Artful Harvest Baskets

How to gather the harvest, and store artfully in the kitchen.

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Hello Everyone.

When I first became a gardener and a cook, I also became a collector of harvest baskets. In my kitchen, there were small baskets with onions and garlic that hung from the rafters; medium-sized baskets for storing cucumbers and beans before processing them for the freezer or canning them into pickles; larger baskets filled the corners of the kitchen each overflowing with potatoes, winter squash, and leeks.

My favorites were the flat baskets for drying seed heads, many of which were once used by my grandmother for drying rose petals to make potpourri.

Storing all these baskets during the off-season months when they are not filled with the delicious harvest became a bit of a chore, and often were stacked in the barn where the chipmunks and squirrels built nests. Every fall, I’d climb the ladder and bring them down, clean and refill again. It made me happy to see my old friends.

Woodcut illustration by Mary Azarian.

Late one summer back in 1998, I purchased a set of twelve nesting authentic Vietnamese harvest baskets at a craft fair in Burlington, Vermont. Each was perfectly shaped and proportioned to carry heavy loads on my hip. I was told they would last forever, even if left outside in the garden or kept pristine in the kitchen. Hand-woven with strips of thin bamboo that had been smoked over dung fire pits to give them durability, they smelled smoky. It was love at first sight.

It was the story behind these baskets, however, that I found most intriguing. In 1980 when Charles Miller was teaching in Japan, he traveled to the small village of Catdang, Vietnam where he discovered the artisans making these baskets. He imported them by the hundreds each year, with proceeds from sales going back to the village to build a school and then a library.

These Vietnamese harvest baskets have become the only ones I use now, in the garden and around the house for children’s toys, skeins of wool, magazines, or anything that can slide easily under the bed. Here’s a woodcut illustration from one of our Cook’s Garden catalogs, beautifully rendered by Mary Azarian.

Charlie is no longer importing these from Vietnam, yet has a few remaining baskets for sale in his barn in Portland, Maine. If interested, leave a comment below and I’ll pass along your email to him.

One of my Vietnamese harvest baskets with Persimmon tomatoes,

Baskets are essential to the gardener, especially this time of year when there is so much to glean from the garden. The ideal basket is durable and long-lasting and can hold its’ own as an integral and artful element in a kitchen for storage, or hanging on a hook near the back door. The size should fit neatly onto the hip or under an arm, allowing the hands-free motion to gather berries, beans, and flowers.

If you are a gardener, you are probably also a basket collector. Leave me a comment below and tell me about your favorites. Treasure them, as the art of basket making is truly an art.

As always,

Ellen O.

Ellen Ecker Ogden is a writer and author, and artful kitchen garden designer. Follow the year-round progress of her Vermont garden on Instagram or sign up for a writing or design workshop on her website.

I’ve been working on a new virtual cookbook writing class. There’s so much more to writing a cookbook than simply gathering the recipes. Here is a link to my sales page on the teachable website, which goes live today! The class starts on October 14th, with early bird special registration thru Sept. 28th. (Use the code EARLY-BIRD at check out for a discount. )