Should I pick my soft fruit by hand or buy a tool to help? Watch this video to find out the winner when picking redcurrants. Note: You will be surprised by the results!
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I'd use the picker, because it would save a lot of kneeling time. The separation is much easier imo and can be done while sitting on a chair.
So the ideal situation would be to wash and press the tool picked currents for juice and throw the pulp to the chickens?
I like your videos and every now and then I stumble upon them when searching stuff in youtube. I came here researching berry pickers since I love picking wild berries and I am trying to find a less painful and more effective solution since more wild berries have thorny bushes, if not all. Obviously you are not researching wild berry picking but it's interesting, the result is a bit surprising.
I wonder if you changed the way you did this would the results be different. Lets say you take buckets and put some water in, when you hand pick you just pull down berries in the bucket and when you use the picker you pour them in from high up so wind blows away any leaves and small branches. I think this would also make it easier to pick up unwanted stuff directly from the bucket at the start of the sorting process and then when you start doing the hand full after handful inspection there would be less work and berries wouldn't be as sticky and hey, washing already done 🙂
I found your channel yesterday and I think I watched around 40 videos since then… so this is where my sunday gone 😉 Anyway, I find them pretty amazing and inspiring, as I decided last year to take control over my grandparents old garden and turn it again into a joyfull source of fruits and vegetables.
When I was young we had couple of redcurrant plants and I remember that I was soooo scared (little girl) about all the spiders that was coming on my hands while picking the fruits, that I finally stopped to harvest and after some years my grandpas decided to cut the bushes out. Now i think: how it was even possible to happen?
So after a year i was planting, taking care and harvesting my first tomatoes and preparing the places for recultivate raspberries I am finally planning to buy some nice currants also, as saying sorry to the old ones 😉
Anyway, as i was planning to say, the video is hilarious in the most positive way and i am planning to see all of them soon. Thanks for sharing the knowledge and passion, your'e doing a great job!
I think this would be good for bushes with thorns. Like blackberries. Might save getting scratched.
Thank you, I'm considering buying a picker for black currants, and other berries and your video demonstration was very helpful. I could nitpick the process, but the fact that you filmed it all makes the context clear and one can judge for oneself. I have limited time outside for a number of reasons, so getting the batch into the house for the remaining processing is a high priority and has me looking forward to using a picker. I should add, that the prep stage for the tool picked currants would have been a lot more efficient had you spread the currants out on a flat surface like a baking sheet, rather than pick them out of the cup one or two at a time.
I was just considering the purchase of a picker after hand picking berries yesterday. I have never had as many berries to pick before this season, so always picked by hand.
However, I lost a few berries, which were falling from the bush whilst picking. I leave berries that have fallen for the wildlife.
So I will still purchase a picker. And I will not lose so many berries and leave some on each bush for the wildlife
Quickest method for me is the berry picker, followed by removing the stalks with a large dinner fork. Love your videos.
I find I can sort faster if I spread the berries out in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet. I can zero in on the ones that need to be cleaned and not have to handle the ones that don't. I've never tried it with currants, but it works great for raspberries and honeyberries.
Very informative. Thanks for taking the time.
Well…it picked leaves, twigs etc., when sorted, there were less berries I the jar. It picked indiscriminately. But was definitely very effective and will get you out of the rain quickly ..lol
Great experiment and comparison Huw. Thanks for doing this and sharing the results. What have you been using this year?
Big tip. To clean berries. There is an attachment for your vacuum cleaner that sucks up the leaves and let the berries drop to a bowl. Using this method I clean about 20 kilos in 5 minutes.
Quick and to the point: i would go with the berry picker. Reasons: yes, hand picking seems to be faster (you have good dexterity working with your hands all day though, so not the same can be said about other people). But hand picking might lead to more fruit being squashed or dirt/dust from one fruit going to the other when you keep touching them all with the same fingers; and also you might squash them and having juice bursting out on your clothes (sticky and staining)… Most importantly is this reason: staying bend for so long, picking by hand; I would rather pick them fast, go inside the house and pour them in a bowl and sort them comfortably, sitting at the table, and save my back.
