Wait, why? Bleach is a common way to kill plants in the short term without any long term lingering effects in the soil since it decomposes into salt and water. With enough drainage, the salt seeps out and plants can grow again. I'd say it's a pretty pragmatic solution to ensuring that someone doesn't grow anything again in the short term.
Everyone in my street is selling their apples on the street. Every house has a little basket and a sign "1 kilo 1 euro" or something like that. Some are even giving them away for free. I gave mine away in bulk, so I haven't got anything to pu in the street.
The annoying thing about fruit trees is that the fruits are only good for picking for like 1-2 weeks of the whole year. If you don't pick them during those 2 weeks, they rot and spoil. That's why the whole street tries to sell them pretty much at the same time, because you can't pick fruit like a basket at the time. You have to pick the whole tree during those 2 weeks.
It depends on the tree, I think, doesn't it? I have a fig tree and the figs are great for about 45 seconds in July. Essentially unfit for human consumption any other time!
it's pretty standard here to have a basket outside your fence where you dump the fallen fruit that looks nice, most people don't even want the fruit from their trees in the first place so they're just glad to have some of it magically disappear.
"‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God." - Leviticus 19:9, 10
Well it is "the Rules of the Tribe of Levi" canonically speaking they are laws made not by God but by a bunch of priests. It is important for biblical historical context reasons but technically speaking these are ancient society laws. It's why instructional portions detailing animal sacrifice are included in that section when modern Christians tend to look at animal sacrifice as a satanic cult kind of thing.
Provided you are Christian ( before the atheists start in, I'm not - I just study the religion as a part of gaining historical background info) Using Leviticus to justify one's opinions on anything strikes me as showing that one read the text absent the scholarly context. A lot of Christians do this because book annotations wouldn't be a thing before 1000 AD and it really benefited a lot of powerful people to never mention context of the compiling process of the book because once the supposed less than divine fingerprints on the processed material are brought to light it weakens it's power as a tool of authority.
So next time you're at the tabernacle or trying to be being a priest you'll know how to behave, sure.
God signs of on mortal codes of governance multiple times in the text. Obedience to "Laws of the land" are a thing in other texts. The order seems to be "be orderly and in accordance to whatever the power structure where you are agrees is fair" it is pretty all over the place, Romans, Deuteronomy, Paul, Hebrews Numbers... God wields a pretty big ole rubber stamp.
Except they don't do that. What they do is pick and choose from the old testament and ignore any part of the new testament that is inconvenient. Not all of them. Just the majority of them. What they do instead is take away the benches least someone in need to sleep there. They punish those that feed the needy in many places. They pass laws to make the most vulnerable of us criminals for daring to exist in their presence.
I don't listen to what people say. I watch what they do. What the majority of christians in my area do is hateful and very non christian. All of them are convinced though that god always wants exactly what they want.
No offense to you personally, but I hate this kind of premature defeatism. Like... yeah, some people are jerks and try to take advantage of things. Put rules in place and enforce them as much as the people in charge care to.
I know it's strawmanning to bring this up, but people use the same argument to say "We shouldn't have food stamps for hungry kids or welfare for needy families or subsidized housing for people without homes because people will abuse it. Yeah. Some people will, and others will suffer because of their greed. But so many more people will continue to suffer if we don't even try because we are too scared of The Undeserving boogeyman. Not every tree will be taken advantage of, and as the sense of outreach and community grows, abuse of it will fall and it will be worth it. I guarantee it...
That too. "I'm a fiscally conservative Republican who doesn't believe in handouts." Oh? How convenient that you can selfishly hoard all your money for yourself by hiding behind principle...
This is what "the tragedy of the commons" was all about in pre-Victorian England. Rich people decried the existence of land held and used by all the people of a community, claiming that it couldn't work in practice because eventually some asshole would always take it all for themselves. Turns out they were the some asshole, seizing all the commons for themselves as private property (a process known as "enclosure"), ending many centuries of actually successful common usage of land.
How acceptable is it, if you can reach a plant / tree from the sidewalk, to pick someone else's fruit? Would that be considered weird, or totally acceptable behavior?
In Hawaii it's quite funny to see, because it if can be reached, it can be taken. So there are these hilarious fellas who have these baskets on long poles, and at the end of it there's this little hand/grabber thing. They reach out as far as they can over the fence, press the button at the bottom, and fwoomp! There goes the fruit from the tree into the basket. I remember my cousin staking out avocados waiting for them to get ripe.
If it's overhanging public property it's fair game. The owner has plenty of fruit on their side too I'll bet. If they take issue with it they can guide their plant so it's confined to their property. That being said I wouldn't be reaching over the fence to yank a cucumber or apple.
it also depends on how much fruit there is, if they have literally 500 apples in the tree then there is no way they're actually going to make use of all that, if they have 4 sad fruits left hanging then you leave it alone.
If they've got 4 fruits left and they're all hanging over the fence then they just harvested their tree. Let's not look for hyperspecific edge cases here we're discussing a rule of thumb.
i'd consider anyone who gives a shit about that to be weird and unpleasant, if you don't want people to eat your fruit maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe don't have half the tree hanging outside your property.
Here in Sweden, there are public fruit trees and bushes, herbs etc. all over the place, and very very rarely does that happen. I live a 15-minute tram ride from the centre of the second-largest city and have within a 10-minute walking distance of my apartment several kinds of plums, cherries, currants, apples, pears, other berries and most common herbs, edible flowers and so on, all in random public places. We also have several "fruit groves" around the city, larger green areas specifically for publicly available fruits and more.
I remember when I was young I got ticketed for trespassing on public property. I was so offended. Yet that’s the society we live in. Public resources aren’t for use by the public, they are for use by the small fraction of the public who control them.
It was for staying too late in a public park. It was meant to be closed after dark. I overstayed by like an hour.
I think there’s a big difference between breaking and entering and trespassing. Going into a restricted area is more like the latter. Although there’s the whole ethics of a prison to consider as well but I don’t want to get into that.
But yes there may be a small number of situations where public access should be forbidden but right now that’s a minority of all of the completely unnecessary restrictions that exist.
You're thinking public or state ownership. Public property is property generally meant to be used by the public. That doesn't mean that there aren't conditions to that use though, like hours of operation.
That would imply the point is shit, which I don't think it really is. It's more like they're buzzing around the point like how a fly will buzz around a chili dog at a baseball game. Likewise, they are being annoying and making it harder to digest.
Property generally meant to be used by the public is "open to the public," not public property. The grocery store is open to the public, but it is not public property, it's private property.
But why should a public park have hours of operation? Benches and open space don't stop working after certain hours, don't take resources or workers to operate, they're just there. Why should we punish people for enjoying the outdoors?
I'd say gravel roads can be argued to be "paved" if it's really fine gravel that has been properly packed down by repeated driving on it, to the point where it starts looking shiny and sort of like glazed clay
I can't recall the source, but I remember hearing that the Amazon, generations ago, was farmed. The trees aren't distributed naturally, or something like that, we see signs of intentional crop management. However, it was done in a symbiotic way with nature so that it almost looks natural, until you look closer. With lots of fruit trees and food sources so that food was an abundant free resource.
Wish I could remember the source for this, sounds like heaven on earth, working with nature is all we need to rediscover freedom.
You got me going down the rabbit hole at work now. Very fascinating stuff. It's incredible the things that our ancestors knew about nature that have been lost to time.
In my city, olive trees thrive like mad. I could probably start a business selling a few tons of brined and jarred olives a year entirely on free produce.
Lemons, too. I could go for a 15 minute walk in any random neighbourhood and come back with 10 pounds of lemons.
I live in Canberra, Australia and we also have an excellent climate for olives and lemons. Apples and practically all citrus also do well and plums and other stone fruit grow like topsi. Figs too.
Deep inland, 600m elevation
We need to protect many of our fruit trees from birds, but not olives, apples, or citrus
Careful. I wouldn't be surprised if people get weird about the origin of said fruit. We both know that those olives in the grocery store come from trees like the one you're talking about. But "I plucked these from wild trees in the park" might not go over all that well.
