Compared to other berries, picking blueberries is not very difficult. It does not wrinkle in the hands, it usually grows in good quantities in a small area, and in a good year it is easy to pick berries in large volumes without running to another meadow. It will be especially convenient to pick blueberries if you get a special handheld harvester.
Harvesters for harvesting berries of factory production began to appear on sale not so long ago. Previously, such designs were made in home workshops. Despite the fact that now the device is easy to acquire, home craftsmen still try to make them on their own.
What is a berry harvester
Combines, with the help of which blueberries are harvested, consist of a body with a handle, the bottom of which is made of wire and equipped with a "comb" of rods. The harvester looks like a scoop, its size can be large or small. To prevent the berries from falling out of it during picking, a special curtain is installed on the hinges in the front part of the body, which should cover the cross-section of the body. In the upper part, it is movably fixed in the sidewalls of the body in such a way that when raking inside the berries, it turns and opens a passage for them.
How to make a harvester with your own hands
First, we make the bottom with a comb. Cut a rectangle out of tin with dimensions of 100x400 mm. Prepare rods from wire or knitting needles with a length of 100 mm. It is better to bend the sheet from one end so that a hard edge is formed - by about 5 mm. At a distance of 40 mm from the edge, draw a line perpendicular to the long side of the plate and drill a number of holes along it, the diameter of which is equal to the diameter of the rods.
The ends of the wire rods need to be ovalized, so they will more easily pass through the bushes and will not puncture the berries.
The first and last rods should be flush with the edges of the plate - they will then need to be soldered to the sides. The distance between the teeth is 3-4 mm. We bend the end of the plate along the line of the holes by 90 degrees to get a side that will not allow the berries collected by the "comb" to roll out. We insert the rods into the holes, fix them - for this you can use a wooden rail, in which holes are drilled with the desired pitch. It is better to solder the rods to the base for structural rigidity.
Now it's the turn of the sidewalls. We cut out two blanks - they should match the length of the resulting bottom, choose an arbitrary height that will be most convenient for work. Bend the edges 90 degrees inward, solder the bottom to these folds. It is also necessary to solder the extreme rods to the sidewalls - this will give the structure additional rigidity.
From the inside, you can also solder a folding curtain to the sidewalls so that the berries do not spill out back.
Fold a suitable tin blank in three or four times - you get a strip that must be bent in the shape of a handle. We solder its ends to the sidewalls. Additionally, you can wrap it with electrical tape so that the handle does not rub your fingers.
