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Letter to the editor

Get hooked on harvesting fruit

By Clarence Jones, Special to the Times
Published January 12, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Special to the Times] Make sure to leave an inch of the dowel protruding from the pole and insert the hook into the dowel. [Special to the Times] Fasten the plastic hose to the dowel with a pipe clamp and insert the hook into the free end. [Special to the Times] Use scrap cloth for the picker's "basket."

My grandmother's house in Plant City was surrounded by citrus trees. When I visited there as a kid more than 50 years ago, she would go out in the yard at dawn and pick oranges so we could have fresh juice for breakfast.

She was a petite woman, less than 5 feet tall. I never saw her wear anything but a skirt. Ladders and tree climbing were not her thing. So she made a device to pick the fruit, even at the top of the tree.

Her fruit picker at the end of a long cane pole caught the oranges in a hand-sewn cloth bag so they wouldn't fall and get bruised.

I made a modern-day version of her fruit picker. I had all the parts in my workshop. If I had bought them, the entire cost would have been about $3. And it works better than the fruit picking devices available on the Internet for $15 to $20 plus shipping.

The handle is two 4-foot sections of 3/4-inch PVC pipe. They join together with threaded fittings to make an 8-foot pole. The handle can be one piece, but will be more difficult to store. With more sections, the pole can be as long as you like. If it's longer than 8 or 10 feet, however, it becomes difficult to handle.

Inside one end of the pole is a 5-inch piece of 3/4-inch doweling that was predrilled at one end to receive a threaded hook. Slip the dowel into the PVC pipe, leaving about 1 inch protruding. Secure it with two stainless steel No. 8 screws.

Before you screw it into the dowel, the hook needs some work. Make the bend fairly small and flare out the tip. I clamped the hook in a vise and used a pipe wrench to shape it. The bend in the hook must be smaller than the fruit you want to pick. The tip of the hook will take a length of plastic hose that forms the rim of the basket that catches the fruit. The amount of flare determines the shape of the basket.

Use plastic hose with an inside diameter that will make a tight fit when it's slipped onto the hook. If you dunk plastic tubing in boiling water, it gets soft and stretchy, so it will slip onto a fitting fairly easily. When it cools, it shrinks back to its original size and is very secure. Fasten the plastic hose to the wooden dowel with a pipe clamp. Then bend the hose in a circle to slip it onto the tip of the hook. The hose should be long enough to create a circle about 1 1/2 times the size of the fruit you want to pick.

Make the basket from scrap cloth. I used a 12- by 20-inch piece of old sheet and fusible hemming or mending tape. At the top end (on a 20-inch side), fold over the material about two inches and seal the fold with the tape. This will create a tunnel of cloth to enclose the basket hoop. Then seal the bottom and fuse the two short ends together. (You could certainly sew this if you have access to a machine. Otherwise iron-on tape will do the job.)

Slip the cloth basket over the plastic hose and bunch it. Then fit the hose onto the end of the hook and bring the cloth basket around to cover the hook.

To harvest fruit, slip the opening of the basket over it, then pull the handle so the stem is caught in the narrow crook. The crook needs to be large enough only for the fruit stem. That way all the stress is on the hook, not on the plastic hose. When you pull, the fruit will drop into the basket.

Clarence Jones is a former newspaper reporter and an award-winning broadcast journalist. He calls himself "an inventor wanna-be" who has created many devices for his sailboat and built his former home in Marathon. He is a freelance writer who specializes in photography, boating and home improvement stories; author of "Winning with the News Media - A Self-Defense Manual When You're the News," and an e-book, "Build Your Next PC." His day job is running a media consulting company that specializes in on-camera training. E-mail him at cjones@winning-newsmedia.com.

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 17:28:33]