The town I grew up in had several public apple trees. I have fond memories of climbing the trees with my friends to get apples.
Maintenance is a thing, though. If not properly maintained, the apples will often grow too densely, yielding only small and sour apples. I would never consider the apples in my home town to be filling food - at best it would be a small snack. It would require a lot of labour to maintain a tree to the point where it would feed people in need.
Public trees already have a maintenance schedule and budget, public fruit trees don't need to be about filling hungry people, they're just as much about finding small moments of joy in your community.
Also trees that bear fruit usually don't produce as much pollen in spring so it would cut down on hayfever, they do drop more seed which can be messier if planted along sidewalks. That's the main reason decorative public trees are often male, 40 years ago civic planners decided pollen was easier to deal with than seed drop.
Public trees already have a maintenance schedule and budget, public fruit trees don't need to be about filling hungry people, they're just as much about finding small moments of joy in your community.
Unfortunately, fruiting trees take a lot more maintenance just to keep alive, even moreso if you want them to produce anything worth eating.
I have two plum trees in my front yard that I planted about 5 years ago and they take about as much work to maintain as a small garden patch. Modern fruit trees aren't really natural, they've been bred over time to produce more and more fruit. With so much of its energy going to produce fruit, it leaves them more susceptible to disease and especially pests.
If you like gardening it's a great little hobby, but I couldn't imagine the amount of work it would take to maintain hundreds or even dozens of public trees. Plus, I'm not so sure how comfortable I would be eating the fruits of trees absorbing all the petrochemicals from road wash.
I have an apple tree in my yard. It needs to be pruned and thinned at appropriate times. Sometimes pest control is required, but that's pretty much it. If done properly, it is a couple of hours of work per year max
I'm guessing it's an older apple tree? Because my two establishing plumb trees take a lot more work than a couple hours a year.
Most of the effort for fruit trees is spent getting them established and shaped the way you want. After 10-15 years of growth they mostly take care of themselves, but depending on your environment the first 5-10 can take a lot of time and effort just to keep them alive.
if that really is such a massive problem (i have never heard of that being a problem ever before, so what if they're sour? just make cider then) just plant something else then, wild plums still taste great.
also like.. you can just plant more trees, you don't need one single tree to feed 500 people, there is a depressing amount of completely unused space in most urban areas which you can just fill with fruit-bearing plants.
Don't fruit trees need extra care and pruning, and the fruit that falls to the ground is also kind of a mess to clean up. Sturdy trees are good in the city, since they are low upkeep and very good for air quality and shade. I am however a huge fan of vertical gardens with edible plants. Imagine a whole wall with mint growing on it, that would be wicked!
If you want to maximize production, yeah, you cut at certain times of the year to force the trees to put as much energy into the fruit as possible. But if you just leave them outside they will fruit as long as they are sufficiently watered and have enough room to grow (and it's not insanely stressed from a drought or heat wave, etc). There might not be as many fruits, and they might be smaller, but it will produce. But ideally you always want to choose fruit or nut trees that are native to your region (or at least your agricultural zone) so that they require less upkeep in general.
We had a lot of berry bushes at the side of the road in my hometown. Trees were often apple or Japanese cherry blossom trees. And of course the local chestnut tree made up a lot of them. Wich are also delicious. All of them bore fruit and nuts and we loved picking the stuf.
Public works departments already deal with a lot of bullshit from the builder's special trees that are already installed, managing permaculture forests would actually be easier in many ways. Portland Oregon handles this by making homeowners responsible for the sidewalk easement so they are encouraged to plant trees that don't get too tall and don't get too wide with their roots so the sidewalk doesn't buckle. So you get people planting a lot of fruit trees. There is a Gleaning group there that goes and gathers ripe fruit and does stuff with it like applesauce, or there is also a cider made by Portland Cider Company with juices from gleaned fruit they get off people's trees around town. It's pretty good cider.
Sturdy trees are good in the city, since they are low upkeep and very good for air quality and shade.
Sturdy trees WOULD be good for the city, yeah. Unfortunately we've decided to, in basically every major city (at least here in NA and I suspect other places), plant non-native trees that have low survival rates and are basically all male. Being male, they tend to also shit pollen basically everywhere. I'd imagine you could deal with the fruit falling to the ground in a number of ways, as well. Could put some canopy underneath the fruiting trees, as to collect the fruit more easily, you could just pay people to come and collect enough of the fruit for use in things like applesauce that the rest of the fruit really presents no issue as far as just sort of rotting and draining into the ground. You could set up a bunch of easy disposal compost boxes every couple feet, so you can just sweep all the fruit up and throw it into that.
I suspect a larger problem would probably be that inside of the city the fruit would be exposed to more than an acceptable amount of brake dust, including that which drains into the planter box, and would maybe not get enough light, but I think those are generally problems we should be solving anyways since they don't disappear just because we decide not to plant fruit trees. Brake dust on the fruit or carcinogens inside the fruit means that those things are also going to be going into your lungs.
I think it's a combination of the effort required and sadly the liability too. I would imagine anyone who is saying "feel free to come eat this food" is exposing themselves to lawsuits, to some degree. The kinds of organizations who are large enough to make a big impact by deciding to grow some food on their properties are the same ones who'd be targeted by frivolous lawsuits, costing money just to defend against, and offering the orgs no tangible benefit in return.
To be clear, I don't agree with structuring things this way and I think it's a trash way for our society to work, but growing food in "public" places seems non-viable without addressing that big vulnerability somehow.
trees don't need much of anything, they're perfectly capable of growing on their own. I can't imagine they prune any of the fruit trees in my city (beyond like, removing big damaged branches and stuff that just applies to literally any tree in an urban area) and they produce fruit just fine.
Fruit falling to the ground isn't particularly problematic either, like yeah it rots and stuff but.. okay? who cares? it's gone within like a week and if people are really so unable to handle the reality of food then they can toss it in the compost.
My parents are happy when people pick fruits from the trees at the street. When they fall they rot no one except the wasps and insects have something from it.
Lol lmao. The right to the fruit of something is literally one of the kinds of Roman property law that informs European ideas of property rights.
Fruit trees are mostly just expensive to grow vs other kinds and can be unappealing if fruit spoils or attracts other animals. E.g. you probably wouldn't want to play on the grass underneath an orange tree on all the little bits of orange after possums have at it.
I've been told that this is a no-go for city planners because the sheer quantity of fallen fruit can be a walking hazard, and no one wants the legal liability. What it comes down to is that "free" fruit trees would require additional ongoing maintenance costs. Nothing nefarious, just logistical issues.
No doubt, but look at the black and white thinking in this thread. We can't have fruit trees at all because they might interfere with sidewalks, or because city planners might get in a huff.
I'm not discounting the legitimate concerns of trafficability or zoning, but to write it off completely for these concerns is trash. If we can engineer a tailings dam and plan for 100 year floods that might ruin it, then we can figure out a way to permit fruit bearing trees in cities.
I imagine if there were trees all over every street in town there would be a lot of mushy ass fruit swarming with flies on the ground.
It's not a stable enough logistics chain to be viable, like, If I think "I'd like to possess a bowl of apples" I'm not going to like, patrol the streets and pick apples to that end.
I actually really appreciate the rational response to this that people have had about waste fruit, the rotting, and the food chain that follows the fallen fruit.
I had wanted to plant a few fruit trees in my front yard and allow neighbors to just take fruit off of it. Lots of people walk up my 0.5mi dead-end road.
But then I remembered what every PYO farm is like...tons of rotting fruits sitting at the bottom of all of them. And any apple someone picks that isn't 100% perfect gets tossed in the pile.
That's a lot of maintenance. Totally doable for an individual or small group to maintain a small patch. Gets really difficult to scale up.
It's worth keeping in mind though, if you want to feed people: we can just do that, we have the food and we have the infrastructure. Every person going hungry in a city with edible food in bins, produce discarded for not looking right and so on is going hungry because of policy decisions.
