Are you allowed to pick berries with hand harvesters?

Peculiarities of picking blueberries and strawberries

Picking blueberries and wild strawberries is a labor-intensive and painstaking process. The berries are small, the bushes are low and grow densely. Harvesting by hand is incredibly difficult—you literally have to pick one berry at a time from all the greenery. In this case, you need to stand bending towards the ground.

Blueberry picking

Most often, blueberries are found in pine and small-leaved forests. Finding a berry bush is quite simple: a clear sign of the presence of shrubs is a wild plant - wild rosemary. It has a distinct smell, which will become your guide.

There are also cultivated varieties of blueberries that gardeners grow in their summer cottages. The bushes of such plants are taller, but less common, and the berries are larger, and therefore it is much more convenient to collect them than forest ones.

Bushes can reach an age of 40 years. The oldest ones occupy a large area and have a spreading shape. They bear a lot of berries, but they are smaller than those on young plants.

The most delicious and healthy fruits grow on young animals, whose age does not exceed 10 years. They have thin green twigs, and thick side branches are practically absent.

It is recommended to collect blueberries in small plastic buckets or baskets. It is not worth pouring the harvested crop from one container to another, since the berries, although strong, are easily damaged. You should not pick blueberries after rain; it is better to choose dry morning weather.

Collection of forest and garden strawberries

Picking strawberries also has its own characteristics. Both a wild forest and a garden berry, it loves well-lit, open areas. Ripe and ready-to-eat fruits have a bright red color and are easily separated from the stalk.

The fruit cups can be removed immediately, or the berries can be sorted later. The best time to pick strawberries is in the morning, when the dew has dried. The fruits must be collected in small containers of 2-3 kg. It is not recommended to overspray; the berries are soft and easily damaged.

Autonomous berry harvesters

In open areas on an industrial scale, it is excellent to harvest crops using controlled agricultural harvesting machines. These combines are used to collect berries in fields or garden plots of one hectare or more.

Some machines operate autonomously, for example, the Viktor self-propelled harvester. Others are hooked to a slow-moving tractor. This is a VICTOR/Z trailed combine harvester for collecting gooseberries, currants or a Joanna Smart combine harvester for harvesting currants, honeysuckle, gooseberries, and rose hips. The amount of harvested crop increases hundreds of times compared to manual harvesting.

The main disadvantage can rightly be called the high price of the combine. Collecting wild berries with such machines is impossible.

The cost of a new combine is from 1 million rubles. Only foreign manufacturers are represented on the Russian market. For example, SDF Group (Italy), Weremczuk and JAGODA JPS (Poland).

Classification of berry harvesters

Based on the level of mechanization, all berry harvesters are usually divided into:

Manual without mechanization of processes. The designers were inspired to create them by ancient prototypes that have been used on our lands since time immemorial, their appearance reminiscent of a short-handled rake with a bag or box tied to it. Nowadays these are very ergonomic containers with a handle, equipped with a wire or sheet palisade to grip stems or branches;
Manual with mechanization of processes. On the modern market there are products held in the hand that use a motor for frequent translational movements of the removing block to crush the berries from the branch, or vacuum suction; 3. Automatic under operator control. Outwardly they resemble ordinary forage or grain harvesters, with the difference that they do not have mowing blocks or digging elements. And separation processes, taking into account the fragility of the product, have their own characteristics.

Based on available assembly volumes, industrial berry units and devices for home use and small farms are distinguished.

Other options for creating a device

If you don't know what material to use for your harvester, then pay attention to wood. The manufacturing method is quite simple and practical. What you will need:

kebabs skewers;
large tree branches (approximate branch diameter 10-12 cm);
saw;
chisel;
drill;
drill;
glue.

First, use a saw to make 2 identical circles from branches. Then, using a chisel, make a hole on one wooden figure with a distance of 1 cm from the edges. The resulting parts need to be properly sanded and get rid of splinters and burrs.

After this, proceed to creating the comb. For this purpose, you will need a drill and a drill bit, the diameter of which should match the caliber of the kebab sticks. Drill holes in the circle.

