Technology in the garden - easy top fruit pickers

The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is upon us.  But if your apple and pear trees have grown so tall you can’t reach the fruit at the top of the tree, and ladders aren’t an option, a fruit picker with a lightweight long pole handle is brilliant tool for the job.  Here are a few to consider.

Wolf Garten’s multi –change adjustable fruit picker has rounded plastic prongs around the picking bag to grasp the fruit, dropping it into the washable cotton bag.  There’s also an integrated stainless steel blade to slice through stalks. It can be used with a choice of lightweight aluminium handles including the telescopic pole that extends to 4m.

Darlac's Swop Top fruit picking basket has an interchangeable picking basket with rounded plastic covered metal teeth used to gently pull the fruit so that it drops into the basket.  It can be used with a range of lightweight poles that extend to 5m.

The Dalac Telescopic Fruit Grabber is a new fruit picker that extends from 1.8m to 3m and has fingers that grab the fruit.  Other choices include the lightweight Gardena Combisystem Fruit Picker, which has plastic teeth around the mesh basket and an aluminium handle with six different heights.  Fiskars also make a Quikfit Fruit Picker, useful for very tall trees as the handle extended to 6m.

These handy pickers are less expensive and often safer than ladders - although try not to overload the basket to avoid fruit falling on your head.  And if you opt for an interchangeable tool head systems, it allows you to add other attachments such as loppers and saws so if your fruit tree wasn’t as productive as you’d have hoped this year you’ll be able to reach high enough to give it a good prune this winter.

And if picking fruit seems a bit too much like hard work, why not invest in The Original Fruit Collector, a harvesting net that catches windfalls before they hit the ground, thus preventing bruising.