This week, the Duchess of Sussex posted the above photo to her As Ever Instagram with the message: “The unofficial quality inspector of this morning’s garden haul.” As you can see, Mia the Beagle is inspecting vegetables, and you can also see Meghan’s Loro Piana slides, which retail for about $920. Or they would retail for that amount if they weren’t selling out nearly everywhere since Meghan posted this photo. Obviously, Meghan’s haters don’t want to focus on how Meghan can sell out expensive slides just by posting a photo of her feet. The haters are focused on Meghan’s “garden haul.” Or rather, what looks like a Whole Foods haul, or perhaps a farmer’s market haul.
Royal fans are calling out Meghan Markle for allegedly lying about her green thumb on Instagram. The Duchess of Sussex, who rebranded her lifestyle brand from “American Riviera Orchard” to “As Ever” in February, posted a photo of her beagle sniffing a produce basket on the brand’s Instagram account.
“The unofficial quality inspector of this morning’s garden haul,” she captioned the photo, which featured her dog, Mia, burying her face in a woven basket of leeks, corn, broccoli, squash, red bell peppers, and carrots. Her caption suggested that the greens were hand-grown in her Southern California coastal garden. But fans were quick to point out something strange: Not only were the vegetables perfectly clean and free from any dirt, but the haul included produce that isn’t in season—in other words, the veggies looked like they were plucked straight from a Whole Foods aisle. Markle, 43, has her comments turned off on Instagram, but followers rushed to other social media platforms to express their doubts.
One Reddit user pointed out that corn was not in season in May—sweetcorn is usually harvested from June to September.
“She is also the only person outside of the US Cornbelt to harvest corn in MAY?” the poster asked. “It’s way too early in the season for most of those vegetables to be grown in her garden and ready to pick,” agreed another.
Other users noted that not only was there no dirt, but the corn and onions looked as if they had been cleaned and trimmed. “Huh. She’s so good at gardening she can grow all things from all seasons at once,” one said.
I love how every single one of Meghan’s IGs makes people’s heads explode. Like… breaking news, a lifestyle influencer stages photos for content on her Instagram. Do people think Meghan is just randomly hanging out in her garden and a photographer just happens to be passing by? Of course she stages and poses. As for Meghan’s “garden haul” – it’s possible that the veggies are from her garden and she just washed them. But for me, the dead giveaway is that the veggies are in a tote bag, not a wicker basket. She probably picked up some stuff at the farmer’s market, meaning those veggies came from someone’s garden! Also: the Daily Beast’s headline was “Meghan humiliated online.” Jesus take the wheel – how is this “humiliating” again?
Photos courtesy of As Ever’s IG.
It’s possible she put the veggies in a tote bag after washing them. Just a thought. If people were as obssessed with Meghan as they were William and Kate I would believe that they were truly the most popular royals.
The hater bots are not programmed to think that far ahead. I mean it’s not like Meghan couldn’t have a hose in her garden to wash off vegetables before bringing them in the house. Who ever heard of such a thing?
Hater bots don’t seem to understand zone gardening either. A simple google search would help them out. If Meghan was in my zone, it would be unlikely. She’s not. One ear of corn creating such a havoc amongst haters is kind of entertaining.
Agreed, Amy Bee.
Look, I have a potager garden. When stuff starts coming into season seemingly all at once, I’m not standing on ceremony to get the veg cleaned up and into the house.
A garden hod with wooden sides/handle and a hardware cloth bottom is where veg get collected and washed, in batches. To get them into the house? I’ll use any clean receptacle! Reusable grocery bags, trugs, my own garden apron with a veggie “kangaroo pocket”, hell I once used an old tablecloth to harvest millet and hulless oats.
Meghan may be gliding through her house in high priced slides, but she’s not actually a snob and any tool can be the right tool when you’re trying to keep up with the harvests of your kitchen garden.