It is cheaper, healthier, and more successful to just distribute the food we already grow, make and transport than trying to turn everything into an orchid.
It's not terrible, but it's also not great. Fruit trees by their nature produce just mountains of fruit for a single tree. I came from a large farming family and we had a few fruit trees. So much of it ends up on the ground and rotting (which, not so bad since it was in a field, a nightmare if it were in the suburbs).
If you really want one, you NEED to maintain the tree. That means cutting branches to make sure the tree doesn't grow up and instead grows out. It also means constant maintenance to make sure branches aren't overloaded (growing out means they have a higher risk of breaking).
Regular trees are already a PITA to take properly maintain, fruit trees are another level.
And even with all that, you'll still end up with a bunch of rotting fruit on the ground. Birds, insects, etc will nibble at your fruits. You'll simply miss the 50 fruit the ripened early or late. It's just going to be a headache no matter what you do.
And it's a lot of fruit. 1 tree can easily make enough fruit for 20 people. That comes in all at once.
I used to live in a peaceful, quiet suburb. Eventually, a Panera appeared, as one does. At the end of each day, the Panera had a load of bread that was uneaten and un-purchased. The employees decided that the right thing to do was to give away the uneaten and un-purchased bread at the end of each day. I got some of it. Others did as well. It would be a waste otherwise! It would go into the dumpster, if nobody were to eat this delicious bread!
Those who were the most needy eventually got word of this free delicious bread. It began attracting ruffians. Travelers. Hobos, you know—homeless people. They traveled from the deeper parts of the city to seek this golden mana.
The locals didn’t approve of these dirty people migrating to our alcove and congregating about the back of the Panera every day. For some mere loaves of bread! It was depressing, and more importantly, it could affect our property values! What if they linger about and people think our city was one that not only catered to the lower people, but harbored them? And so, it was dealt with. The police helped to put a stop to it, bless their souls. We thank them for their service.
Now, the citizens of this peaceful city no longer have to view the sad visages of those who never learned how to play the game of our society. The excess bread may rot locked away in that dumpster, but it is the price we must pay for the cleanliness and uninterrupted peace we enjoy.
BIG /s. I typed this out so somebody may see how fucked-up this line of thinking is.
Urban planning is tricky, some times nice ideas have super tricky executions. Planting fruit/food trees in public spaces also accounts for rodents and pests, and managing disease vectors. Was just reading about fruit bats and Marburg virus spread in Central Africa…, regardless, just something that needs to be done with planning and consideration https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/04/23/178603623/want-to-forage-in-your-city-theres-a-map-for-that
I mean cmon though - in a capitalist country someone would take ALL the fruit and then sell it to people. “It was public but then it became MINE and if you want it you need to enrich MY wealth with a piece of YOUR value”
Reminds me of a video I saw of a lady taking all the books from a “little library” someone has in front of their house. The lady thought free books to sell, but didn’t care it’s a “library” means check out books or trade books.
Presumably because everyone assumes the tragedy of the commons will happen as it always does. And, little red hen, there's a sense that if one person does the work, they are owed the fruits of their labor
I mean, yeah...one of them is an attempt at a solution for the tragedy. It's a logical step to protect things from others ruining it by saying it's yours.
But a fruit tree in a public space is like an open field or playground equipment in a public space. They are there for everyone, and people who complain that the 'wrong people' are using those public rrsources for personal use are selfish idiots.
Like if a company came in and took all the fruit, sure, that would be wrong. But someone taking apples to make a pie? That's what it is there for.
What if I hire a dozen people to randomly, individually go and pick all the fruit and bring it to me, and then I make a profit reselling what they collect?
this is literally a legitimate business in the nordic forests thanks to the right to roam, people will hire (generally thai people) to go out into the forests and harvest berries and mushrooms on an industrial scale (by hand though) and then sell it to grocery stores or directly to people on the street..
and surprise surprise, i have never seen anyone complain about this. Rather people gladly pay their pretty cheap prices rather than going out and picking it themselves, and there's more than enough available out in the forest that everyone can find some for theirselves if they want.
hell the law specifically gives you a tax break for selling fruits and berries you've personally picked, you can earn something like 25'000 SEK per year that way without needing to pay any tax on it.
That's the thing though: someone will. That's what regulations, ownership (collective or individual), and laws are for. That's why it's not a simple thing.
Idk, you tell me. I'm suggesting that scarce resources not owned by anyone will get used by those who take it. This is a fact. What then? Is it bad? Is it ok? Pretending it's not a thing is to deny reality and all of human/life history
It's only a tragedy if allowing "first come, first served" until the resource is completely exhausted is actually a problematic outcome. For urban fruit trees intentionally planted for the public, I'd argue that that isn't the case.
Yeah, my city has street sweepers and gardeners, so I wouldn't imagine this would be a huge problem.
They could even put out compost bins like public trashcans. I wouldn't mind cleaning up a couple of fruits here and there as I walk by.
If it's in a public place in front of businesses and such, then the business has an incentive to keep things tidy. So all in all, I think it's a fairly easy problem to solve.
Plus the employees and customers could enjoy the fruit. Free fruit already gathered may entice more customers for other things. I guess food stores may not like the idea.
I'm thinking about fruit trees and bushes specifically. If you've ever gone apple picking you see how many apples are on the ground. Domesticated fruit trees are bred and grafted to be highly prolific, and you'll have a lot more fruit dropped than you'd think.
Plus you'll have animals going into the trees to eat the fruit. Commercial berry farmers have to cover their bushes and trees with nets to prevent birds from picking them clean. (And then producing very colorful art on outdoor surfaces.)
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I don't think people have entirely thought it through.
this is already bog standard here in sweden and the only real problem is fucking MOOSE coming into people's gardens to eat fruit, any other animals are too small for anyone to be bothered by them.
fallen fruit just isn't a problem in the real world, it's fine.
Some apple trees can produce hundreds of fruit a day. No you wouldn’t. That’s someone else’s problem. It takes massive organization and as you can see no one really cares enough.
Yes I know, I meant that there could be a dedicated team for this. Yk, people paid by the state to tend to the gardens. If it was a serious problem you could also just use less productive strains of these plants. You could also just compost the excess. Greater endeavors have succeeded and you cant say food production and beauty is not worthwhile. I'm not suggesting we just put a bunch of fruit trees everywhere and expect the public to autonomously maintain them lol.
how do you explain this just.. not being a problem that anyone talks about in areas where fruit trees are already plentiful in cities? I feel like people use the word "pests" the same way conservatives use the word "immigrants", it's just an abstract scapegoat to throw out whenever you want to argue against something..
I had a long list of animals that I was going to use but omitted it for brevity. Rats, mice, cockroaches, pigeons, raccoons, possums, deer and, apparently, moose would be a few of them.
But in cities they’re already pretty prevalent so I guess adding another food source wouldn’t encourage them
No legal advice, but I am pretty sure picking an apple from a tree in a public space (but can be privately owned) for direct consumption is legal in Germany. Weird but understandable that you need a law for that.
Not just crime but in large parts of the country it's a popular myth that they can shoot you for being on their property. They can't, that's ridiculous, but Hollywood and popular myth won't let it die.
Also, legality doesn't change the odds of some old white dude taking pot shots from his porch at strange noises, because of precisely the same popular myth
ironically i think this is technically not covered by nordic "right to roam" as that says you should avoid areas near housing, however if anyone tries to raise a stink about people picking fruits from public trees then everyone is going to tell them to shut up and stop being a miserable idiot.
that just obviously doesn't happen though, my city's full of fruit trees all over and the absolute worst thing that happens is that dumb kids shake down some of the fruit because they're dumb, and you can just.. pick that up..
If the suits who run society find out that people would get this fruit for free, they'd probably make it so that taking this fruit is considered stealing. You'd get a fine, charged with thievery because it's property of the city.
Hear me out; hire a few more municipal employees, care for the trees/pick the fruit, place in "blessing boxes" in public spaces, post office, library, DMV, tax office, town/city hall, worship venues etc? Employees can take what they need too?