The optimal distance between the holes is no more than 5 mm, so that the berries do not fall to the ground when picked. When the holes on the first figure are ready, repeat the same with the second. Next, place one rounded piece on top of the other so that their holes match. Using kebab sticks, pull both figures away from each other at a distance of 15 cm and secure the frame with glue. The harvester is ready (Fig. 4).

The simplest option for assembling a combine consists of a durable plastic bottle. For this design you will also need a knife, stick, leash, etc.

Ketchup containers, which are known for their durability, work best. The mineral water container can quickly become unusable. The bottle itself should be small in size, with a large neck so that you can easily get the collected berries.

Make marks on it, a small flag with a couple of teeth. Using a sharp knife, a hole is cut along the contour, after which the bottle is tied to a stick with a cord or secured with tape.

By using your ingenuity, you can ease the hard work of picking lingonberries and other berries in your garden.

What is such a combine?

Structurally, a lingonberry harvester is a deep bucket, to which a special comb with long teeth is attached in the front part from the bottom, and a handle for holding the entire device is located on top.

The disadvantage of this model is the thin metal handle, which is uncomfortable to hold and quickly rubs calluses.

The main working body of such a device is the comb. The length of its teeth is 10-20 cm, so that in one movement you can grab and “comb” an entire lingonberry bush. The distance between the teeth is approximately 4-5 mm. It is into such gaps that the leaves and stems of the bush easily fit, but the berries no longer fit.

Practice shows that a lingonberry harvester is also suitable for harvesting cranberries, bearberries, as well as large blueberries and blueberries. Small blueberries fit between the teeth and are easily crushed. Other berries - strawberries, cloudberries, currants - cannot be harvested with such combs, since the leaves of their bushes are very large and do not fit between the teeth.

The receiving compartment of the device is blind; berries picked with a comb accumulate in it.

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When working, the picker holds the scoop in his hand, brings the comb to the base of the bush and simply lifts it up. Stems, branches and leaves pass between the teeth, and the berries are torn off and rolled into the depths of the receiving chamber. At one time or another, the picker pours the berries from the harvester into a bucket or basket.

This way you can pick berries from one bush in a few seconds. When collecting manually, the same operation takes at least a minute.

In well-designed harvesters, the comb does not have sharp cutting edges and therefore does not scratch the plant stems or tear off leaves. Even the edges of the teeth are rounded and do not scratch the stems. That is, in a good case, the tool is harmless to lingonberry bushes. In many cases, when such devices are made by hand, they contain areas that are dangerous for plants, which cause damage to the bushes.

Such devices are manufactured by many manufacturers and, therefore, have different appearance and design features.

For example, Finnish MARJUKKA combines are very famous in Karelia and the Leningrad region. They are made of durable plastic and therefore are quite lightweight, but at the same time durable. The photo shows a classic version of such a device:

And here is a model for children in the form of a fox:

Its price is the same - 750 rubles.

Simpler devices can be made of steel:

and sometimes they don’t even have teeth, but simply a rounded lattice in the front part:

These are the models that are considered the safest. Already these options:

...they pick off a large number of leaves that do not fit between the teeth. It is these harvesters and their analogues that are considered poachers and it is with them that the Ministry of Natural Resources is fighting. And they are the ones that cost less (in the range of 300-400 rubles), which is why they are most popular among the population.

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And on cranberry or blueberry plantations, real mobile harvesters are used:

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Actually, these manual deep buckets with handles are also called manual harvesters. However, other devices for picking berries, often not at all similar to buckets, work on a similar principle.

Types of berry harvesters - design features

Berry harvesters not only help to significantly facilitate the process of picking blueberries, lingonberries, cranberries and other berries, but also make this process as efficient as possible, reducing losses and shortening the time of activities.

Users can choose either a production model or design a manual harvester for picking berries with their own hands. The configurations of such devices are quite simple, and following the instructions and drawings, creating them is quite easy.

Features of blueberry harvesters

Picking blueberries is a very labor-intensive process, and care must be taken, since the berries, although dense, are easy to damage. Plastic containers or baskets are used, and you should not frequently move the crop from one container to another.

