Need tips on harvesting lots of pecans!?

Question

There's got to be a better way! There's tons of pecans on my lawn,along with tons of leaves and sticks too.Raking gets it all together,but then the pecans are all mixed with the leaf litter.Settling the pecans toward the bottom of all the leaves and twigs is only marginally working,leaving me to go through the leaves handful by handful to get the pecans out.Do any of you more experienced pecan harvesters have any better ideas?Simply strolling the lawn and picking pecans up by hand really isn't an option at this point,there's SO many.What works for YOU???

Thanks in advance for any help with this! Jus

Answer 1

Around here you can buy a pecan picker. Here is a link to one kind but there are alot of varieties and they make harvesting alot easier. People go out and do this a little while every afternoon and save them in sacks and boxes. Hope it helps .. a google on Pecan Picker will show you alot of options :)
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/pecanpicker.html

Answer 2

There's a little gizmo that you can buy that will let you pick up pecans without bending over constantly. It looks like a wire spiral on a long handle. You press it down over the pecan(s), they pop through the wire, and then the wire springs back to its original shape, trapping the pecans. The one at the link below is kinda pricey (about $40), but I've seen other cheaper/simpler ones for sale, too. Check at a hardware store - Lowe's, Home Depot, etc. - and see if they have these.

Good luck!

Answer 3

First make sure the pecans are good. I picked up a bunch one time to sell, and turned out it wasn't a desirable variety, and most of them were rotten too. Big waste of time. I've been picking up pecans all my life, and the best way for me is what you're already doing. I hate the 'picker uppers'. Slower in my opinion, and they pick up trash along with the pecans. Have a 'pecan pickup party'....invite friends or family to help you out, then treat them to a nice lunch, dinner or cocktail afterwards.

Answer 4

You could make a screen from chicken wire on a wood frame. You still have to rake or somehow gather everything, but you toss it on the screen and give a couple of shakes the pecans fall through. Not %100 efective but seperates most of the leaves and twigs.

Answer 5

heymm just attach a lawn sweeper behing your mower and sweep up everything,,lift up handfuls of the stuff in front of a LARGE fan to blow away leaves and twigs,,,,,