I believe it happened I’ve had many insane conversations with people like this.
Like food banks and people will say well what if people that don’t need it go there. I’m like so what, if 1 in a 1000 abuses a system it doesn’t mean we should make the 999 suffer by removing it.
I only care when a single individual or group picks all of the fruit from the public trees just so that they can sell it down the road and profit from it.
Not sure about this particular conversation, but for extreme capitalists this is a thing. a Robert Heinlein novel is a place for them to start and misunderstand.
The park that I live next to has 3 apple trees (I'm in USA). These are not grocery store apples, they're small and riddle with bugs, this isn't an orchard.
When the apples are ripe, they'll get picked by kids and familes for a couple weeks. Nobody hordes them, nobody sees it as stealing, they're cool, and great for the community.
I'm just sad that they're getting old and about to die. There used to be 5 just a couple years ago. I think they may have planted a couple new saplings, but I'm not an arborist.
Fruit trees typically don't live as long as other trees, that's probably why parks and rec usually don't plant them. Having to replace an apple tree every 25 years as opposed to a Maple, Oak, Sycamore, Pine, Elm, Cedar every 100-200+ years, kinda an easy choice. With that said, I like it, and think it's worth. More parks should have a handful of them.
We're banned from planting fruit-bearing trees in our Florida neighborhood due to pest problems.
This sounds outrageous from outside the state... turns out, it's not. Oh, it is not, you have no idea. Planting those on main street would be a catastrophe.
What I'm saying is this sounds nice in theory, but there are all sorts of knock-on effects that have nothing to do with humans, and you'd have to at the very least tailor it to the local environment and climate.
Maybe its better in like boulder or San Francisco?
Because we live in a world where everything is owned by someone and one must profit off of anything they possess or it's considered a wasteful liability.
We used to have loquat trees in the city, it was fine, people could take them to eat but they are small and, while delicious, not a commercial fruit here, mostly seeds. The trees aren't there anymore, there was a redesign of that plaza, but not because there was a rush on the loquats.
Someone was, however, stealing the ducks of the city to sell. Nobody planted them.
Aren't there cherry trees in DC? Or are cherry blossom trees not cherry trees?
In my city, city planners decided to bring trees that aren't native to our country (sycamore trees), and now we have an invasion of these bugs that bite and stink bugs.
It's bog standard to have fruit trees and berry bushes in urban areas here in sweden, rowan trees and serviceberry bushes are literally everywhere, and it simply is not a problem. Birds will eat most of it before you even have time to notice the fruit going bad.
Oh I'm sure some European countries have a more ecologically friendly setup than us. I'm speaking from the perspective of US city planners, and I assure you, this is a major consideration for them.
I hope they plan on coming back through and cleaning up all the not used drops. Especially before they all start rotting or animals get drunk on them and run into traffic.
Here is someone trying it but notice they have an entire crew devoted to managing them and their hundreds of lbs of produce weekly. None of this even talks about the logistics of distributing it either.
The trees aren't meant to solve homelessness or poverty. They also do more than just feed people. As a whole I think its worth it, and we can also tax the rich to pay for social welfare at the same time.
Obligatory:
This sounded plausible until she said they poured bleach on the ground. Then it had the smell of bullshit.
Wait, why? Bleach is a common way to kill plants in the short term without any long term lingering effects in the soil since it decomposes into salt and water. With enough drainage, the salt seeps out and plants can grow again. I'd say it's a pretty pragmatic solution to ensuring that someone doesn't grow anything again in the short term.
https://www.bhg.com/does-bleach-kill-weeds-8673023
That seems to support what you're calling "implausible". It clearly says bleach would work to prevent a garden from being regrown there.
Same comments I got when I said I was planting apple trees in my front yard. Those are for the public, the ones in my back yard are for me.
Everyone in my street is selling their apples on the street. Every house has a little basket and a sign "1 kilo 1 euro" or something like that. Some are even giving them away for free. I gave mine away in bulk, so I haven't got anything to pu in the street.
The annoying thing about fruit trees is that the fruits are only good for picking for like 1-2 weeks of the whole year. If you don't pick them during those 2 weeks, they rot and spoil. That's why the whole street tries to sell them pretty much at the same time, because you can't pick fruit like a basket at the time. You have to pick the whole tree during those 2 weeks.
It depends on the tree, I think, doesn't it? I have a fig tree and the figs are great for about 45 seconds in July. Essentially unfit for human consumption any other time!
Mine is in August. Figs supposedly have two harvests a year, but I must have blinked during the other one.
it's pretty standard here to have a basket outside your fence where you dump the fallen fruit that looks nice, most people don't even want the fruit from their trees in the first place so they're just glad to have some of it magically disappear.
In Cupertino houses have boxes of fruit of different kinds in front of their house. It is all free. Very kind of them.
"‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God." - Leviticus 19:9, 10
Well it is "the Rules of the Tribe of Levi" canonically speaking they are laws made not by God but by a bunch of priests. It is important for biblical historical context reasons but technically speaking these are ancient society laws. It's why instructional portions detailing animal sacrifice are included in that section when modern Christians tend to look at animal sacrifice as a satanic cult kind of thing.
Provided you are Christian ( before the atheists start in, I'm not - I just study the religion as a part of gaining historical background info) Using Leviticus to justify one's opinions on anything strikes me as showing that one read the text absent the scholarly context. A lot of Christians do this because book annotations wouldn't be a thing before 1000 AD and it really benefited a lot of powerful people to never mention context of the compiling process of the book because once the supposed less than divine fingerprints on the processed material are brought to light it weakens it's power as a tool of authority.
but the passage ends with God signing off on the law
So next time you're at the tabernacle or trying to be being a priest you'll know how to behave, sure.
God signs of on mortal codes of governance multiple times in the text. Obedience to "Laws of the land" are a thing in other texts. The order seems to be "be orderly and in accordance to whatever the power structure where you are agrees is fair" it is pretty all over the place, Romans, Deuteronomy, Paul, Hebrews Numbers... God wields a pretty big ole rubber stamp.
I think something like this would be carried over into the new covenant as the spirit of the law remained
Except they don't do that. What they do is pick and choose from the old testament and ignore any part of the new testament that is inconvenient. Not all of them. Just the majority of them. What they do instead is take away the benches least someone in need to sleep there. They punish those that feed the needy in many places. They pass laws to make the most vulnerable of us criminals for daring to exist in their presence.
I don't listen to what people say. I watch what they do. What the majority of christians in my area do is hateful and very non christian. All of them are convinced though that god always wants exactly what they want.
That's disgusting
Yeah, you don't use the 5e handbook as your character sheet, just like you don't use the Bible as your moral code.
You get to not play as a charitable and kind Christian if you don't want to, you can just as well play a greedy and mean subclass.
Just a bafflingly dumb response to such an obviously great thing to do.
This is the result of a century of propaganda and destruction of public spaces
You just know some asshole would pick all the trees clean and go sell the fruit
Plant enough so they can't make a profit.
No offense to you personally, but I hate this kind of premature defeatism. Like... yeah, some people are jerks and try to take advantage of things. Put rules in place and enforce them as much as the people in charge care to.
I know it's strawmanning to bring this up, but people use the same argument to say "We shouldn't have food stamps for hungry kids or welfare for needy families or subsidized housing for people without homes because people will abuse it. Yeah. Some people will, and others will suffer because of their greed. But so many more people will continue to suffer if we don't even try because we are too scared of The Undeserving boogeyman. Not every tree will be taken advantage of, and as the sense of outreach and community grows, abuse of it will fall and it will be worth it. I guarantee it...
Honestly it's really telling on them.
Like you can't do nice things because X. So they don't do it.
That too. "I'm a fiscally conservative Republican who doesn't believe in handouts." Oh? How convenient that you can selfishly hoard all your money for yourself by hiding behind principle...
Sometimes they are even taking advantage of welfare themselves, but don't seem to make that connection.