And on that note, I have some perennial onions to cut tops off and a few more asparagus to pick this morning…🥬🧅
It looks like the Taco Tote bag she was papped with after going to the farmers market. It later came out she was an investor in Cesta Collective. Here is a picture from there website. I bet she was at the farmers market.
https://cestacollective.com/products/taco-tote-natural
Greenhouse starts, greenhouse growing, buy plants already greenhouse started, row covers. With the climate in California these would work better than in a lot of places. And they don’t clean and trim vegetables when they pick them? Likely she would clean the onions where she pulled them to leave the dirt in the bed where it belonged. And then you trim excess where you have your compost heap. They have chickens so trim may have been thrown to them. If you are going to take a pic, of course, you will clean off the produce. Wonder how many commenting have ever gardened or are familiar with California climate.
All of this.
But for the corn and broccoli, I used to have a garden (in Virginia) with extensive varieties, and I used to take photos of my haul to post on social media. I find her harvest believable. Saltines really have no clue how diverse gardening in California is. There’s a reason they supply vegetables nationwide.
Looks like summer squash to me.
As a Californian, I can attest that sweet corn can in fact be harvested at this point in time in the region in which she lives. This IS an agricultural state after all, and each region has a different time of harvest. It to mention that with global warming shifts, everything people thought they knew isn’t the fact anymore…
My local farmers’ market is getting in fresh corn now. Strawberry season has become year round in California, I think there is a lack of understanding about our climate?
I don’t see an ear of corn, either. Looks like a squash!
Yes, things are early in my garden this year.
That’s what I thought. A greenhouse.
So these people aren’t “royal fans”. Just Meghan haters.
I have photos of my garden harvests that look *exactly* like that – minus the great shoes!. Peppers and broccoli aren’t going to have dirt. Rinse the leeks and they are all set. I have no idea about the growing season for corn in Montecito, but it’s warm enough that you may be able to grow it all year.
California gardener here (Bay Area so we are slower than Montecito). I was just at a garden in Lafayette (over the hill from me and hotter) where they are harvesting sugar snap peas, chard and broccoli at the same time. It’s probably the end of the broccoli and peas though since it’s really starting to heat up. Corn feels a little early but she could have started it earlier. Since it’s one ear, I totally believe it. I am now just starting to see it in the stores.
All that said – utterly believable, she has an outdoor garden area where she can wash the produce off, take off the outer leaves and save for compost etc.
I don’t think I will go to the UK or the Daily Beast for garden advice – they haven’t a clue about gardening in California’s mediterranean climate. Idiots the lot of them.
Bean I’m an hour or so south of the Bay Area, drove through a garlic capital yesterday (I’m sure you know what it is haha) and saw a huge field of corn growing. I think people don’t really understand the California growing season is much different than the rest of the US.
With onions, I was taught to let them cure a few days, with dirt still on, in a well ventilated area. I use a frame my hub built so that I can dry them out a bit, root side up.
After curing, that’s when I gently dust off dried soil (I use a clean small paintbrush never used for paint). Doing it when fresh can damage the bulb and introduce rot to outer layers. This is also why gardeners advise not trimming the roots from the root plate right after unearthing.
Giving them that time to dry helps them keep longer.
I’m in the Central Valley and sweet corn is ready. Fresno state started selling their sweet corn on the 24th and that’s a big deal, lol
I’m in MD, and we’ve been getting corn up here from FL and GA for almost a month now. I would be not at all surprised to see CA corn this time of year.
I’m in LA, and our farmers’ market has corn.
If corn isn’t available in May, then how would she even buy it at Whole Foods? And if she’s posting something pretty on IG, then why wouldn’t she wash the vegetables?
Agree. Been buying fresh corn in Tennessee for a few weeks now.
It’s California
We have good weather all year
All these vegetables are in season here
Including corn and can be found at the farmers markets year round
The humiliation is coming from folks who study Meghan obsessively. This is her page, she posts what she chooses. Whether bought or grown in her garden, only the obsessive care enough to research the time of year corn is grown. Meghan is able to keep those folks on their knees following her for content.
That DB headline. Giving the game away. Basically they just really want her to be humiliated. Over anything. Even over vegetables. Oh well. Boo hoo. Bc I am doubting that Meghan is humiliated over this. If her team even warranted this as important enough to tell her. Please. The desperation.
This was my point yesterday. Despite Kate being future queen & publicly funded when Kate was missing for months there was no timeline of when she was last seen etc like they did with Meghan in 2023 & the press haven’t bothered to examine the extent of that faked Mother’s Day photo or why KP even felt need to issue a faked photo. But the press will ‘report’ on troll theories about Meghan even though she’s not publicly funded, hoping to catch her out in a lie.
