
Guerrilla Grafters Quietly Grow Fruit on SF Street Trees Using Latest Tech - gkop
http://hoodline.com/2015/12/guerrilla-grafters-quietly-grow-fruit-on-city-trees-using-latest-tech
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beefman
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...

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pvaldes
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.

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pvaldes
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.

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ilaksh
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](http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage)

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pvaldes
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.

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

