Ingenious Fruit Berry Harvester Home Made From a Plastic Bleach Bottle in Action.

by AndrewKFletcher

5.6K4912

Intro: Ingenious Fruit Berry Harvester Home Made From a Plastic Bleach Bottle in Action.

Simple Fruit / Berry Picker in action, picking ripe blackcurrants without damaging the berry's. (Video)

Click here to see video of Fruit Picker in Action

The picker is made from an empty bleach container, which provides a comfortable handle.

The cheap bleach cost 23 pence from Asda and most supermarkets.

The screw cap end of the bottle can be used to secure a pole to reach distant fruits, by screwing through the threaded neck into a cane or wooden pole, inserted into the neck of the bottle.

The fruit picker helps to decrease the harvesting time, while making it very easy to harvest fruits, especially where the plant has prickles. Berries such as blackberry, gooseberry, raspberry, elderberry, bilberry, redcurrant and blueberry can be picked with ease using this excellent free harvester.

Very pleased with the results and making use of containers we frequently discard makes it a very worthwhile project.

Please come back and share your experience

Thank you for watching my video and please check out my research into circulation and inclined bed therapy at http://inclinedbedtherapy.com

Kind regards Andrew


STEP 1: Locate a Plastic Bottle of Cheap Bleach From Your Supermarket

Cheap bleach cost for us is 23 pence, which makes you wonder how they can make a profit?

You need the type that has a handle on it and is made from tough plastic, don't settle for anything less.

Wallmart is the equivalent to Asda in the USA

Once emptied you need to thoroughly wash out the empty bottle, several times to remove all traces of bleach.

Make sure you don't get any on your clothes and if you do, immediately wash your clothes under the tap to avoid bleach damaging them.

STEP 2: Cutting the Bleach Bottle to Make Your Ingenious Fruit Picker

  1. With the bleach bottle on a firm surface, have the handle pointing up.
  2. Using a box cutter, saw or scissors, cut half way down through the side of the bottle below the handle as shown.
  3. Then cut horizontally along from the bottom to the first cut that you made.

This will create a funnel for the berries to roll towards the capped end and prevent you from losing any as you gather more.

STEP 3: Now You Need to Add Some Teeth to Your Ingenious Fruit Picker

Using sharp strong scissors or a box knife / Stanley Knife, cut V shaped teeth in the end of the bleach bottle to create the comb that will dislodge the softest fruits without damaging them and capture the berries in the bleach bottle, enabling you to work for much longer between visiting your basket / storage container.

This Ingenious Fruit Picker will enable you to strip berries from the branches of fruit bushes, shrubs and even trees without staining your hands.

Especially in protecting you from those species that rip your hands with sharp thorns, such as gooseberry and blackberry.

To reach fruits further away, drill a hole through the plastic cap and insert a wooden mop / broom handle, then screw through the bleach bottle threaded neck into the pole. No more fruits out of reach :)

Hope you enjoyed this Instructable as much as we did eating all of those yummy blackcurrants :)

Kind regards

Andrew

website: http://inclinedbedtherapy.com

11 Comments

f1dd13r 4 years ago

Ooh great idea. I have a commercial berry picker which is a bit like a dustpan and works very much as this does but I like how you have used a free item to make it. I might make one for next year as we have cherry trees here and I could put the bottle on a pole to grab all the best ones (and of course well out of reach) that usually go to the birds. Im also thinking a much wider toothed version on a pole could be used for apples and will defo be making one to try.

tenbury 5 years ago

Andrew mate, that's brilliant. I've been growing currants for 4 decades, why didn't I think of this!

As I can't presently move ( broken hip) this is exactly the kind of project for me.I'll be hunting under the sink for a bleach bottle later today.

Thank you.

tammycntn 7 years ago

So glad you posted this. Love this great idea.

WilliamB274 7 years ago

One suggestion. It was seeming like you were sometimes angling too far forward,and possibly losing/dumping berries to the ground. What if you were to attach some kind of hose to the hole end and then run it to a bucket of some sorts? Then, there wouldn't be any berries in the scoop to lose when you do angle too far.

AndrewKFletcher 7 years ago

Yes, that was me taking my eye off what I was doing :) It works very well and those berries that fell were knocked off by me rather than falling out of the scoop.
That said, your idea of adding a hose sounds promising.

Heyup 7 years ago

Great idea Andrew, well done..... John from sunny Donny :)

AndrewKFletcher 7 years ago

Thanks John, it is very comfortable to use close up. Will take some more picks and footage with one extended on a pole to reach those fruits other pickers can't :)

AndrewKFletcher 7 years ago

UK Berries are ripe for harvesting right now. bilberries, raspberries, blackcurrant, blackberry, In the North, gooseberry