Another distraction spiel from the fact that the Lazies are on holiday again.
@ABritguest, appreciate your comment, Future Queen can disappear for months with photoshopped/Franken photos and it’s crickets. Meghan posts a bag of of vegetables and it’s a scandal. One ear of corn! Crisis. Lies! These people are idiots. I say this with some confidence/knowledge. WI corn growers wished they could start in March. Our best hopes our knee by the 4th of July. Zone 5 etc.. Very different than zone 9. Details don’t matter to some.
I can understand why these people care, truly. As other people have mentioned depending on the climate where you are at some things are growing early my own garden is killing it with peppers right now oddly. She also could have a greenhouse is not like she’s not wealthy enough, and she has an entire beehive on her grounds and chicken coop, a greenhouse that temperature controlled isn’t out of the reasonable expectation. I imagine she probably also has an orangery.
What I really don’t understand is they hate her it’s clear in their every comment, but they know what’s going on with her faster than I do, and probably many other people that like Meghan. They follow every single thing she does to find something wrong with it even when these things have no impact on their life, or anyone’s life in general. If she was camping out in the whole foods produce department and posting it on her Instagram pretending that she grew it what does that matter?
Don’t you get it? The ability to harvest a single ear of sweet corn in California in May is threatening the monarchy! This information could destroy the entire line of succession!
At least that’s the idea I get from their overwrought comments on a woman they claim is irrelevant but occupies every single thought of theirs.
Because if they can make people think she lied about the vegetable haul, they can say she’s untrustworthy and lies about other things as well. It’s all part of a master plan …
Here’s a wild idea: she, like most people with gardens, supplemented her haul with stuff from the farmer’s market/grocery store. The sweetcorn is not prominently featured or anything, so maybe she tossed it in with the other stuff for the sake of a pretty photo, not thinking — or more likely, not caring, or maybe even amused at this point — that people who hate her are going to lose their minds over something so utterly insignificant.
She could literally film herself digging stuff out of the ground and washing the dirt off, and these people would STILL insist that it was fake. So.
It is fresh corn. It had to be grown in a garden somewhere, so why does it defy belief that it was Meghan’s garden?
I can buy fresh corn at my local farmstand now (mid-atlantic) but its not locally grown, they bring it in from the south. its not corn season yet here, so if someone posted a picture of corn from their garden i would think….well I dont know what I would think bc I wouldn’t care that much, lmao.
I have no idea if everything in this picture was from her garden, if some of it was, if she cleaned it off, if its all from the farmers market or all from her greenhouse. Its a pretty picture and those veggies look delicious.
Haters gonna hate, as Taylor would say 🤷♀️😂
This. Also, we’re a couple days from June. Very possible this is the first ear of corn ready, especially with an early variety in a warm sunny spot.
In the USA Corn Belt, the planting season is just finished or finishing. The writer of this hit piece is revealing their ignorance.
I should add the disclaimer that I’m a lifelong Manhattanite and know virtually nothing about gardens and farms. So I’m fine with being wrong if I am!
@Dee agree. She’s in California. Different climate.
I lived in Southern California most of my life. Montecito sits at the same latitude as Atlanta, Georgia. Even San Francisco, which Californians often consider to be in “Northern California,” sits further south than Winchester, Virginia, a state that is considered to be in “the South.” All of this is to say that people who are not from the U.S. and not from the West Coast are often talking out of their ass when they opine on California and its climate and growing seasons.
Unless she has a commercial farm, Meghan is not going to get a bunch a corn. Her basket is a true representation of a backyard garden.
Salties are so hell bent on proving she is „fake”, whatever that means, even claiming A&L don’t exist. So all is possible.
I don’t care where she got the vegetables.. it was a beautiful picture and made me want a big colorful 🥗 salad.
When I buy things at the farmers market, I call it my “haul .” This was no gotcha moment. These insane people need to LET IT GO. She’s not coming back!
One corn is the cause of all this wahala!!! I laugh in Nigerian. The wotld media is a mess that now take their cues from on line trolls.