Factory-produced berry harvesters

The most common design has become a manual blueberry harvester in the form of a scoop. Despite the fact that it is extremely simple, the device speeds up the process three or four times. The cost of a blueberry harvester is not high, but you can find it in the hardware department or in garden tools. The equipment is known to users under several names:

Berry
Fruit picker.
Berry harvester.

Design

The container of the device has the shape of a parallelepiped.
On the underside there are elongated curved teeth for combing out berries.
The gap between the teeth is five, six millimeters.

Branches with foliage easily pass between the cloves without being damaged, and the berries are torn off and sent to the back of the equipment. Among the various models, the berry harvester made in Finland is very popular.

The body of homemade and factory-made products can be metal, plastic or wood. As for the teeth, they are almost always made of wire.

How to make a blueberry harvester with your own hands?

It’s quite easy to make a blueberry harvester with your own hands; for this you will need:

Patterns of paper parts - two side walls and one back, bottom, handle, part with teeth.
Place the pattern on the surface of the material from which the body will be made, trace and cut.
Fasten all the components according to the diagram.

Using the drawings, creating a blueberry harvester with your own hands is quite simple. For the teeth you can use wire. After making several long loops, secure them to the bottom of the device.

Cranberry harvester

One of the most popular combines for harvesting cranberries is the Toropushka device. The manual device damages the plants, ensuring gentle and quick harvesting. The device is equipped with a capacious storage sleeve into which the picked berries are sent. To pour them into the tank, just one movement of your hand is enough. If you want to make a popular Toropushka cranberry harvester with your own hands, look at the drawings.

Design Features:

The cranberry harvester has solid metal baffles to prevent bunches of plants from getting tangled. This allows grass and moss to escape without problems, leaving the berries in the container.
The springiness of the plates does not tear leaves from the branches.
Thanks to the rounded shape of the device, berries can be removed even from recesses.
The sleeve is made of fabric, which reduces the time it takes to extract berries - you will need to lower the edge of the sleeve into the container.

Harvester for collecting lingonberries

A convenient and efficient manual harvester for collecting lingonberries was previously produced by domestic manufacturers. Its configuration is similar to other devices for berries:

Body equipped with a handle.
Bottom with a comb made of wire.
A metal partition located inside the manual berry harvester, covering the cross-section of the body, prevents accidental loss of lingonberries.
The partition is fixed in the side plates of the housing so that it can be easily rotated to access the berries directly into the combine.

This design is often used to make do-it-yourself berry harvesters. Today, inexpensive models made of durable plastic are increasingly used. Most often on the market you can find Finnish berry harvesters, which have proven themselves to be excellent for working with various harvest volumes.

Source: https://sadovij-pomoshnik.ru/kombajny/dlya-sbora-yagod.html

How to make a harvester for collecting lingonberries and other berries with your own hands?

It’s easy to make a manual harvester yourself using the following drawings:

Materials you will need:

metal wire;
wooden slats;
Sheet steel;
pieces of plywood or plastic;
fasteners.

The production process itself is as follows:

Patterns are made from paper of all parts except wire ones;
Using metal scissors, the bottom of the device and its body are cut out of a sheet of steel;
On a separate narrow sheet of galvanized steel with a width equal to the size of the berry receptacle, one edge is bent - the future cutter;
In the second part of this piece, holes are drilled every 0.4-0.5 cm, the diameter of which is equal to the diameter of the wire;
The wire is cut into segments 10 cm long (the size of the wire should not exceed 0.3 cm), and inserted into the prepared holes, after which it is fixed by welding, bending the plate with a hammer, a wooden lath or any other convenient method;
The ends of the resulting rake are bent with a side to protect the berries from rolling;
The body is assembled using the selected fasteners, and the rake part is screwed to it. You can additionally cover it, for example, with wood or plastic for the safety of hands and plants;
The handle can be made by bending a tube or double narrow plate from galvanized steel. You can also use any analogue that is idle on the farm (a door, a construction iron, etc.). It is attached by welding to the metal top of the structure or with bolts, for which holes must first be drilled.

