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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.
Athens?
Shelbyville?
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.
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 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.
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
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?
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
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?
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.
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.
Obligatory:
This sounded plausible until she said they poured bleach on the ground. Then it had the smell of bullshit.
People drink bleach to avoid a life saving vaccine.
In this parody of a world we live in I say it is not so far fetched someone would do this.
You just know some asshole would pick all the trees clean and go sell the fruit
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...
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.
Plant enough so they can't make a profit.