This is what "the tragedy of the commons" was all about in pre-Victorian England. Rich people decried the existence of land held and used by all the people of a community, claiming that it couldn't work in practice because eventually some asshole would always take it all for themselves. Turns out they were the some asshole, seizing all the commons for themselves as private property (a process known as "enclosure"), ending many centuries of actually successful common usage of land.
Visit Portland. Lots of neighborhoods grow fruit trees.
And the fruit falls to the ground.
Nobody is going around selling them.
As someone who lives in Portland, yes.
People stealing fruit from trees is the least of my Portland worries.
Watching the tree to see when the fruit is ripe and then carting around a ladder to pick it? That sounds like a fucking job.
How acceptable is it, if you can reach a plant / tree from the sidewalk, to pick someone else's fruit? Would that be considered weird, or totally acceptable behavior?
Hmm, weird but maybe good weird unless the person is weird about it.
And I mean just like 1 or 2 pieces. Not backing up a truck or anything. In case that changes your answer. Thanks
My dream is that people could live in supportive communes or whatever, so this seems fine to me.
In Hawaii it's quite funny to see, because it if can be reached, it can be taken. So there are these hilarious fellas who have these baskets on long poles, and at the end of it there's this little hand/grabber thing. They reach out as far as they can over the fence, press the button at the bottom, and fwoomp! There goes the fruit from the tree into the basket. I remember my cousin staking out avocados waiting for them to get ripe.
If it's overhanging public property it's fair game. The owner has plenty of fruit on their side too I'll bet. If they take issue with it they can guide their plant so it's confined to their property. That being said I wouldn't be reaching over the fence to yank a cucumber or apple.
it also depends on how much fruit there is, if they have literally 500 apples in the tree then there is no way they're actually going to make use of all that, if they have 4 sad fruits left hanging then you leave it alone.
If they've got 4 fruits left and they're all hanging over the fence then they just harvested their tree. Let's not look for hyperspecific edge cases here we're discussing a rule of thumb.
i'd consider anyone who gives a shit about that to be weird and unpleasant, if you don't want people to eat your fruit maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe don't have half the tree hanging outside your property.
Only if you're weird about it. If it's a tree on the sidewalk, go for it.
In the US, probably.
Here in Sweden, there are public fruit trees and bushes, herbs etc. all over the place, and very very rarely does that happen. I live a 15-minute tram ride from the centre of the second-largest city and have within a 10-minute walking distance of my apartment several kinds of plums, cherries, currants, apples, pears, other berries and most common herbs, edible flowers and so on, all in random public places. We also have several "fruit groves" around the city, larger green areas specifically for publicly available fruits and more.
So what
okay, and? plant more trees then, or how superhuman is this dude that they can personally harvest every single tree?
And then cut down the tree.
I remember when I was young I got ticketed for trespassing on public property. I was so offended. Yet that’s the society we live in. Public resources aren’t for use by the public, they are for use by the small fraction of the public who control them.
We're gonna need the detail. The county jail is public property, but you can't waltz in and say hi to the inmates.
It was for staying too late in a public park. It was meant to be closed after dark. I overstayed by like an hour.
I think there’s a big difference between breaking and entering and trespassing. Going into a restricted area is more like the latter. Although there’s the whole ethics of a prison to consider as well but I don’t want to get into that.
But yes there may be a small number of situations where public access should be forbidden but right now that’s a minority of all of the completely unnecessary restrictions that exist.
So you were there when it wasn't public property, legally speaking.
In this case, they mean "public property" as in it's the property of the public. It's owned by the government, by the tax payers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_property
You're thinking public or state ownership. Public property is property generally meant to be used by the public. That doesn't mean that there aren't conditions to that use though, like hours of operation.
Most of this is in that article you linked...
You're buzzing around the point like a fly on shit
That would imply the point is shit, which I don't think it really is. It's more like they're buzzing around the point like how a fly will buzz around a chili dog at a baseball game. Likewise, they are being annoying and making it harder to digest.
Property generally meant to be used by the public is "open to the public," not public property. The grocery store is open to the public, but it is not public property, it's private property.
But why should a public park have hours of operation? Benches and open space don't stop working after certain hours, don't take resources or workers to operate, they're just there. Why should we punish people for enjoying the outdoors?
Swing through Washington square park at 2 in the morning, better still if you can do it 20 years ago
Those same people walk on sidewalks without going through the toll booths!
(for US people, sidewalks are designated areas on the side of the road especially for pedestrians, or as some people say, wasted space)
We call them pavements in the UK and I kinda think sidewalk is more descriptive. You walk on the side of the road.
In the US basically anything paved is pavement.
Asphalt road: Pavement
Concrete sidewalk: Pavement
Giant parking lot: Pavement
Gravel road: Believe it or not - paveme.. well that one's debatable.
I'd say gravel roads can be argued to be "paved" if it's really fine gravel that has been properly packed down by repeated driving on it, to the point where it starts looking shiny and sort of like glazed clay
Gravelment
Down under, it's usually footpath which I think is even more descriptive
Footpath makes it sound like it goes through the woods or a field or something.
It can do. But your feet do work outside of woods and fields too.
Footpath is also the more popular term in the UK IMO
They needed more information.
I can't recall the source, but I remember hearing that the Amazon, generations ago, was farmed. The trees aren't distributed naturally, or something like that, we see signs of intentional crop management. However, it was done in a symbiotic way with nature so that it almost looks natural, until you look closer. With lots of fruit trees and food sources so that food was an abundant free resource.
Wish I could remember the source for this, sounds like heaven on earth, working with nature is all we need to rediscover freedom.
You're thinking about indigenous groups that farmed parts of the Amazon. You want a rabbit hole? Google Terra preta. See you in a few years ;)
You got me going down the rabbit hole at work now. Very fascinating stuff. It's incredible the things that our ancestors knew about nature that have been lost to time.
Next stop [email protected] !
1491 by Charles Mann. The book everyone should read instead of Guns, Germs and Steel which is a bunch of hooey.
In my city, olive trees thrive like mad. I could probably start a business selling a few tons of brined and jarred olives a year entirely on free produce.
Lemons, too. I could go for a 15 minute walk in any random neighbourhood and come back with 10 pounds of lemons.
Lemon stealing whore.
I live in Canberra, Australia and we also have an excellent climate for olives and lemons. Apples and practically all citrus also do well and plums and other stone fruit grow like topsi. Figs too.
Deep inland, 600m elevation
We need to protect many of our fruit trees from birds, but not olives, apples, or citrus
Athens?
Shelbyville?
Gross, no. A different Mediterranean climate nowhere near the Mediterranean.
Careful. I wouldn't be surprised if people get weird about the origin of said fruit. We both know that those olives in the grocery store come from trees like the one you're talking about. But "I plucked these from wild trees in the park" might not go over all that well.
"God created everything for billionaires to profit from!" Duh!
The town I grew up in had several public apple trees. I have fond memories of climbing the trees with my friends to get apples.
Maintenance is a thing, though. If not properly maintained, the apples will often grow too densely, yielding only small and sour apples. I would never consider the apples in my home town to be filling food - at best it would be a small snack. It would require a lot of labour to maintain a tree to the point where it would feed people in need.
Public trees already have a maintenance schedule and budget, public fruit trees don't need to be about filling hungry people, they're just as much about finding small moments of joy in your community.
Also trees that bear fruit usually don't produce as much pollen in spring so it would cut down on hayfever, they do drop more seed which can be messier if planted along sidewalks. That's the main reason decorative public trees are often male, 40 years ago civic planners decided pollen was easier to deal with than seed drop.
I think whoever put the trees in my yard felt the same way.
Never see any acorns or pinecones. Sometimes a maple seedpod floats it's way into my yard.
But our (silver and white) cars turn fluorescent green with tree spooge if we don't rinse them off daily in the spring.
Well, screw those people! In both nostrils!
Unfortunately, fruiting trees take a lot more maintenance just to keep alive, even moreso if you want them to produce anything worth eating.
