Problems

Obligatory:

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.

"‘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

Just a bafflingly dumb response to such an obviously great thing to do.

You just know some asshole would pick all the trees clean and go sell the fruit

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.

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.

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)

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.

"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.

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!

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.

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.

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 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”

I put on a vest and plant clones of apple trees in public parks

We should put public roads in our city.

Why, so people can just trespass everywhere?

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

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.

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

We need to re-think our relationship with property.

There will be atleast 1 asshole trying to take all the aplles fer themselves. I guarantee it

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.

Permanently Deleted

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

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.

And then you have old ladies come by to take all the fruit for themselves saying "It's public property bitch!!"

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

Unfortunately, we have bears around my parts. And bears like the fruit too, driving human bear conflict. Which means the bears are killed. 🐻 :(

From a city planner view point this would never fly because it was attract insects to public spaces.

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.

it costs money to take care of trees like that. There's a lot of work you need to do to make sure the fruit comes out the correct way.