One of the downsides to this year’s bountiful garden is my ability to harvest it easily. I’ve generally used one of the kitchen strainer baskets to hold stuff as I wander around the garden picking. It was handy for a few reasons, including the ability to plop it into the sink to rinse everything. Previous years this has generally worked fine for most of the garden.
This year? Not so much.
Yesterday I picked two strainer fulls of tomatoes and left more on the vines that I could have picked but would be ok for another couple days.
So earlier this week I went looking at various options and ideas for harvesting baskets. Found lots of:
Expensive.
Really big gaps that my little tomatoes would fall out of.
Awkward to use.
Tiny.
Expensive.
Ran across this one, which struck me as really cool, but gosh, do I really have to spend $50? I’m sure it’s worth it, but money…….
The more I looked at that last one the more I thought I could build something comparable. I’d have to go buy some cedar board, but I already have 1/2″ hardware cloth left over from another project……
Bonus: mine has feet to hold the contents out of the dirt!
The mesh and staples used to hold it on will probably eventually deteriorate, but the wood is cedar and the screws are exterior grade, so at whatever point the mesh dies I can reuse the frame.
Of course, it won’t fit in the sink, but I can rinse stuff off with the hose if need be and not worry about it!
It holds just, you know, one or two tomatoes…..
Interior dimensions are approx 5.5″ deep, 8″ wide, 16.6″ long