Why are people talking about corn? I see a Yellow Squash, not an ear of corn. And Meghan live in California which has a long growing season. I don’t think any of the produce that Meghan photographs in a basket have dirt clinging to them. She obviously washes them.
There is absolutely an ear of corn in the shot, it just hasn’t been shucked.
If you’re going to throw that corn in the microwave..you absolutely leave it in the shuck. That is the best way we’ve ever found for cooking fresh corn on the cob. When I was a kid my mom would boil it…bleh. But microwaved in the shuck makes for an amazing ear of corn. 🙂
The ear of corn is using the broccoli as a pillow.
Right. Missed it the first time I looked at the picture. Lovely way to describe it.
Good grief on toast, what a tantrum in a teacup! (“Royal” bone china, of course.)
Can we just talk about the fact that HRH Meghan, Princess of Arochukwu, Duchess of Sussex, consistently promotes healthy eating with gorgeous photos of beautiful produce?
She also shares easy recipes, and gives full acknowledgement that what’s important is getting there, and making it easy on yourself to choose healthy options for yourself and your loved ones.
It does not matter in the slightest whether these veggies were all harvested on Meghan’s property (easily possible) or bought at a farmstand, market, or store.
What’s important is that she’s reminding us that this food is avaliable and very appealing. Can we talk about that for a minute?
I’m starting to think that the entire British press, the “royals”, and all the varieties of delulu derangers are all suffering from vitamin D deficiency-induced dementia.
I really want these slides!!! The garden haul looks lovely and I couldn’t care less if it came from her garden, the store or a farmers market. I live in a rural high desert community in California and our local mom-pop grocery store is selling local grown corn already.
Breaking news! Meghan living her best life in Cali is breaking people’s brains again.
Well….I have corn..albeit one stalk😆. I have carrots and peppers and green onions and beets. I live in California…….. People are so ignorant that its becoming painful.
People really have zero idea of what it’s possible to grow in a home garden. Especially one in California.
Where do they think local farmer’s markets get their produce? Do they think it’s grown in the full sunshine of outer space? 🙄
Now what I want to know is, if HRH Meghan is growing corn, HOW IS SHE KEEPING THE SQUIRRELS OUT OF IT??
Little beggars stole at least half of all the corn I’ve ever grown, *right*; before it was harvest-ripe!
We have never grown corn, but for tomatoes and peppers, dog hair works really well. we used to have a golden retriever and when we brushed him we would take his hair and spread it around/over the plants. Kind of like the dried blood/urine idea but easier.
@Becks1 — great idea! I don’t grow corn anymore, but I wonder if cat hair would work for that too?
I do miss it a bit. I’ve never tasted anything better in my life than a fresh, sun-warmed ear of homegrown sweet corn, picked at the peak of ripeness, shucked and eaten raw right there in the garden. So. Good.
I still grow my own herbs, and sometimes cherry and grape tomatoes. They’re easy to grow in pots, quick to ripen, delicious, and expensive at the market. And if the squirrels take a share, I have plenty so I don’t really mind 😎
It’s like these expletives have never been to California and seen everything we can grow out here. We can also grow all year round. They’re willfully blind idiots.
We should all start posting our garden hauls and tagging the Daily Beast.
Blackbirds steal my fruit so I use a fruit cage. An old polytunnel covered in netting.
Idles—urgh, squirrels. Starting this spring, I’ve had to put cinnamon in my porch house plants because those little stinkers have been eating the roots. A whole world of blooming trees and wild plants…yet, they go after my stuff. 🙄🙄🙄
I feel for you. One year we had a groundhog and it took a bite out of every zucchini. If it had eaten an entire zucchini and left the rest for us, then OK, wild critters got to eat, but it didn’t ! it bit every single one once.
I tried growing corn one year and it came up very well and overnight it fell prey to a marauding gang of raccoons. They ate everything and left all the trash and some piles of poop. Never bothered again after that.
Veggies do not grow in dark basements where derangers dwell.
They’ve never heard of California where some backyard gardens never experience frost. They don’t know about permaculture, growing year round, or 270+ days a year average outdoor growing season in Cali.
If youre in zone 7 or 9, you can absolutely have backyard corn by the end of may.
Even in areas with shorter growing seasons? You start your seeds indoors in early February to make sure you have plants (not seedlings) to plant. If you want to maxize how much food you can produce on your own, you start early and work your garden well as Meghan seems to.