I have two plum trees in my front yard that I planted about 5 years ago and they take about as much work to maintain as a small garden patch. Modern fruit trees aren't really natural, they've been bred over time to produce more and more fruit. With so much of its energy going to produce fruit, it leaves them more susceptible to disease and especially pests.
If you like gardening it's a great little hobby, but I couldn't imagine the amount of work it would take to maintain hundreds or even dozens of public trees. Plus, I'm not so sure how comfortable I would be eating the fruits of trees absorbing all the petrochemicals from road wash.
I have an apple tree in my yard. It needs to be pruned and thinned at appropriate times. Sometimes pest control is required, but that's pretty much it. If done properly, it is a couple of hours of work per year max
I'm guessing it's an older apple tree? Because my two establishing plumb trees take a lot more work than a couple hours a year.
Most of the effort for fruit trees is spent getting them established and shaped the way you want. After 10-15 years of growth they mostly take care of themselves, but depending on your environment the first 5-10 can take a lot of time and effort just to keep them alive.
if that really is such a massive problem (i have never heard of that being a problem ever before, so what if they're sour? just make cider then) just plant something else then, wild plums still taste great.
also like.. you can just plant more trees, you don't need one single tree to feed 500 people, there is a depressing amount of completely unused space in most urban areas which you can just fill with fruit-bearing plants.
Don't fruit trees need extra care and pruning, and the fruit that falls to the ground is also kind of a mess to clean up. Sturdy trees are good in the city, since they are low upkeep and very good for air quality and shade. I am however a huge fan of vertical gardens with edible plants. Imagine a whole wall with mint growing on it, that would be wicked!
If you want to maximize production, yeah, you cut at certain times of the year to force the trees to put as much energy into the fruit as possible. But if you just leave them outside they will fruit as long as they are sufficiently watered and have enough room to grow (and it's not insanely stressed from a drought or heat wave, etc). There might not be as many fruits, and they might be smaller, but it will produce. But ideally you always want to choose fruit or nut trees that are native to your region (or at least your agricultural zone) so that they require less upkeep in general.
Date trees line the boulevards of many Mediterranean countries, and there is no issue with cleanup or rot.
How do they handle that?
...they shovel or wash the walkways if they get dirty.
Simple solution. Jobs creating. Thank you.
Yeah the answer is almost never that there is no solution, and most simple problems have easy solutions.
We had a lot of berry bushes at the side of the road in my hometown. Trees were often apple or Japanese cherry blossom trees. And of course the local chestnut tree made up a lot of them. Wich are also delicious. All of them bore fruit and nuts and we loved picking the stuf.
Public works departments already deal with a lot of bullshit from the builder's special trees that are already installed, managing permaculture forests would actually be easier in many ways. Portland Oregon handles this by making homeowners responsible for the sidewalk easement so they are encouraged to plant trees that don't get too tall and don't get too wide with their roots so the sidewalk doesn't buckle. So you get people planting a lot of fruit trees. There is a Gleaning group there that goes and gathers ripe fruit and does stuff with it like applesauce, or there is also a cider made by Portland Cider Company with juices from gleaned fruit they get off people's trees around town. It's pretty good cider.
Sturdy trees WOULD be good for the city, yeah. Unfortunately we've decided to, in basically every major city (at least here in NA and I suspect other places), plant non-native trees that have low survival rates and are basically all male. Being male, they tend to also shit pollen basically everywhere. I'd imagine you could deal with the fruit falling to the ground in a number of ways, as well. Could put some canopy underneath the fruiting trees, as to collect the fruit more easily, you could just pay people to come and collect enough of the fruit for use in things like applesauce that the rest of the fruit really presents no issue as far as just sort of rotting and draining into the ground. You could set up a bunch of easy disposal compost boxes every couple feet, so you can just sweep all the fruit up and throw it into that.
I suspect a larger problem would probably be that inside of the city the fruit would be exposed to more than an acceptable amount of brake dust, including that which drains into the planter box, and would maybe not get enough light, but I think those are generally problems we should be solving anyways since they don't disappear just because we decide not to plant fruit trees. Brake dust on the fruit or carcinogens inside the fruit means that those things are also going to be going into your lungs.
I think it's a combination of the effort required and sadly the liability too. I would imagine anyone who is saying "feel free to come eat this food" is exposing themselves to lawsuits, to some degree. The kinds of organizations who are large enough to make a big impact by deciding to grow some food on their properties are the same ones who'd be targeted by frivolous lawsuits, costing money just to defend against, and offering the orgs no tangible benefit in return.
To be clear, I don't agree with structuring things this way and I think it's a trash way for our society to work, but growing food in "public" places seems non-viable without addressing that big vulnerability somehow.
trees don't need much of anything, they're perfectly capable of growing on their own. I can't imagine they prune any of the fruit trees in my city (beyond like, removing big damaged branches and stuff that just applies to literally any tree in an urban area) and they produce fruit just fine.
Fruit falling to the ground isn't particularly problematic either, like yeah it rots and stuff but.. okay? who cares? it's gone within like a week and if people are really so unable to handle the reality of food then they can toss it in the compost.
My parents are happy when people pick fruits from the trees at the street. When they fall they rot no one except the wasps and insects have something from it.
No-good lazy workshy people stealing food from hardworking wasps 🤬🤬🤬🤬
Lol lmao. The right to the fruit of something is literally one of the kinds of Roman property law that informs European ideas of property rights.
Fruit trees are mostly just expensive to grow vs other kinds and can be unappealing if fruit spoils or attracts other animals. E.g. you probably wouldn't want to play on the grass underneath an orange tree on all the little bits of orange after possums have at it.
Ginko Biloba would like to know your location
I don't understand sorry
Because it's a tree that smells awful if you don't clean up all the dropped fruits.
It's a dietary supplement that helps memory. I think they are implying that Europe needs help remembering.
Lmaoo no. It's also a tree and it's fruit smells like rotting shit. They only permit male trees in cities for this reason
I've been told that this is a no-go for city planners because the sheer quantity of fallen fruit can be a walking hazard, and no one wants the legal liability. What it comes down to is that "free" fruit trees would require additional ongoing maintenance costs. Nothing nefarious, just logistical issues.
Sounds like job creation to me
Agreed.
You mean like shoveling sidewalks in the winter?
Oh no.
The horror.
Does the snow smell like shit and attract wasps and animals that shit all over.
As opposed to the neighborhood dogs shitting all over?
And yeah having pollinators back would be helpful.
Bringing nature back is a good thing.
How fucked is it that our first thoughts are about cars and sidewalks?
Cars, yeah it's fucked. But I think keeping things walkable is good.
No doubt, but look at the black and white thinking in this thread. We can't have fruit trees at all because they might interfere with sidewalks, or because city planners might get in a huff.
I'm not discounting the legitimate concerns of trafficability or zoning, but to write it off completely for these concerns is trash. If we can engineer a tailings dam and plan for 100 year floods that might ruin it, then we can figure out a way to permit fruit bearing trees in cities.
I think people are thinking more that if you want to feed people just give them food you buy is more cost effective.
You're coming on pretty strong and I haven't even had my coffee.
There are other comments about the topics I am getting at. I'm not attacking you but agreeing with you.
Chill bruh.
I'd say that's a question for city planners.
Fallen bananas are slippery.
I imagine if there were trees all over every street in town there would be a lot of mushy ass fruit swarming with flies on the ground.
It's not a stable enough logistics chain to be viable, like, If I think "I'd like to possess a bowl of apples" I'm not going to like, patrol the streets and pick apples to that end.
You would if you were hungry and didn't have money
I thought they were banned to prevent free food and thus discouraged homeless people.
I actually really appreciate the rational response to this that people have had about waste fruit, the rotting, and the food chain that follows the fallen fruit.
I had wanted to plant a few fruit trees in my front yard and allow neighbors to just take fruit off of it. Lots of people walk up my 0.5mi dead-end road.
