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.

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.

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.

Quickest method for me is the berry picker, followed by removing the stalks with a large dinner fork. Love your videos.

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.

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.

Well done on the video, Huw (love your accent!). Redcurrants grow on old wood, so why not do two jobs in one go: harvest the fruit and prune the bush. Cut out the old stems, bring them indoors, sit at a table with a bucket between your knees (to catch the falling berries), use a fork to separate the berries from the branch, and Bob's your uncle!! This is how my 93 year old mother still harvests her fruit!

Hi Huw, in a commercial environment the berry picker is ideal as time is a key factor but where home is concerned you want more produce whilst spending less money so you've proven that hand picking is a cheaper/free and effective method. when you filled the beaker with berries using berry picker the leaves/twigs took up a lot of the volume leaving empty gaps, so its possible that is the reason you had less berries with the berry picker.

okay now lets factor in the weather - where I live it got 100F with 110F heat index meaning picking by hand I would be out in that heat a longer time but with the berry picker I can pick a bunch and go sit in my air cooled house and sort them - besides if I had help more could be picked with the berry picker before the birds got them and cleaned later which I think you mentioned

One thing to also factor in is that whilst you are picking you have to almost always do a lot of bending. Young folk probably won't have a problem with this (or very short people/children), but it can literally be a pain for taller/older people. The preparing part can be done at a table - a comfortable height for everyone. Thus a berry picker may make more sense for taller/older people simply because it reduces picking time, the amount of bending, and therefore back pain - making the grams/minute figure pretty-much irrelevant. There's no point saving a few minutes hand-picking berries when you'll have a sore back for the rest of the day.

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.

An excellent video Huw. Exactly the kind of review that my mind likes to see. Thankyou.

Great vid thank you, love the comparison .Thinking of buying one of these berry pickers as I am in my late 70's and not as dexterous as you!

Thank you for doing this. Is a good thing to know. The heat here in Idaho this summer is so bad that the berry picker is the only way, but maybe in future years I will try by hand.

I have to admit that I had never seen a berry picker before and was half way through buying one when the results came out. I have now paused as I am absolutely amazed at the results. One thing though, you were picking the berries by hand and you could see when you were reaching the top and yet the berry picker overflowed the container, and yet your results showed that there were fewer berries. How does that work? If the berry picker overflowed the container then surely it picked more berries. It was an interesting video Huw.

Thanks for making this experiment and sharing! I was pondering on getting one of those pickers myself, but wasn't sure how well it'll actually perform.

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.

I really thought that it would sort of even out because after having seen a picker for the first time on your video, I knew that there would be quite a bit of debris in the harvest , and therefore it would take longer to clean. Plus, in picking out the debris, you encounter bunches of berries still on the vine, so in separating them, your technically picking berries again! Meantime, in picking the berries by hand, it may be slower at first, but because you're preventing a lot of the debris from getting into the harvest while you're picking, the time you save during clean up makes up for the slower picking time. Interesting video. Thanks for sharing.

I think this would be good for bushes with thorns. Like blackberries. Might save getting scratched.

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

It’s basically 12 minutes hunched over a bush… or 2 minutes at the bush and 10 minutes at the table where it’s comfortable.

Great experiment and comparison Huw. Thanks for doing this and sharing the results. What have you been using this year?

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.

limiting time out in the sun, limiting use of hands, and able to sit down inside to sort? for me hands down the berry picker.

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.

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.

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 :)

That's an interesting picker Huw. I prefer the hand picking .

Great video! and timely for me, as I was picking red currents for the last few days. I do prefer the hand method...it seem I have more patience picking than sorting :) I also "dump" a cup at a time on a white towel which makes sorting easier and faster (for me anyway), before they go into rinsing.

Hi Huw, What a good video!!!! I have never seen the hand picker before. I didn't think the results would be that close.

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

In Finland you can buy a cheap €3 berry sieve to clean berries much quicker, either way a faster way to clean the berries is pour them all out onto a big tray and pick out the bits 👍

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.

I'd take the shorter time picking at the bush and spend the rest of the time in comfort of the house or on the porch prepping the berries. Back breaking work handpicking at the bush.

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.

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.

This was a cool experiment thanks for sharing it I would prefer to use my hands because I like to eat while I work LOL have a great day 🤓👍

Interesting experiment on Berry picking methods my friend !

Very informative. Thanks for taking the time.

I've never seen redcurrant bushes with so few berries on the branches. I have redcurrant and blackcurrant varieties. The red ones (a Dutch variety) have about 25 times as many berries as your bush in the video. I can fill up a bucket in quite a short time with hand picking; your picking tool would be impractical. I don't pick berry-by-berry but whole, large bunches. The blackcurrants are more difficult because the berries on a bunch ripen at different times. You should try out the new Dutch redcurrants.

great little video. one thing I will say is when you are picking with your hands there is no real need to check them over for anything because you should already have taken the stalks out. but a great little video :)

I'm surprised! But the Berry picker would be useful when you're starving... I need one!

Great video, and I have hands and don't need to purchase anything. Besides, I have a stool, and can sit and pick. That was interesting. Thanks for sharing. God Bless and take care.

I must be very clumsy but when hand harvesting redcurrants I seem to have a lot fall onto the ground and be lost. I'm going to have a hunt to find a berry picker 😉. Aha, can get it through Amazon Australia (with horrid postal charges)

I’m picking now, in a rare English heatwave, I’d happily spend £14 on something to save me from the hot sun

So the ideal situation would be to wash and press the tool picked currents for juice and throw the pulp to the chickens?

Guessing the picker, must be useful for picking Whinberries as they're called in the Shropshire Hills!

Interesting picker but I think I'll stick with using my hand!

Remember that the berry picker had some overflow... so I'm calling it even stevens. :) With practice you'd probably get faster by hand and technique.

Well done!

nice

Hand picking is natural and better for our well-being.

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

There may have been a surprise there, blueberries/winberrie are pretty different guessing it's a more useful tool dependant on what's being harvested?

Berry rakes also damage the plants.

I think hand picking is faster great video

Interesting tool but can't beat hands :)

I still did not watch the video but I will now , I guess it's the hand PICKING :) ... Because it's faster for me

As I have fragile skin, I use tiny scissors, cut the stem of berries ,then the grandchildren have fun picking off the berries while i make the rough puff pastry ready for the tartletts goodbye Huw. thankyou

What about the "shake the bush" method 😂

I can tell that you're nervous in your videos. Don't be. I don't think anyone is judging you/thinking rudely of you

English please

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!