@kaiser it looks like a woven grass tote. Reasonable to me that it could be used in a garden.
@Alteya — exactly.
Layered, intensive, four-season planting, a greenhouse, an outdoor potting & cleanup area with a plumbed grey-water recovery sink, a seed-starting area with grow lights, vintage cold frames, the works — if I were HRH Meghan, I’d have it all, and I’m sure she does. Why on earth not?
She’s joyful and thriving, and so are her beloved husband and kids. That’s what kills these people. It’s really pathologically sad.
I missed the part in Meghan’s caption in which she claimed: I grew every piece of this delightful cornucopia because I am the bestest gardener in the world! Kneel before me, peasants!
These people are deranged. A “garden haul” can just as easily come from a market as from one’s own garden. Meghan wasn’t making any dramatic claims here.
It’s Instagram, not EyeWitness news. It’s a mood photo, pretty shoes, cute dog. She’s not wearing her Crocs which are her gardening shoes. I assumed it’s a gift basket . When I saw this on AsEver, I was hoping we’ll be getting vegetable dips or chutneys. Her AsEver page is marketing/advertising. Are people really going insane over this because they are that obsessed with every minutiae of her life? This is madness.
They must spend hours poring over photos to try to find something to criticise her for.
How I cackled at “eyewitness news”! That is absolutely how the British media are treating Meghan’s Instagram, and it’s hilarious.
I noticed she’s barefoot on gravel in one photo (tiny pea gravel but still) and that hurts, at least for me even though my feet are pretty tough. This is meant to be a pretty photo. No doubt she grows plenty in her garden! My sister-in-law grows tons of stuff and she’s in Long Island, not California. But who cares?
Oh my god, why are they so obsessed with her?!
All she said was quality control.
So she bought some vegetables and the pup came over when she was home and she snapped a picture.
So who cares? It’s looks delicious.
Look this🎉
https://farmflavor.com/california/whats-growing-california-produce-calendar/
Meghan has a lot of raised beds and, as you know, many things grow there that are not yet there on the ground. She also once posted a bunch of carrots full of soil.
LMFAO!! These Meghan hating people really do need help.
I think they’re more angry about the $920 sandals than the contents of her very beautiful basket , which would be a fantastic summer tote. Which I would like. Just saying. I will be looking for a knock- off version of those slides because while I’ll shell out $9 for jam, $900 for those gorgeous sandals are a round-trip ticket, lol. I really don’t understand the fuss over this post.
Hee—hurray for knockoffs! 🤣🤣🤣🥳🥳Those sandals are cute.
We are 2 seconds away from someone in the British media calling nature “Catherine’s”, I just know it. They really love to beat Meghan with any stick that happens to be laying around. She cannot do anything right, and I can’t figure out how anyone believes the British media anymore. About anything, they have lost all credibility with the Meghan and Harry situation.
Once again the homespun, social mediated royal Court at Montecito outpaces that other one in the quiet style QEII exemplified and the buzz the old girl never achieved.
Hand-held Montecito is motion, color, the cynosure of the globe’s young adults.
Professionally photographed England always seems to be taking the same dull headshot.
Newsflash: The only veggies in that tote that would be quite dirty would be the carrots and onions. It would not be odd to trim and clean up the onions while out in your garden where you probably have a compost bin, especially if you were photographing your basket for IG. The carrots are below the other produce, so we can’t see how dirty they are. The other veggies don’t grow in the dirt so no reason for them to be dirty. Try again haters.
Whatever.
It’s also possible she has an outside prep area with tables, knives, sink + water, compost container, etc
Jesus – I don’t have a garden now, but even I had that setup in my shabby old LA backyard garden. My BIL has container garden on his deck with much of the same items in the basket. Etc.
We’ve seen video of her and Archie pulling up dirty carrots. We’ve seen other bits of her garden. What losers they are.
PS – it would be nice to see her prep setup. I’m nosy!
She had a reel where she was arranging flowers that showed an outside prep area. She has a really beautiful outdoor space and seems to fully utilize it.
