EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
04.10.12 - 11:07 AM
Guerrilla Grafters: Undoing Civilization One Fruitless Branch At A Time
Disdaining the notion of both fruitless fruit trees and "fresh" produce shipped from afar and wrapped in plastic, the San Francisco-based Guerrilla Grafters graft fruit-bearing branches onto the city's ornamental cherry, plum and pear trees to create a "culture of care" - and fruit for all. Illegal, but tasty.
Comments are closed
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
26 Comments so far
Show AllI don't agree with this practice.
Are they willing to prop up these branches when the fruit proves to heavy for the branch to support itself? Will they repair the tree when broken branches encroach upon the health of the tree? Will they pick up the fallen fruit that is not harvested? Do they provide the water or fertilizer for these trees to bear fruit? Are they willing to eat the fruit which may routinely be sprayed with pesticides by the municipality or which become pest infested because they are not sprayed? Are they not engaged in genetically altering these trees from their intended purpose?
Are they prepared to pay the medical bills of people who may be injured by slipping on fallen fruit in areas that are designed for public traffic rather than farming?
A lot of thought and planning goes into the establishment of public spaces and parks.
It would be preferable to get our city planners to plant fruit bearing trees, or to graft fruit bearing branches on hardy city tree trunks. But considering the dire state of the climate and of food, and our weaknesses when it comes to money and influence with politicians, I welcome the work of these lovely young people. Best wishes for them, and for the trees.
I can't speak for these folks but the guerilla gardeners I know do revisit and tend their plantings.
This practice in no way alters the genetics of the tree. Grafting fruit-bearing branches is a technique which has been around for some time now.
Questions about pesticides should be taken to the municipality.
People are capable of looking where they are walking, aren't they?
In a country where a few thousand people hold 99% of the wealth and there are millions malnourished and going hungry, this is an idea whose time has come.
The scion wood is genetically different from the hoststock and current studies have proven that the horizontal transfer of genetic material does occur.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/23/1114076109.abstract
The rest of what you say is not worthy of a response, except to say what these people are doing amounts to nothing more than horticultural graffiti.
Well, so far, you are the only person in this discussion who opposes the idea. You are also the only person here talking about property rights, while others are talking about hunger. Interesting.
Adhering to the status quo only gets you more of the same.
Grafting does not alter the gene pool. Your attempt to discredit this idea with science has failed.
Yes, guerilla gardening and graffiti are similar in that they are both acts of public expression that are frowned upon by TPTB. That fact discredits neither activity.
The idea being presented; that local production of food stuffs needs to be implemented as to lessen the fossil fuels impact of big agriculture, is a good one.
That can be accomplished by growing your own on your own property in pots or in the ground. It can even be done in dorm rooms and apartments. To surreptiously modify someone else's property is wrong, and won't in any effective way lessen the use of fossil fuels or impact big agriculture. Attention grabbing it may be, but it's not a productive use of resources or effort.
Petitioning their local government for communal gardening space would be much more beneficial. But most communal garden agreements come with a stipulation that someone needs to maintain them. I am thinking these young "guerillas" are more interested in short term celebrity than long term results.
There are many people who do not have "their own property" or even a room or a balcony.
Additionally, fruit trees are lovely, sour grapes notwithstanding.
The people in the picture don't look homeless to me.
I agree fruit tress are lovely, so are flowering trees and each has its place in the world.
Where, on a Monsanto seeded corporate farm?
You are just upset because you realize they are planting an idea of collective ownership of food production in public spaces... which is much more dangerous than any single "productive use of resources or effort." as you put it.
They are not modifying 'someone else's property'. It is PUBLIC property...that is...OUR PROPERTY. This is a great idea and I hope more people will take responsibility for improving our world instead of waiting for others, i.e. elected officials, to take care of everything.
'Guerilla gardening' has been around for decades. I personally know people who use 'seed-bombs' to reintroduce native species to commercialized spaces like golf courses and Corporate campus lawns
On a similar note, we just had some very commercially valuable land legally removed from the developers grasp, and the backers of this project are converting it back into productive urban farmland and public access orchard. Vancouver also has a diversity of 'guerilla gardening' plots in abandoned lots.
And I keep getting the impression that poster 'gardenernorcal' probably has ties to the industrial farming industry. S/He seems to be very invested in maintaining the Corporate-driven status quo.
You would be wrong. I've done landscaping, nursery work and some harvesting work when times were tight and I couldn't find anything else. I hardly see how that can be construed as supporting the corporate status quo.
I just object to some idly dabbling and affecting the property of others for laughs and street cred. Have you ever considered how much extra work those seed bombs made for the groundskeepers at those golfcourses and corporate campuses. It didn't effect cushy lifestyles of the golfers or executives, it just made that poor minimum wage employees life harder.
It's like student vandals at schools tearing up school bathrooms. It does nothing but make the bathrooms unusable and the janitors lives hell. It doesn't stick it to the teachers or schoolboards.
Thank you for demonstrating my point.
If you had actually been paying attention, you would have seen that the seed-bombs were to reintroduce NATIVE plant species that had been forced out by monocultures produced by the companies OWNED by the country club set, who EXPLOIT the minimum wage workers you pretend to give a damn about.
And what do you call natural propagation of plant species in the wild? There are no human hands involved, and species adapt to their environment in a total chance-driven crapshoot.
Your throwaway comment "affecting the property of others" demonstrates EXACTLY where you put your values. Those are PUBLIC plants/trees bought with PUBLIC FUNDS, ie TAX MONEY paid by the commons. If the member of the PUBLIC decide they want productive fruit trees instead of ornamental crap that consumes resources without benefit to the community as a whole, isn't that democracy in action?
