Guerrilla Grafters Quietly Grow Fruit on SF Street Trees Using Latest Tech | Hacker News Reader

Guerrilla Grafters Quietly Grow Fruit on SF Street Trees Using Latest Tech

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37 pointsgkop15 comments

Cities don't plant fruit trees because the fallen fruit makes a big mess, attracts rats, etc. Meanwhile, there are plenty of beggars in tropical places where unlimited fruit of all kinds grows everywhere...

Fallen fruit over asphalt is a problem (if not removed) that this guys are creating, this is true. You can easily broke a leg or an arm if you step over an apple or a rotten nashi. You can have a bike accident also. What the woman of the photo is doing will be a problem in four years. (Although racoons will be probably happy to do the cleaning work for us).

Other problem is that this trees lose aesthetic value and health. This can sound silly, but good trees are expensive, and a mishappen tree that only have good flowers in the 50% and with stems that break or touch the soil by the load of the fruit in a narrow street will be chopped.

But if we think a little about it, to have fruit trees in suitable areas is common sense and an ancient culture of sharing that is lost now. Those trees were invaluable life-savers at war times in Europe, for example. The place for fruit trees is in a park, where you just don't care if there is some fruit around the tree, not in a narrow street.

This said, I must admit that I deliberately let some of my fruit trees growing over the wall towards the street because I like the idea of sharing the fruit with other people. Is just that those plants are carefully chosen (only small nuts and berries), and the street is suitable (cars and bikes need to drive slowly in any case). Of course I prune ASAP any too low or too large stem and clean the area from fallen leaves when needed, as with any other shrub, and everybody is happy.

As long as this guys be consistent cleaning under canopies, and prune low or broken stems, they will have much more possibilities of success.

Remember also that fruit in the street should not be treated unless you put a 'warning pesticides' signal somewhere.

You can easily broke a leg or an arm if you step over an apple or a rotten nashi. You can have a bike accident also.

I live on a street where grapes grow freely (as in, not on anyone's private property) and it's neat to see old ladies and birds pick at them. Yeah, a lot of the grapes end up on the ground but it's not a massive problem. In inner city areas you'll find people are already quite good at looking where they're going because the density of humans correlates with the number of dogs and thus the amount of dog shit everywhere.

It also correlates with the number of assholes not looking where they're going who will home-in on you like a heat-seeking missile when their eyes are affixed to the screen of their phone and plow into you if you don't take evasive maneuvers.

Meh, having been to tropical places where fruit grows everywhere, I don't think it's a big deal. Yes it attracted more wildlife (birds, lizards, snakes, the odd monkey and sloth), but it didn't seem to attract beggars. I saw less beggars there than in the wonderful first-world urban frozen wasteland I currently live in...

I for one welcome growing things of value in the city, not just lawns and decorative plants (which the animals - rabbits and deer here - eat anyway but people don't)

The OPs point wasn't that fruit trees attract beggers. It was that in places with abundant fruit trees there are still beggers. The premise of the article is that the people doing this think it is a way to feed the homeless. People begging for money though often aren't doing it so they can buy food despite what their cardboard signs say.

Gotcha. Although I wonder who thinks its a way to feed the homeless... Fruititarian diets aren't particularly great, although fruit makes a good snack and source of vitamins.

Personally, I just see it as a good use of space and something to make residents happy (as a kid I loved picking fruits).

Sure, the homeless can't eat entirely fruit. But if they eat 2 apples per day, that's almost 10% of their daily calorie requirements right there.

Rats in SF don't eat fruit. They eat the cat food people leave out for feral cats.

SF (at least the neighborhood I live in) has a lot of trees that produce fruit I don't recognize. Yes, it makes a terrible mess, but it's pretty neat to see. My home country had limited fruit with only 3 months of summer!

I think the trees are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbutus_unedo

Ah, the joys of trees that produce weird fruit. My favorite is the sperm trees of Los Angeles: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/569/i-want-to-get-m...

In general it is not a good idea to grow vegetables or fruit in urban area's. The pollution from car exhaust gasses makes the crops unhealthy to eat.

Because all the fuss about insecticides and other chemical detergents in the bio industry in the last couple of decades, the food industry has done a lot to ensure that most of the chemicals are gone once the fruits are in the supermarket. Sure, it could still be better. But it is a lot better than a fruit tree that has been sucking up air pollution during its entire life.

Here is some more background: http://www.thewire.com/national/2011/06/ways-urban-gardening...

Fruit trees is a good start. One of my ideas is to grow food on every roof in the city/suburb and use 1/3 of each lot as a well-insulated greenhouse. Then fruit and nut trees in abundant parks.

http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage

Just adding a footnote. I had grafted some trees, and black tape is not good because it promotes root formation, that is not probably what they want here. I will suggest to use a transparent film for this instead.

Another similar submission that got a few comments is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10533975

Reply on news.ycombinator.com