This is ridiculously stupid. Even anyone who isn’t wealthy like she is would have a source of water outdoors to help clean or water the plants, flowers, vegetables or fruit that she has growing in her large garden and property. We don’t even know if the photo is from the outside area near the garden, at the outside entranceway or inside her home. So for these deranged people to study a photo to try and call her out on a lie is ridiculous. She could have cleaned the produce outside ot inside before she posted the photo and neither would mean that it wasn’t from her own garden, since harvesting for these items varies based on climate of where someone lives and not just about what time of year it is. Even in California, the climate would vary from region to region. As most have already mentioned corn is already being harvested now in certain areas of California and the country. Besides, if a woman cleaning her produce before posting a photo of it or buying some of it from another garden is the biggest lie you can come up with, but you still remain silent about the ultimate lies told by Kate about Meghan making her cry and copy and pasting family photos, then you have a huge issue with your mental health. These people need to get a life and help.
Right about the corn. A small garden plot of corn (3-4 stalks) is in danger of all not getting pollinated; so a single ear in a day is very likely her haul. Most plants have one ear, possibly 2 at most. I find this believable.
Ever since Meghan started posting on her IG accounts, the gossip mags and tabloid outlets, more so the British ones and especially The Daily Fail, have made a habit of actively scouring social media for posts from online trolls (some of whom are definitely their own and other tabloid hacks, and “royal experts and commentators” with burner accounts) to publish damning and defaming digital and print articles about her, which then will endlessly be discussed on their cheap morning shows and podcasts, with the sole purpose of tarnishing her business and brand name.
They hide behind these hateful posts to cover their asses – by calling these people “royal fans”, they pretend as if they’re spouting legit opinions of fans/others, but it’s exactly what they themselves think of her. Why else would you pay attention to, and rehash those trolling posts full of hate, proven lies and misreprestation of her?
I think it’s time for Meghan to lawyer up, to do something about this, because this is getting out of hand – these are business demaging/sabotaging moves. It’s not just personal anymore. Netflix, her business partner in As Ever, needs to step in as well.
Last week, The Fail took her wedding anniversary post, and not only put it online in their digital articles, but also in a two-page tabloid take down to criticise every photo, even those with the kids, with the most negative comments.
This is a very lucrative business for them – they make a lot of money off her. If they can continue like this with impunity, they will surely have earned all the money they will need to cover the legal costs (their expensive lawyers, and even the damage costs, should they lose the case) of the phone hacking lawsuit that Prince Harry and four others are bringing against The Fail, which is due to start in January of next year.
It is ridiculous that this form of bullying, the ongoing hate campaign and this form of blatant exploitation, is allowed in the UK without any sanctions from a press/media regulator, or by law.
🎯
Live in the Central Valley of California and everything in her basket is grown year round. BTW we just picked sweet corn up from a road side stand. Sweet corn season began a couple weeks ago
Meghan didn’t say “from my garden”. Evan in Canada we can. at this time of the year buy fresh vegetables from local farms or farmer’s markets.
They’re so close to realizing everything on social media is staged lol. That would mean realizing influencers are a business, though, including their personal faves.
Even people who aren’t celebs or influencers photoshop, filter, stage pictures for SM.
I’ve been buying sweet corn on the cob since April and I live in the northern Midwest. She could have planted the corn last August. She does live in Southern Cali which is a reverse season climate. Corn is in season from May to October in that region.
The derangers always refer nastily to the Duchesses’ feet (she’s got very nice, recently pedicured feet). I love how many pics there are of her feet…just for them🤣
I love Megan, but she definitely implied her garden, and that looks unrealistic, coming from a garden, even one in California.
Unless the garden has a series of gardeners that wash, cut, and polish the veggies, and even de- tassle the corn. Which sounds more realistic.
Its all smoke and mirrors in Hollywood.
Nope, it’s not ‘unrealistic’ for a home garden in southern California. I’m afraid you’ve just demonstrated your lack of knowledge. And of course her produce would be presented nicely for her business Insta. Btw, if you REALLY love Meghan, you’d know she lives about 100 miles from Hollywood. Nice try 😂
If you ‘loved” Meghan, you’d learn to spell her name correctly.
Because, of course, ordinary people can’t de-tassel corn or wash their veggies when they pick them.
Why does one need “a variety of gardeners” to make the contents of one vegetable basket Instagram-presentable?