Great idea! I hope it takes off.
I would like to see fruit and nut trees planted along the highways instead of just ornamentals. States spend a lot of money to mow highway grass, trim trees and pick up trash along the sides. They could profit from picking up tree produce and selling it, by making alcohol, or they could just give it away. In fact, anyone could. Makes me wonder why it is not done. But I guess Big Agro doesn't want people to have free food, like Big Pharma doesn't want people to have free medical pot.
No chemicals are needed. I let squirrels, coons, possums and birds have some avocados from my tree and they always leave enough for family and friends. The more produce in the neighborhood trees, the more is left for us after sharing with wildlife, the way nature intended.
The One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSKSxLHMv9k
Seems that anything that benefits someone else or doesn't conform is "illegal". Law is the codification of the fears of the existing culture, and leaves no room for change and growth. Nature abhors stasis, so where does that leave humanity?
People are against this? Their are no hungry people is the US? Some municipalities are actually creating edible food forests with our tax money.
"This adopt-a-tree model is similar to San Francisco’s own Tree Maintenance Transfer Plan, through which property owners can adopt the trees outside their home or storefront. The Department of Public Works hopes to put some 20,000 city trees up for adoption." (from "illegal" link)
Instead of being "guerrillas" why not volunteer to help property owners care for their trees upfront. Some I am sure would agree to grafting. Would that not be glamous or revolutionary enough to spur enthusiasm?
There are people who do that. It's not an either/or proposition. There are many ways to democratize food, to feed the hungry, and to make our towns and cities more beautiful.
Why do so many of your posts stress the concept of ownership? You must realize that everything is on loan. Every molecule in "your" body will soon become something else, and the concept of ownership is actually quite absurd. We are each here for a short time. If we spend that time guarding our stuff, rather than serving the common good, we miss out on a lot.
I like this idea, for a whole variety of reasons, but notably because it's culture jamming. It introduces to the viewing public about horticulture, alternative public space use, and local community diversity of needs. We have mostly hidden fruit trees in our front yard, but also have traditional ornamentals too. The neighborhood "culture" prevents too much experimentation on this front unfortunately (blowback ensues.) But that's what makes this effort "guerrilla" right? And over time, conversations, and public and even private landscapes, will adopt and include a new landscape culture. Brilliant and love it.
Compared to other types of trees, fruit trees require considerable, ongoing, yearly maintenance to realize a harvestable crop. At least a dozen or so spray applications per growing season are needed to control diseases and insect pests and to provide supplemental nutrition. Trees need to be pruned at least once per year to create and maintain a branching structure that is conducive to produce a good crop. Soil needs to be properly amended and managed. Fruits need to be thinned early in the season each year.
Without this care, the amount and quality of the fruit will fall somewhere between highly compromised and unusable.
There's a lot of truth in that. America spends a lot of time and money mowing, pruning, fertilizing, raking, watering and caring for ornamentals. It is time that could be spent taking care of fruit trees in yards, roadways, parks, etc.. But even if with minimal care, some produce can still be had.
If there's any such plan for managing the guerilla-grafted trees, it's not evident. It takes time, money, a lot of work and planning to get usable tree fruit. Trees have to be located in places where they are accessible to manage, where overspray won't fall on vehicles, people, buildings, etc. Trained people licensed to apply pesticides (even "organic" ones) are needed. It's much more expensive than maintaining "traditional" landscapes.
Why not work with municipalities or private property owners to plan to do this in appropriate sites? It doesn't appear that randomly grafting existing trees without any follow-on plan will produce anything useful.
Arguably, our ancestors, who developed fruit trees (and all crops) in the first place, did so with 'public property' and without spraying. Countless generations of humans enjoyed tree fruits without spraying, and once they began treating against insects, they probably used natural substances. I would guess that use of strong chemicals on our food is is the result of Bernaysian propaganda. Objections to such a positive activism on the part of our S.F. brethren is strange.
You seem anxious to conflate concern with the likely results from the lack of proper care with "opposition." By the tone and content of your comments, i'm guessing that you have little or no experience actually growing tree fruit.
Obviously ancient peoples did not have access to anything resembling modern pesticides, but, in the earliest cases, food plants were generally utilized in the areas where they were indigenous. Pests and diseases were somewhat kept in check by the natural, co-evolved dynamics of the local ecosystem. Most sources agree that apples originated in central Asia.
Once plants are moved from their indigenous region and grown elsewhere, they are subject to an entirely different set of potential pests and diseases. Plus, new pest species are constantly introduced, further complicating successful cultivation.
Early apples and other, currently cultivated fruits bear little resemblance to their original ancestors. Apples were small, tart, and hard. Hundreds of years of breeding have produced the varieties we know today, but this development would not have been possible without synthetic pesticides. The earliest pest control efforts were mostly manual—killing insects by hand. There was little or no effective disease control; crop losses sometimes reached 100% (think Irish potato famine).
The earliest pesticides were often horrid materials, applied with no knowledge of or regard for unintended health (toxicity) effects. Materials have improved, but commercial, non-organic growers still often use products which have questionable environmental and health profiles.
Most fruit can be grown without these materials, but the "organic" controls—even many of the certified organic ones—need to be applied more frequently, thus increasing the time and cost involved. And one still needs to have the proper credentials to apply many of these "organic" materials.
What I find saddening is that someone named Mohammed Nurus expresses a bureaucratic objection rather than support. His ancestors at least, if not also he, came from a culture where fruit and nut trees and bushes in public space are cherished for the scents and food they provide everyone in season.
The town of Khan Yunus in Gaza was celebrated by travellers in the 19th century for the almost sense-stunning riot of aromas and color from the fruit and nut trees growing in every street and courtyard.