To give the handle anti-slip properties, you can wrap it with electrical tape.

Thus, making a berry harvester yourself is not at all difficult, and cheap and affordable materials, as well as tools, will be used for this.

The only note: the dimensions of the container depend on the planned collection volumes, but here it is important to look for a proper balance between them and the convenience of holding the entire structure by hand, as well as the characteristics of crop growth

Making such a device yourself

The machine for harvesting blueberries is manufactured in several stages:

Creation of a schematic drawing. First, a diagram is created with the exact dimensions of all structural elements.
Creation of the corpus. During the manufacturing process of the case, you will have to cut the metal sheet.
Making a comb. To make your own comb for picking berries, you will have to cut pre-prepared metal rods. They don’t have to be long, but even short twigs will make the berries difficult to pick.
Attaching the scraper to the body. The created comb must be secured to the front side of the combine body. This is done with durable fastening screws.
Creating a pen. To equip the blueberry picking machine with a handle, you can use a steel tube or metal plate. The material is bent to form the shape of a doorknob and bolted to the top of the structure.

Similar designs: rakes, scoops, shovels, combs and others

The principle of “picking” berries from herbaceous bushes is implemented in some devices, either simpler in design, or designed to further simplify the work of the picker.

For example, the simplest options are ordinary wooden scoops with long teeth on the leading edge:

Some of their options are simplified as much as possible:

And some homemade models strike an excellent balance between simplicity, cheapness and functionality. For example, here's a combine:

It is made of wire, thread and a bag, but is very compact and is not inferior in ease of use to industrial options.

In these cases, the typical combine design is simplified for the fastest possible production. However, these options have their drawbacks. For example, the scoop has low sides and if accidentally tilted, the berries easily spill out of it. And wooden ladles get dirty quickly.

In other cases, inventors are working to make it possible to use a harvester to pick berries without bending over or crawling through the forest on your knees. The simplest option in this case is a special rake:

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They can be used to comb the bushes without bending over, from time to time pouring the collected berries into a bucket.

A more complex option is to combine a rake and a combine. Simply put, the combine has a long handle that allows you to change the angle of the bucket itself. The video shows an example of such a device:

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And, by the way, please note: even such complex designs can be made with your own hands. And if manufactured correctly, the resulting combine will be no worse than an industrial one

Therefore, it is worth saying a few words about how to correctly implement the basic principle in such a product.

How to pick blueberries with a combine harvester

In order to properly clean wild bushes, you need to familiarize yourself with the main points: is there a ban on the use of special devices, is there liability for their use.

Is it possible to harvest blueberries with a combine?

It is prohibited to use a blueberry scraper or other suitable device in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Since these devices severely damage the bushes and their branches, and they require a long period to fully recover.

Modern designs have a more gentle operating mode and do not injure wild bushes. They are officially allowed in Sweden and Finland. Norwegians also actively use them.

What are the responsibilities for using combine harvesters?

In Ukraine and Belarus, administrative liability is provided for the use of homemade berry pickers. The fine for non-compliance of a device with the law is almost 1900 UAH in Ukraine, 420 rubles in Belarus, 4000 rubles in Russia. The fruit picker is allowed if it meets certain requirements - there must be a distance of 5 mm between the teeth.

How to choose?

Choose according to the size of your plot or forest in which you will pick berries. If you plan to collect fruits only for eating or making jam, then you should not spend money and purchase a whole combine or vacuum collector. A simple hand tool will suffice.

It can also be customized to the types of berries you want. In fact, even with a manual unit you can pick different types of berries. For example, if you grow cranberries, then it is better to purchase a tool whose partitions are made of solid metal. Because of this feature, there will be no tangling of plants.

A vacuum collector will help you collect berries such as gooseberries, wild raspberries, strawberries, wild strawberries, currants, lingonberries, cranberries, sea buckthorn and many others. You can even collect hazelnuts.