Great analysis. I hand pick it, remove the leaves, wash it and freeze it with vines. I mostly use it in smoothies anyway, so it doesn't really matter. I also use them fresh in mixed fruit jams, mostly for the taste and as thickener (specially black currant), cook it, mash it through the sieve. Same story with making syrup. So I pick them with vines and it's quick.
Good video with an intersting outcome. I come to a different conclusion for me personally. I accept that hand picking may be marginally faster in grams per minute. This is because you are doing most of the selection/processing at the point of collection and there is therefore very litte "re-handling". However – where the processing is done is an issue. I do not find bending over picking berries comfortable and a definitely do not enjoy the picking process. However – sat at my kitchen table chatting to my wife, litening to music and/or drinking a cup of coffee while de-stalking etc the berries is very congenial. Also – when picking by hand it is a one on one job. Hoovering up a load with a picker means that third parties (wife, children and grandchildren) can also sit around the kitchen table chatting and processing the berries prior to jamming or canning. For me the picker has it.
I would say that because the picker tool can get so many more berries in the same amount of time it would take to pick them, roughly 5x the amount, even though the preparation time would take longer; the energy you put into preparation is much smaller compared to the amount of time you would be bending over at your plant trying to get to that 5x more mark.
nice
Hi thanks for video. I find if you hand pick but take the whole bunch rather than pick individually its much quicker. When I sort them it's easy to peel fruit off stalk cos bunch is in tact, therefore less individual fruit with stalks attached.
English please
I would say if you have arthritis, cannot stand being bent over very long, or it is very hot outside when ripe and you cannot handle being out in the sun very long to pick by hand, you should use the device. Honestly I did not pick many in June when my pink currants were ready and it affected my plant which oddly died. If I had the picker I would have had a huge harvest and maybe my bush would still be producing.
Heiya there is some sieves here in scandinavia which are for getting rid of leaves and such (I live in Finland). That should make it easier to prepare berries. Especially with a 10 l bucket full of stuff. you basically let them roll around in the sieve and the leaves fall through.
Both the picker and sieve are traditional blue berry stuff here. I even found a cleaning tool for a vacuum cleaner this year … Gonna probably use it but people said it works by sucking up the leaves whilst the berries are more heavy and fall into the collection container . Should work according to people that knew that stuff and just happened to be around as customers in the shop. Here that device costs 10-15 euro, I guess and also those berry pickers are really cheap compared to the work you save
what im concerned about is the berry scoop damaging the stem post harvest. I found some of these berry scoops and I wanted to try. my family and I live a "hunter/gatherer" lifestyle. so we pick alot. huckleberries, blueberries, Saskatoon, cherries, peaches, apricots, mushrooms and many other food for sustenance purposes. I was interested in trying them out and seeing if they do. if they do then I will advocate for not using them. if they don't then will have my vouch. thank you for your video, it is very informative. we can pick 140lbs of cherries between 3 of us in 2hrs, with processing time (from tree to freezer) I calculated per pound takes 11mins of we freeze. but if we can I calculated 29 mins. so yes I can appreciate the work you put in for this video and understand the concept.
I got this picker for my birthday from my son who knows that my husband and i have a large garden and many raspberry and blackberry bushes. i watched videos on how to use it, but i'm not sure they would work with the delicate berries that we have. i haven't given it a real try yet, but i will do so when the blackberries ripen. all the raspberries were gone by the time i got the picker. i want to thank you for the time and effort and thought you put into this video. now i just have to decide myself which one will work best for us in time and or labor spent. thanks again. the video was great.
One advantage with the berry picker is that you could divide the work and end up ahead. Have one person doing the picking and one or more people doing the sorting. If you're hand picking, that's a bottleneck in terms of time.
Another thing is it depends on what you're making. If you're making wine or jam or steam juicing, having some small amount of stems and leaves in the batch isn't a big deal.
Hand picking is natural and better for our well-being.