But then I remembered what every PYO farm is like...tons of rotting fruits sitting at the bottom of all of them. And any apple someone picks that isn't 100% perfect gets tossed in the pile.
That's a lot of maintenance. Totally doable for an individual or small group to maintain a small patch. Gets really difficult to scale up.
It's worth keeping in mind though, if you want to feed people: we can just do that, we have the food and we have the infrastructure. Every person going hungry in a city with edible food in bins, produce discarded for not looking right and so on is going hungry because of policy decisions.
It is cheaper, healthier, and more successful to just distribute the food we already grow, make and transport than trying to turn everything into an orchid.
It's not terrible, but it's also not great. Fruit trees by their nature produce just mountains of fruit for a single tree. I came from a large farming family and we had a few fruit trees. So much of it ends up on the ground and rotting (which, not so bad since it was in a field, a nightmare if it were in the suburbs).
If you really want one, you NEED to maintain the tree. That means cutting branches to make sure the tree doesn't grow up and instead grows out. It also means constant maintenance to make sure branches aren't overloaded (growing out means they have a higher risk of breaking).
Regular trees are already a PITA to take properly maintain, fruit trees are another level.
And even with all that, you'll still end up with a bunch of rotting fruit on the ground. Birds, insects, etc will nibble at your fruits. You'll simply miss the 50 fruit the ripened early or late. It's just going to be a headache no matter what you do.
And it's a lot of fruit. 1 tree can easily make enough fruit for 20 people. That comes in all at once.
These are the same people that run restaurants that will throw away perfectly good food instead of donating it and then keep their trash bins locked.
I used to live in a peaceful, quiet suburb. Eventually, a Panera appeared, as one does. At the end of each day, the Panera had a load of bread that was uneaten and un-purchased. The employees decided that the right thing to do was to give away the uneaten and un-purchased bread at the end of each day. I got some of it. Others did as well. It would be a waste otherwise! It would go into the dumpster, if nobody were to eat this delicious bread!
Those who were the most needy eventually got word of this free delicious bread. It began attracting ruffians. Travelers. Hobos, you know—homeless people. They traveled from the deeper parts of the city to seek this golden mana.
The locals didn’t approve of these dirty people migrating to our alcove and congregating about the back of the Panera every day. For some mere loaves of bread! It was depressing, and more importantly, it could affect our property values! What if they linger about and people think our city was one that not only catered to the lower people, but harbored them? And so, it was dealt with. The police helped to put a stop to it, bless their souls. We thank them for their service.
Now, the citizens of this peaceful city no longer have to view the sad visages of those who never learned how to play the game of our society. The excess bread may rot locked away in that dumpster, but it is the price we must pay for the cleanliness and uninterrupted peace we enjoy.
BIG /s. I typed this out so somebody may see how fucked-up this line of thinking is.
We should put public roads in our city.
Why, so people can just trespass everywhere?
I put on a vest and plant clones of apple trees in public parks
I put on my robe and wizard hat...
I flip my hair back and forth
Also. Hemp
Urban planning is tricky, some times nice ideas have super tricky executions. Planting fruit/food trees in public spaces also accounts for rodents and pests, and managing disease vectors. Was just reading about fruit bats and Marburg virus spread in Central Africa…, regardless, just something that needs to be done with planning and consideration https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/04/23/178603623/want-to-forage-in-your-city-theres-a-map-for-that
And things that people are allergic to, like wasps and bees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyIIqrcl-V0
I mean cmon though - in a capitalist country someone would take ALL the fruit and then sell it to people. “It was public but then it became MINE and if you want it you need to enrich MY wealth with a piece of YOUR value”
Then I say we enforce the social contract of "don't be a fucking asshole", with force if needed.
Reminds me of a video I saw of a lady taking all the books from a “little library” someone has in front of their house. The lady thought free books to sell, but didn’t care it’s a “library” means check out books or trade books.
Somehow that simply doesn't happen in any place with public fruit trees
that sounds like they're doing work then, what's the problem?
Hoarding and repackaging a free public good in order to sell it back to the people it was originally free for?
Do you work for Nestle?
you'd prefer not having fruits in the first place, just to prevent someone from harvesting and selling them?
Don’t sealion me, you know that’s not the argument I was making
Presumably because everyone assumes the tragedy of the commons will happen as it always does. And, little red hen, there's a sense that if one person does the work, they are owed the fruits of their labor
What’s cool is we don’t even have to wait for the collapse, we can start working towards the greater good today!
Don't work too hard you'll end up in jail or shot
Fuck that’s depressing, but at the same time I think making a better world for people is something worth dedicating your life to.
Sorry :c
I mean, yeah...one of them is an attempt at a solution for the tragedy. It's a logical step to protect things from others ruining it by saying it's yours.
Talking about tragedy of the commons on the internet, in a decentralized network, is an extremely funny bit.
Do I need to mention that the guy who came up with it was a racist who wanted to justify displacing the "unproductives"?
To your first point, why? You know what the Internet is like outside the fediverse right?
To your second, I guess you can. Don't know what it has to do with the subject at hand
But a fruit tree in a public space is like an open field or playground equipment in a public space. They are there for everyone, and people who complain that the 'wrong people' are using those public rrsources for personal use are selfish idiots.
Like if a company came in and took all the fruit, sure, that would be wrong. But someone taking apples to make a pie? That's what it is there for.
What if I hire a dozen people to randomly, individually go and pick all the fruit and bring it to me, and then I make a profit reselling what they collect?
Then you’re an asshole
Lotta them exist. Always have and always will. This is how you begin the "have and have not" groups.
Well duh. Kind of missing the point though.
this is literally a legitimate business in the nordic forests thanks to the right to roam, people will hire (generally thai people) to go out into the forests and harvest berries and mushrooms on an industrial scale (by hand though) and then sell it to grocery stores or directly to people on the street..
and surprise surprise, i have never seen anyone complain about this. Rather people gladly pay their pretty cheap prices rather than going out and picking it themselves, and there's more than enough available out in the forest that everyone can find some for theirselves if they want.
hell the law specifically gives you a tax break for selling fruits and berries you've personally picked, you can earn something like 25'000 SEK per year that way without needing to pay any tax on it.
This isn't a fucking problem.
What if one person comes in and takes it all? Don't even need companies, just individuals.
That's the tragedy of the commons.
So we shouldn't have nice things because someone might act in bad faith?
That's the thing though: someone will. That's what regulations, ownership (collective or individual), and laws are for. That's why it's not a simple thing.
So instead of accounting for it, just don't try?
What if the tree only produces 3 fruit, is it wrong for three siblings to pick and eat them?
Idk, you tell me. I'm suggesting that scarce resources not owned by anyone will get used by those who take it. This is a fact. What then? Is it bad? Is it ok? Pretending it's not a thing is to deny reality and all of human/life history
Do you get this worked up over kids who spend too long on the swings?
Literally the fruits in this case.
It's only a tragedy if allowing "first come, first served" until the resource is completely exhausted is actually a problematic outcome. For urban fruit trees intentionally planted for the public, I'd argue that that isn't the case.
Plus having rotting fruit laying around will encourage pests. Maybe put these into specific areas rather than just scattering them around.
You would just have people tend to the gardens no?
Yeah, my city has street sweepers and gardeners, so I wouldn't imagine this would be a huge problem.
They could even put out compost bins like public trashcans. I wouldn't mind cleaning up a couple of fruits here and there as I walk by.
If it's in a public place in front of businesses and such, then the business has an incentive to keep things tidy. So all in all, I think it's a fairly easy problem to solve.
Plus the employees and customers could enjoy the fruit. Free fruit already gathered may entice more customers for other things. I guess food stores may not like the idea.
I'm thinking about fruit trees and bushes specifically. If you've ever gone apple picking you see how many apples are on the ground. Domesticated fruit trees are bred and grafted to be highly prolific, and you'll have a lot more fruit dropped than you'd think.
Plus you'll have animals going into the trees to eat the fruit. Commercial berry farmers have to cover their bushes and trees with nets to prevent birds from picking them clean. (And then producing very colorful art on outdoor surfaces.)