Pay attention to the price too. A vacuum berry picker costs about 29 thousand

rubles and is intended for those who make fruit picking their business. Of course, it’s worth remembering the price of a mechanical harvester, namely 1-9 million rubles. This is a high price for a medium-sized plot of land.

Where to look for ripe blueberries and when

The first ripened berries can be seen at the end of June. But this is only the beginning of the phase - matured specimens of the unit. The timing of mass fruiting is influenced by the place where the plant grows and climatic features.

As blueberry fruiting time approaches, experienced berry growers go into the forest to explore

In general, the “silent hunt” calendar for blueberries looks like this:

Blueberry storage

at the end of June it can be collected in thawed areas and on the edges of forests in the southern regions;
in the middle zone, the berries ripen in early July, but the fruiting phase occurs at the end of July - the first half of August;
in the Urals and Bashkiria, harvesting begins at the end of June;
in Siberia, the beginning of the period falls at the end of July.

Attention! With different start dates, the “hunt” continues until autumn, and sometimes until the first snow (in Siberia).

How to make a blueberry harvester

The device is assembled from plastic, wood, and metal. The berry collector is a box-shaped scoop or a cloth bag. The main working mechanism of the combine is the comb. The optimal length of the teeth is 6 cm. The width of the gaps is 5 mm. The comb can be adapted from a store-bought comb or made independently. Typically, the material for the teeth is steel wire or wooden kebab skewers.

Watch the video for more details about the homemade harvester:

Grabber for picking blueberries from a metal sheet

A durable combine is made from thin stainless steel sheets. In extreme cases, galvanizing is suitable. Consists of a scoop for collecting blueberries from a ladle and a handle. To manufacture the first element, perform the following steps:

A rectangular blank is cut from sheet steel. According to the drawing, the stiffener is bent. On long curved shelves, holes are drilled in increments of 5 mm, into which wire teeth will be inserted.
Following the drawing, a housing element is cut out of metal. The side shelves are bent, forming a U-shaped blank.
The teeth of the combine comb are made of stainless, bend-resistant wire 2 mm thick. The elements must have the same bend. It is more convenient to bend the teeth on a wooden template.
The last element of the combine bucket is the mounting block. A wooden strip 10 mm thick is drilled every 5 mm. The fastening bar will have teeth inserted into it.

When assembled, you should get a bucket, but for now without a handle.

For the handle of the combine you will need a piece of aluminum or metal-plastic pipe. The workpiece is bent in the shape of a “U”. A wooden round handle is put on one end. The second end of the pipe is inserted into a hole drilled in the center of the block. Its size is equal to the parameters of the fastening bar for the teeth.

When all the components of the combine are prepared, assembly begins. First, the bucket is assembled. The body is connected to a stiffener and a fastening bar. Self-tapping screws and rivets are used for fixation. Wire teeth are placed in the holes with glue so that they do not fall out. The handle is attached with a block to a fastening block fixed on the bucket. Two wooden elements are tightened with self-tapping screws.

A ready-made scoop for picking blueberries is tested in action. If the teeth seriously injure the blueberry branches, check the gaps. Perhaps some elements are bent and tightly pinching the shoots.

Wooden blueberry picker

A simple DIY blueberry harvester is made from plywood. Essentially, the device resembles an excavator bucket. 5 blanks are cut out of plywood: side elements of the same shape and size, top cover, back plug and bottom comb. Four fragments can be easily cut out with a jigsaw. The difficulty lies in making the fifth part - the comb. On a rectangular piece of plywood, teeth are precisely marked with the same gap. Each cut is made carefully so as not to break the comb element.

The blanks are connected to each other with self-tapping screws. A U-shaped handle is attached to the top cover of the combine bucket. It is made from a thin tube or steel plate.

Blueberry harvester from a plastic bottle

A primitive harvester can quickly be built from PET containers. The bottle will act as a fruit collector for blueberries and a comb. If you come across a fruitful bush while walking in the forest, but don’t have a combine harvester with you, you should look in your backpack. Ketchup, kefir or other bottled product taken on a picnic will have to be used quickly. If you have a choice, it is advisable to take a rigid container with a wide neck of small volume. Additionally, you will need a stick, which is not in short supply in the forest, a piece of rope or tape. Tools you need are a knife or scissors and a marker.

