Prep Tools

Hand-Held Olive Rake (Comb)

A toothed comb that strips olives or berries from branches without bruising the fruit.

A hand-held olive rake is a comb-like tool whose splayed tines are drawn through olive branches to strip the fruit into a net or basket below. It harvests faster than hand picking while sparing the leaves and limbs. The same toothed design is sold as a berry picker for blueberries and lingonberries.

The hand-held olive rake — also called an olive comb or, in Italian, a pettine per olive — is a short-handled harvesting tool built around a row of flexible tines, usually eight to fourteen, that slide along an olive branch and catch the fruit's pedicels just hard enough to snap the stems free without tearing the bark or stripping the leaves. It matters because olive trees carry the next season's crop on one-year-old wood: a tool that thrashes the branch will cost the grower next year's harvest along with this year's olives. The comb is the low-tech solution to that problem, and the reason it has survived the spread of electric shaker wands and trunk-wrapping harvesters in industrial groves.

In practice the tool behaves like a soft pitchfork drawn through hair. You gather a bundle of branchlets in one hand, hook the tines behind the fruit, and pull toward you; the flexible fingers flex around the wood, the olives drop into the net below, and the leaves mostly stay put. Modern versions use food-grade plastic tines roughly ten to fifteen centimeters long, mounted on a wooden or plastic handle, because plastic is cheap, easy to wash, and won't absorb olive oil the way older horn or hardwood combs did. The rake lives in the orchard and the curing shed, not on the kitchen counter — the entry exists here because the choices made at harvest (ripeness, bruising, cleanliness) directly shape the table olive or oil that ends up on the cook's bench.

Alternatives

Hand Picking The FruitA Wide Tined Garden Fork Run Gently Through Branches

Types & varieties

Hand comb (pettine corto)

Short-handled model held at chest height; the classic small-farmer tool, used while standing under the tree.

Long-reach comb

Comb head mounted on an extended wooden or aluminum pole (1.5–3 m) for upper branches without a ladder.

Double-sided comb

Tines on both faces of the head, so the comb works on either a pull or a push stroke.

Traditional wooden or horn comb

Older pre-plastic version; gentler on bark but less durable, harder to sanitize, and absorbs oil over time.

Plastic finger rake

Modern injection-molded food-grade plastic; the most widely sold style today, and the easiest to wash.

Electric or pneumatic harvester (related, not identical)

Battery or PTO-powered abbacchiatore or shaker combs from Campagnola, Pellenc, Zanon, Lisam — far faster but a different class of tool.

Choosing tine spacing

Tine spacing is the specification that actually matters when you buy one of these, and it is tuned to the cultivar being harvested. Tight spacing suits small-fruited oil varieties like Leccino and Frantoio, where the pedicels are short and the olives dense on the branch. Wider spacing suits large table olives such as Gordal and Sevillano, whose longer stems and bigger fruit would clog a tight comb and crush the olives underneath. A comb matched to the wrong cultivar is the single most common reason beginners leave half the crop on the tree or arrive at the net with olive mash instead of whole fruit.

Working with a net

The comb is only half the system. The other half is what you catch on: an olive net (rete in Italian), a tarpaulin, or a ring of ground cloth spread under the canopy before you start pulling. Combing straight onto bare ground is the fastest way to bruise fruit, pick up leaf litter and stones, and end up with dirty olives that have to be washed before any curing or milling decision can be made. The net also lets you bunch the harvest into crates at the end of each row rather than chasing loose fruit across the orchard.

Common uses

Stripping table olives and oil olives from the tree at harvest.Working over a spread olive net or tarp so the fruit drops cleanly onto the catching surface.Selective harvesting in mixed-ripeness orchards where only certain branches need to be cleared.Stripping other small stem-borne fruit where the same gentle combing motion applies, such as sloes and certain berries — the tool is purpose-built for olives but the action generalizes.Cleaning up fallen fruit from low branches and suckers during the final pass of harvest.Small-scale home and boutique groves where mechanical harvesters are uneconomical.

Tips & pitfalls

Lay a net or tarp under the canopy first — combing directly onto the ground bruises fruit and picks up dirt and leaf litter.
Pull the comb toward you along the branch, not across it, so the tines slide with the grain of the wood and don't snap the fruiting shoots.
Target the one-year-old bearing wood; avoid stripping the current season's growth, which carries next year's buds.
Unload the comb every few pulls — a handful of olives held in the tines crushes the fruit underneath and jams the tool.
Harvest in the morning after dew has dried; wet olives slip through the tines and rot faster in storage.
Wear nitrile or leather gloves; olive sap and the comb edges will wear skin raw inside an hour.
For green table olives such as Sevillano and Manzanilla, pick firm; overripe fruit is much harder to comb cleanly and bruises on contact.
Sanitize the comb between trees or groves with a dilute food-safe sanitizer if olive fly or other pests are a concern.
Don't substitute a leaf rake, dog comb, or plastic fork — the tine spacing and flexibility are tuned to olive pedicels, and you will either strip the leaves or snap the twigs.
For tall trees, a long-reach comb is safer than climbing; pair it with a ladder only on level ground.

Good to know

Also called: Olive comb, olive harvester comb, pettine per olive (Italian), rastrillo de aceitunas (Spanish)
Typical material: Food-grade plastic tines with a wooden or plastic handle; older versions use wood or horn
Tine length: Roughly 10–15 cm (4–6 in) flexible fingers
Tine count: Usually 8–14 tines per comb; some models are double-sided
Region of use: Mediterranean basin — Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, North Africa — plus California, Australia, and parts of South America
Harvest season: October through January in the Northern Hemisphere, varying with cultivar and end use (green table vs. oil-ripe black)
Labor efficiency: Manual combing is far slower than pneumatic or electric harvesters but cheaper, quieter, and gentler
Fruit damage: Significantly less bruising than beating branches with sticks; some skin abrasion still possible on overripe fruit