Posted on 10/14/2012 9:00:22 AM PDT by Donkey Odious
In South Florida, in non gated neighborhoods some people felt it would be nice to have a mango or other fruit tree in their front yard.
As we had an increase in less than desirable demographics, you'd witness cars parking in front of said neighbors yards where the fruit trees were. The next time the owners saw those trees, they were stripped bare.
Odds are they fruit was sold at a flea market or other open market shortly after.
Expect a booming street vendor/market industry.
Ping to Garden List requested by Black Agnes.
Absolutely not! The downtrodden,homeless,vagrants and the "homies" will certainly participate in the planting, watering, harvesting and maintainence of Uncle Barry's Farm.
What could go wrong?
Homeless people don’t want fruits and nuts. They want $ for cigarettes, dope, booze and McDonalds.
Well, I used to live in a city that had purple leaf plums planted as street trees. By the time I got there, most of them were gone, but the few that were left were always host to gangs of small boys climbing to get the fruit. The city will be sued the first time one of them falls out of the tree and cracks his head on the sidewalk.
Why don’t you just shut up.
Nice. I wish you a happy life : )
The city here planted olive trees.
When the olives do not get picked, they create lovely slimy black spots all over the sidewalks, not to mention being a walking hazard with the pits and slime.
Unintended consequences - what liberals everywhere create.
The city here planted olive trees.
When the olives do not get picked, they create lovely slimy black spots all over the sidewalks, not to mention being a walking hazard with the pits and slime.
Unintended consequences - what liberals everywhere create.
The city here planted olive trees.
When the olives do not get picked, they create lovely slimy black spots all over the sidewalks, not to mention being a walking hazard with the pits and slime.
Unintended consequences - what liberals everywhere create.
Same to you.
This is a very bad idea in so many ways. I suppose they envision hippies running
around naked, picking fruit off the tress in a delightful bliss and skipping down the road.
Franky, I would make use of such resources if I were living in the city but sooner of later there will be harvesting conflicts and fights (i.e.; ‘I was here first’), vandalism and the inevitable regulatory/permitting process for citizens to be allowed to use this resource. There will also be the likely fruit picker-thrower teenage twerps.
Finally, clever immigrants will make effective use of the fruits and nuts once they adapt to them in their diets. In my old area, the Hmong had admirable harvesting skills and often found themselves in conflict with the law. This aspect is tailor made for bigotry and any conflict there will fuel the press and gub’mint types with outrage over our cultural hatred for the poor and oppressed and the dire need to oppress the rest of us, too.
On the whole, though, I'd say it's a good idea if they can care for the tender and delicate fruit trees with all the clods pawing them and damaging their branches, spurs and bark.
But the homeless will stay away due to the treacherous walking conditions on sidewalks all broken up by tree roots.
haha
Free range is making money because of the added value of appeasing one’s conscious that the cows were happily grazing up until their slaughter.
Taste tests confirm (at least with me) that grass fed has far less flavor than corn fed.
But sacrificing flavor for peace of mind is apparently good enough for certain segments of the cattle industry to make a go of it.
Some whiners are going to complain of the extra bird droppings on their cars.
Some whiners are going to complain when more nesting activity brings on aggressive bird strikes as nesting pairs defend their chosen nesting sites from passerby.
Fruit trees, except for wild varieties, need to be tended and pruned and often need fruit thinned for their own well-being, and in my experience if something does not belong to someone that work will not be done, so they may end up with a bunch of cross-limbed trees with fungal infections, or with limbs broken from too heavy a fruit load.
If the fruit goes unharvested and falls onto the ground there is going to be a bigger rat population if someone doesn’t clean it up, and when time comes to clean it up people are going to say, “It’s not MY tree.”
If there are young boys in the neighborhood unripened fruit and nuts will be picked and used as missiles, so there may be window damage and injuries and such.
If the fruit by some miracle makes it to maturity, the tree you’ve been watering and caring for because it is nearby will be mobbed by people who didn’t water and care for it who will get the fruit before you do.
There will be more nocturnal visitations by forest critters, including coyotes, who eat fruit and housepets.
There will be a squirrel population explosion, and squirrels while cute, squirrels eat birds, bird eggs, ripe fruit, unripe fruit, and nuts; often they will tear into fruit just for the seeds leaving a huge wasteful mess, or will carry it and drop it in unwanted places.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of having fruit and nut trees planted all over the place...and will happily clean up the associated debris, but I know a lot of people who are too lazy, or people who won’t be happy at all and they tend to be the whiniest most annoying people around.
I’ve enjoyed great pie cherries and crabapples from abandoned orchards in St. Louis and from people tired of tending their trees who light up whenever someone shows an interest in their trees and is willing to pick the fruit so they don’t have to. And wild persimmons and pawpaws were always abundant but so were the resulting well-fed ‘possums.
I worked at a park years ago that had heirloom fruit trees and gardens which we tended all year with the intention of holding a fall festival with old time apple butter making, tastings, etc., for the public to share. It was a wonderful idea except for the fact that there are just enough people in the country who think that because a plant is on state property that the fruit and vegetables grown there belong to them personally. Several times we caught people with bushel baskets getting ready to help themselves [and only themselves] to the bounty, but eventually some individuals learned to come at night to steal it when we were away. Even had one jerk who killed our kingsnake and was indignant when caught, as if he had done the world a favor.
Urban Shared Space = Tragedy of the Commons
Without some "ownership" involved it will likely be more costly than it is worth.
And there is another problem with it in that it will hurt farmers who do tend their orchards and who do have to put up with EPA and USDA rules to bring produce to market, because how can they compete with "free?" Years ago the US "helped" Haiti by bringing in tons of free rice. We were actually helping the rice farmer lobby in the states. But we wiped out Haitian rice farmers who could not sell their rice when the market was flooded with free aid rice.
Yes. Lots. Now the birds gobbled up all the ones on my domestic cherry tree... often just eating the half that was ripe. Problem with wild cherry is not so much the fruit but in how high off the ground it is- black cherry gets huge.
Or a wild hickory?
Absolutely... that's the only way to get hickory nuts. I have yet to find a domestic hickory orchard and they are my favorite, especially the really GIANT, really buttery ones that grow in the bootheel of Missouri and in S Illinois on the river bottoms, the ones that are even bigger than standard shagbarks. Of course, we also had to eat a lot of squirrel to make sure we'd have some.
Wild pecans, too... and black walnuts, profusely. Hazelnuts too though the squirrels seemed to get allmost all of those.
They will get fruit and nuts and plenty of them but they being urban will also get rats. Obviously the harvest would be better if tended, but in Il and Mo those species outdo themselves, because they are true natives.
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