Having laid the bottle on its side, use a marker to draw a window in the form of a flag on the side wall. The working side, with its teeth directed towards the bottom of the container, is shaped like the English letter “W”. According to the marking, a fragment is cut out with a knife or scissors. The edges of the comb are sharp enough to cut blueberries. The stiffer the wall of the bottle, the stronger the comb will be.

The cut out fragment is thrown away. It is not needed for the combine. The bottle is tightly tied to the stick with the bottom up. It is advisable to use tape. The bottle will slide off the rope. Harvesting is carried out by pulling the device along the branches. A sharp blueberry comb cuts the berries with three teeth, and they roll into the neck of the bottle. When the fruit collector is full, unscrew the plug. The berries are poured into the bag through the wide neck.

Required tools and materials

Before you create a good and reliable container for picking blueberries, you need to figure out what materials and tools will be useful to get the job done.

The following materials and tools will be needed:

Steel sheets. To make a durable structure body or create a container for collected berries, steel sheets are used. For this purpose, it is recommended to use new and undamaged metal sheets.
Iron wire. The rake, which is responsible for picking berries, must be made of wire. In this case, it is better to make them from durable pins that will not bend when in contact with the ground surface. The length of the pins should be at least 10-15 centimeters.
Plywood or plastic. In order not to damage the berries during the harvesting process, the body is lined with plastic or wood. Some gardeners line their own blueberry picking device with scraps from plastic bottles or canisters.
Fastening elements. Screws, nails or bolts are used to secure parts of the combine.
Drill. This tool is necessary for making mounting holes.
Hammer. This may be necessary if the combine body will be covered with plywood.

Strawberry picking device

August is a special time not only for ordinary people who like to observe the incredible riot of colors and beauty of our nature, but also for berry growers or simply for those people who have currant or blueberry bushes on their property. The berry ripening season is in full swing and you need to get everything from it! Picking berries is a very exciting and interesting activity, but extremely exhausting: the branches get into your eyes, the berries are difficult to get, and you just get tired of throwing one berry at a time into the basket. The question arises: how can you speed up and simplify harvesting and there is an answer - a berry picker. The thing is very practical - a comfortable handle, great pleasure, and most importantly - high collection speed. Indeed, the harvest is harvested about three times faster than usual, but there is an opinion that berry pickers harm berry bushes. You can even give an example: in Belarus, picking berries with any mechanical devices is prohibited. It is believed that a large number of leaves are torn from the bush and branches are broken off during its use.

But this is only believed - an experiment was conducted, the results of which slightly differ from the prevailing opinion.

In this experiment, we used a high-quality berry picker - not a homemade one - like this one.

What's the point? From a plot of 25 square meters we harvested lingonberries - they harvested well, without missing anything. Having processed the plot, we began to calculate the harvest - in the end we got about 3 kilograms of berries, 40 leaves and a couple of inflorescences.

From this experiment we can conclude that a high-quality factory berry picker does not harm nature in any way, but what does this mean, and this means that this unit can be used to its fullest.

But somehow I digress from the product itself - let's take a closer look at the berry picker itself, or rather, list its advantages over the manual method of picking berries:

— Firstly, the berry picker greatly increases the efficiency of your work: you no longer need to bend over, bend over, crawl on your haunches and climb on thorny bushes, you just need to move it through the bush once and all the berries are already in the harvester’s container.

— High level of convenience. The berry picker is made in such a way that you will not experience discomfort when using it: a comfortable rubberized handle, sharp cutters for separating berries from the branch and a very durable berry receiver made of high-quality plastic. Harvesting will only bring pleasure.

Now you know what berry pickers are, why they are dangerous and not dangerous, their main qualities and advantages, but you came here not to learn more about them, but to buy them. We list all the berry picker products that our store offers:

Berry harvester, 10 cm wide. An excellent tool, suitable for collecting a wide variety of berries: blueberries, lingonberries, cranberries, cranberries and even sea buckthorn. A distinctive feature of this harvester is that it does not grab leaves; of course, three leaves can be caught, but as you understand, this is not a serious loss on the part of the bush.

