Nearly every time we go out for a walk at the moment, we seem to find a new set of berries aching to be picked. And every time that happens, we kick ourselves for not having a bag with us.

After our discussion about making one earlier in the year, I have a trug-ish basket for gentle, slow foraging but I like the idea of a dedicated small fruit/berry harvesting bag – something that either hangs from my shoulder (possibly across my body for extra stability) to leave both hands free for collecting.

I could just use a long handled shopping bag but after seeing a post about purpose-bought harvesting bags at The Cottage Smallholder, I wondered about making one with a bit more structure than my floppy shoppers – I imagine it would protect the berries/fruit from accidentally squishing and hold the bag open so it’s easy to drop fruit in it with both hands full. (The more structured bag could be used as a general shopping bag too during the rest of the year so it’s not just a one-off use.)

So any suggestions/ideas/thoughts on how to make one?

The shape of the Cottage Smallholder’s one reminds me of a small pop-up laundry basket – a reuse for a (clean) old one of those maybe?

After posting my The Really Good Life post about fishing for fruit with a child’s fishing net, I read about someone making a similar net with an old wire coathanger and the gusset of some old tights — I wonder if another gusset could be used to make a basket – the fabric would be light, quick-drying and smooth on the fruit.

Another idea might be to crochet it – crocheting “net” shopping bags is easy-peasy but I’d have to make sure the holes didn’t stretch so much that the fruit would escape. I’d also have to add the structure to it – any suggestions for doing that? An old record might make a fun base plate but what about something to hold it open at the top?

I’ve been getting more and more interested in wild food lately – we’ve been trying different things while walking the dog in the woods behind our house and on Sunday, we went on a wonderful Wild Food Foray organised by Slow Food West Yorkshire. Led by medical herbalist Jesper Launder, we spent just over three hours pottering around the River Wharfe just north of Barden Bridge and tasted more than a dozen different plants, and also went crayfishing (for nasty invasive signal crayfish) – which was a lot of fun. (I’m going to do a full write up of all the things we tasted on my personal blog soon.)

Anyway, long & short of it is, between wild food collecting and the hopefully bountiful harvest from our garden, a trug would be really useful for carrying stuff back up to the house – a Sussex trug style basket like the one pictured rather than those big rubbery plastic bins with handles. Up to now, I’ve mostly just either taken so few leaves that I could easily carry them in my hands or used shopping bags/a colander when I’ve headed down to get a larger amount of, say, wild garlic – but a trug would be useful for carrying large amounts of longer things, letting them lie flat instead of crunching them up.

One recycled trug idea I’ve seen is made using an old car tyre – the tyre is cut into sections (sixths?) and rope handles are attached, et voila! instant trug. I’ve also seen old fruit/veg boxes made into trugs with addition of a central handle.

But before I start hacking up John’s spare, I thought it might be interesting to hear if anyone has any other suggestions. Might something like paper mache even work? It doesn’t need to be that strong and I guess it could be varnished/painted enough to make it waterproof enough (it wouldn’t be sitting out in the rain but the plants might be damp/dewy.)

Any other ideas?