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I don't think people have entirely thought it through.
this is already bog standard here in sweden and the only real problem is fucking MOOSE coming into people's gardens to eat fruit, any other animals are too small for anyone to be bothered by them.
fallen fruit just isn't a problem in the real world, it's fine.
I lack confidence that my fellow Americans won't make it a problem. Here people cut down fruit trees because birds shit on their cars.
Some apple trees can produce hundreds of fruit a day. No you wouldn’t. That’s someone else’s problem. It takes massive organization and as you can see no one really cares enough.
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/cities-are-planting-trees-why-not-make-them-fruit-trees
A small example of the work needed. You’re not going to get this everywhere or forever and what happens when people stop. The trees don’t stop.
Yes I know, I meant that there could be a dedicated team for this. Yk, people paid by the state to tend to the gardens. If it was a serious problem you could also just use less productive strains of these plants. You could also just compost the excess. Greater endeavors have succeeded and you cant say food production and beauty is not worthwhile. I'm not suggesting we just put a bunch of fruit trees everywhere and expect the public to autonomously maintain them lol.
how do you explain this just.. not being a problem that anyone talks about in areas where fruit trees are already plentiful in cities? I feel like people use the word "pests" the same way conservatives use the word "immigrants", it's just an abstract scapegoat to throw out whenever you want to argue against something..
I had a long list of animals that I was going to use but omitted it for brevity. Rats, mice, cockroaches, pigeons, raccoons, possums, deer and, apparently, moose would be a few of them.
But in cities they’re already pretty prevalent so I guess adding another food source wouldn’t encourage them
We need to re-think our relationship with property.
So, in your eyes, one's worth is directly tied to whether or not you have a job?
No legal advice, but I am pretty sure picking an apple from a tree in a public space (but can be privately owned) for direct consumption is legal in Germany. Weird but understandable that you need a law for that.
Laws regarding public access to nature are much better in Europe & the UK than in the US.
If I remember correctly, Trespassing isn't a viable law in Finland.
You want to walk across the land? Go ahead.
In the US: CRIME
Not just crime but in large parts of the country it's a popular myth that they can shoot you for being on their property. They can't, that's ridiculous, but Hollywood and popular myth won't let it die.
Also, legality doesn't change the odds of some old white dude taking pot shots from his porch at strange noises, because of precisely the same popular myth
But what if you want to make moonshine or cook meth? How are you supposed to get some privacy with people traipsing all over the place?
invite them in for a taste test, and tell them that they get a discount if they bring you ingredients.
ironically i think this is technically not covered by nordic "right to roam" as that says you should avoid areas near housing, however if anyone tries to raise a stink about people picking fruits from public trees then everyone is going to tell them to shut up and stop being a miserable idiot.
There will be atleast 1 asshole trying to take all the aplles fer themselves. I guarantee it
Guess we can't have anything nice as long as one person might be selfish.
I didn't say we shouldn't do it. I just wanted to point out that sadly one jerk will probably try and ruin it for everyone
We should bring back tar and feather punishments or maybe exile, for people who ruin good things so they can benefit more than anyone else
God damn apple stealing whores....
Tragedy of the commons
Opens Apple selling stand across the street.
that just obviously doesn't happen though, my city's full of fruit trees all over and the absolute worst thing that happens is that dumb kids shake down some of the fruit because they're dumb, and you can just.. pick that up..
If the suits who run society find out that people would get this fruit for free, they'd probably make it so that taking this fruit is considered stealing. You'd get a fine, charged with thievery because it's property of the city.
Hear me out; hire a few more municipal employees, care for the trees/pick the fruit, place in "blessing boxes" in public spaces, post office, library, DMV, tax office, town/city hall, worship venues etc? Employees can take what they need too?
Lmao. A box. Someone has no idea the productivity of fruit trees or how long picked fruit will last outside of refrigeration.
I guess not, having grown up with them.
I believe it happened I’ve had many insane conversations with people like this.
Like food banks and people will say well what if people that don’t need it go there. I’m like so what, if 1 in a 1000 abuses a system it doesn’t mean we should make the 999 suffer by removing it.
I only care when a single individual or group picks all of the fruit from the public trees just so that they can sell it down the road and profit from it.
Not sure about this particular conversation, but for extreme capitalists this is a thing. a Robert Heinlein novel is a place for them to start and misunderstand.
The park that I live next to has 3 apple trees (I'm in USA). These are not grocery store apples, they're small and riddle with bugs, this isn't an orchard.
When the apples are ripe, they'll get picked by kids and familes for a couple weeks. Nobody hordes them, nobody sees it as stealing, they're cool, and great for the community.
I'm just sad that they're getting old and about to die. There used to be 5 just a couple years ago. I think they may have planted a couple new saplings, but I'm not an arborist.
Fruit trees typically don't live as long as other trees, that's probably why parks and rec usually don't plant them. Having to replace an apple tree every 25 years as opposed to a Maple, Oak, Sycamore, Pine, Elm, Cedar every 100-200+ years, kinda an easy choice. With that said, I like it, and think it's worth. More parks should have a handful of them.
We're banned from planting fruit-bearing trees in our Florida neighborhood due to pest problems.
This sounds outrageous from outside the state... turns out, it's not. Oh, it is not, you have no idea. Planting those on main street would be a catastrophe.
What I'm saying is this sounds nice in theory, but there are all sorts of knock-on effects that have nothing to do with humans, and you'd have to at the very least tailor it to the local environment and climate.
Maybe its better in like boulder or San Francisco?
Johnny Appleseed would have a word
Johnny Aplleseed only grew apples from seed, so at least 99% of the apples tasted like crap and were only useful for making alcohol.
Because we live in a world where everything is owned by someone and one must profit off of anything they possess or it's considered a wasteful liability.
it is indeed a problem if that response came from your neighbor or some other johnq on the street. 100% expected from a politician though
Usufruct
And then you have old ladies come by to take all the fruit for themselves saying "It's public property bitch!!"
Great when are we eating the pie? I'll bring ice cream
Clearly you've never heard about the "rhubarb lady". Conan even did a sketch about it lol
We used to have loquat trees in the city, it was fine, people could take them to eat but they are small and, while delicious, not a commercial fruit here, mostly seeds. The trees aren't there anymore, there was a redesign of that plaza, but not because there was a rush on the loquats.
Someone was, however, stealing the ducks of the city to sell. Nobody planted them.
Aren't there cherry trees in DC? Or are cherry blossom trees not cherry trees?
From a city planner view point this would never fly because it was attract insects to public spaces.
How dare we have pollinators.
How disgusting! Nature? In my neighborhood? Ugh.
In my city, city planners decided to bring trees that aren't native to our country (sycamore trees), and now we have an invasion of these bugs that bite and stink bugs.
But at least we don't have, god forbid, bees.
Same for any flowers
It's bog standard to have fruit trees and berry bushes in urban areas here in sweden, rowan trees and serviceberry bushes are literally everywhere, and it simply is not a problem. Birds will eat most of it before you even have time to notice the fruit going bad.
Oh I'm sure some European countries have a more ecologically friendly setup than us. I'm speaking from the perspective of US city planners, and I assure you, this is a major consideration for them.
I hope they plan on coming back through and cleaning up all the not used drops. Especially before they all start rotting or animals get drunk on them and run into traffic.
https://land8.com/5-reasons-why-planting-fruit-trees-along-sidewalks-is-a-terrible-idea/
Here is someone trying it but notice they have an entire crew devoted to managing them and their hundreds of lbs of produce weekly. None of this even talks about the logistics of distributing it either.
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/cities-are-planting-trees-why-not-make-them-fruit-trees
No you weren't.
95% of the cost is just time, which I am willing to donate for a better society.
The trees aren't meant to solve homelessness or poverty. They also do more than just feed people. As a whole I think its worth it, and we can also tax the rich to pay for social welfare at the same time.
That's the neat part: community tree is taken care by the community.