Basic berry picker 14 cm. An excellent average option, suitable for both collecting wild berries in the forest and for your own bush on the site. It does not damage or crush the berries - they fall into the harvester receiver whole and unharmed. Doesn't grab leaves. It has a comfortable handle, which is the most important thing - after trying to collect with this tool once, you will understand that you don’t need anything else.

The berry picker is wide, 17 cm. Picking berries is a wonderful activity, agree: forest, nature, what else is needed, not if picking berries is directly a source of profit, then for industrial picking you need something more than a small berry picker. For such purposes, a wide berry collector was invented.

Children's berry picker. Berry picking is often a family activity. They also like to pick berries, but they won’t pick them in five buckets and won’t be able to use berry pickers for adults. Based on these reasons, a children's berry picker was invented. This combine has two differences from the usual ones: design and size.

Device for picking cranberries while standing

Such a device can be made by a master who is fluent in tools. It is quite complicated, but you can use it to pick cranberries without bending over. All the parts of the box are cut out from a piece of thick plywood, as well as the comb strip.

The comb is easy to make:

a number of holes are drilled in the plank;
cut the wire into pieces of the required length;
the teeth are fixed in the holes with glue.

Comment!

To prevent cranberries from spilling out during harvesting, install a movable plate.

The back wall of the bucket is made composite, the lower part is movable. It is attached to the top part on furniture hinges, and fixed to the side walls with pieces of rubber. This design allows you to stand and pour cranberries into a bucket.

To do this, one end of the rope is attached to the lid, the other is tied to a movable handle, which is bolted to a high handle made of 2 plastic tubes. Their length is determined empirically to make it convenient for the assembler.

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Wooden choppers are hammered into the holes of the tubes, and plywood plates are screwed onto screws on the outside. The tubes are attached to the box using furniture corners and bolts. The connection turns out to be movable, which is very convenient when picking blueberries while standing. A narrow strip of plywood - a handle - is screwed to the top of the tubes. It is wrapped with soft cloth and electrical tape.

Advantages and disadvantages

The big advantage is that it simplifies collection and increases the speed of work. Even homemade units will allow you to work several times faster, and in 7-8 hours a novice assembler will be able to collect 12-15 kg. Very impressive numbers when compared with the bare-handed collection method.

Another plus is the low price. On average, berry pickers cost about 900 rubles. You can recoup this price on the first day or after several hours of work. You can make such a unit yourself, but for this you need to try.

The disadvantage of using a combine is the damage to berries and bushes. The thing is that when you pick leaves and young branches along with the berries, you make the bush less fertile. Such a sharp method of plucking has a bad effect on what the harvest will be like next year. In addition, you litter with leaves and debris that falls to the ground from branches.

Is mechanized berry picking harmful to berry bushes?

Even the highest quality harvester in any case injures the bushes more than a person picking lingonberries by hand does. At a minimum, some of the leaves and individual shoots are still torn off and end up in the receiving chamber. And on very light forest soil, especially with a moss bedding, individual bushes can be torn out entirely if the stem accidentally becomes intertwined in the ridge. One-time cases of such damage are, in principle, not critical. But you need to take into account that thousands of people pick berries in the forest in the summer; most of them do not use gentle imported buckets, but rough homemade structures that can break or tear out bushes literally “every second.”

Observations in nature and forestry logs show that areas in the forest that are under heavy pressure from berry pickers very quickly lose their productivity. The more people in a particular area collect berries with combines, the worse the fruit production of this area will be in a year. And with constant harvesting, the yield decreases every year.

Perhaps, in just a few years, it will hardly be possible to collect at least one bucket from the same plot from which these berries were now collected.

At the same time, according to environmental organizations in Finland and Sweden, with proper control by foresters and disciplined pickers, the use of combines does not affect the yield of berry fields in the forest. In these countries, the designs of devices that can be used for picking berries are strictly regulated, and serious fines are imposed for violations of the requirements. As a result, the population mainly uses safe structures, so the berry growers themselves do not suffer.

In Russia and Belarus, pickers also note that with proper, careful harvesting, using only gentle modern combines and a small number of pickers (when the bushes are not trampled), the harm from the harvesters themselves is practically not felt, and the berry plants bear fruit the same whether with manual picking or with delicate picking special combs. Where there are a lot of people, and the pickers do not disdain any devices, working on the principle “after us, even a flood,” berry growers die out.

Finnish manual harvester for picking blueberries and other berries

A very convenient hand-held device was invented in Finland, the design of which is certified in many European countries as environmentally friendly. It represents:

a plastic container (similar to a closed, very large scoop);
rubberized comfortable handle;
metal berry cutter;
protected spokes.

The latter can be bent with a pin, or have plastic limiter balls at the ends. In practice, these knitting needles pry up a branch with berries until they meet the cutter, then they are torn off the base and shaken into a container.

List of sources

pro-traktor.ru
vsadu.ru
stroy-podskazka.ru
sovhozik.ru
herbarix.ru

What do the deadlines depend on?

The timing of ripening, and therefore the harvesting of lingonberries, depends on the variety and location of the region where it grows. And also on weather conditions in the collection area.

From variety

The ripening period of lingonberries directly depends on this. Now there are quite a few varieties on the market that differ from the forest variety in their larger berry size and yield, for example, the German Coral or the Polish Belyavskoye Fleece. The discrepancy in the ripening time of early and mid-late lingonberries is 14-20 days.

From region of growth

The beginning of fruit harvesting directly depends on the region where it grows. In the northern regions of the country (Kamchatka, Karelia, the Kola Peninsula, the Komi Republic and the Arctic), the peak sampling period for lingonberries falls in September.

A little further south (in Siberia, Belarus and the Leningrad region) the berries ripen from the first ten days of September to mid-October.

What’s interesting is that on bushes growing in sunny places, the fruits ripen a couple of weeks earlier than in the strong shade of trees. In the southern regions of the country, lingonberries begin to be harvested much earlier - from the third decade of July.

Tips for picking berries from a tall tree

There are the simplest and most commonly used methods for collecting fruits from tall trees:

use stairs;
shake the tree;
pull up branches and collect by hand.

Each of these methods has disadvantages.

The use of ladders is not possible for trees with thin trunks. You will either need a stepladder, which not everyone has, or additional help, which may not be available nearby.
After shaking, it is necessary to collect fruits from the ground; some may fly far, some may be damaged, and some may even remain on the tree.
By pulling up branches you won’t always be able to reach all the fruits, and if you overdo it, you can even break the branch. This method is more suitable for small trees when the branches will not need to be pulled up much.

Such devices are called fruit pickers or fruit collectors. They can be purchased in stores or made yourself.

Harvesting methods

There are different ways to collect lingonberries. Some gardeners collect fruits by hand, and some use special devices to make the work easier.

Manually

When collecting fruits by hand, you need to try not to break the thin shoots of the bush. They are carefully pulled apart with their hands, and the harvest is already harvested from the bush with their fingers. Ripe berries are torn from the brush without significant effort, with a characteristic sound reminiscent of a “click.”

We use special rakes

A common name for this collection device is the Finnish rake. This device is made of plastic or metal. Round, sparse, non-damaging teeth are attached to the protective casing; a short holder is attached. When picking berries, they are used like an ordinary rake.

Using a collection device

It is not difficult to make a special collection device yourself. A handle is attached to the tin box, and rounded, long teeth are attached or welded. With its help, harvesting lingonberries will be much easier and more efficient. You can even use a regular, deep plastic scoop, as long as the teeth do not fit tightly against each other.

Harvester

To speed up collection, you can use a simple device. Simply put, a combine is a scoop with frequent, long and non-sharp teeth. It allows you to quickly collect fruits - much faster than manually. When using a food processor, lingonberries do not wrinkle, unlike blueberries.