Problems

Face = palm

This is the result of a century of propaganda and destruction of public spaces

Plant enough so they can't make a profit.

In the US, probably.

Here in Sweden, there are public fruit trees and bushes, herbs etc. all over the place, and very very rarely does that happen. I live a 15-minute tram ride from the centre of the second-largest city and have within a 10-minute walking distance of my apartment several kinds of plums, cherries, currants, apples, pears, other berries and most common herbs, edible flowers and so on, all in random public places. We also have several "fruit groves" around the city, larger green areas specifically for publicly available fruits and more.

So what

okay, and? plant more trees then, or how superhuman is this dude that they can personally harvest every single tree?

And then cut down the tree.

1491 by Charles Mann. The book everyone should read instead of Guns, Germs and Steel which is a bunch of hooey.

Lemon stealing whore.

I live in Canberra, Australia and we also have an excellent climate for olives and lemons. Apples and practically all citrus also do well and plums and other stone fruit grow like topsi. Figs too.

Deep inland, 600m elevation

We need to protect many of our fruit trees from birds, but not olives, apples, or citrus

Careful. I wouldn't be surprised if people get weird about the origin of said fruit. We both know that those olives in the grocery store come from trees like the one you're talking about. But "I plucked these from wild trees in the park" might not go over all that well.

if that really is such a massive problem (i have never heard of that being a problem ever before, so what if they're sour? just make cider then) just plant something else then, wild plums still taste great.

also like.. you can just plant more trees, you don't need one single tree to feed 500 people, there is a depressing amount of completely unused space in most urban areas which you can just fill with fruit-bearing plants.

If you want to maximize production, yeah, you cut at certain times of the year to force the trees to put as much energy into the fruit as possible. But if you just leave them outside they will fruit as long as they are sufficiently watered and have enough room to grow (and it's not insanely stressed from a drought or heat wave, etc). There might not be as many fruits, and they might be smaller, but it will produce. But ideally you always want to choose fruit or nut trees that are native to your region (or at least your agricultural zone) so that they require less upkeep in general.

We had a lot of berry bushes at the side of the road in my hometown. Trees were often apple or Japanese cherry blossom trees. And of course the local chestnut tree made up a lot of them. Wich are also delicious. All of them bore fruit and nuts and we loved picking the stuf.

Public works departments already deal with a lot of bullshit from the builder's special trees that are already installed, managing permaculture forests would actually be easier in many ways. Portland Oregon handles this by making homeowners responsible for the sidewalk easement so they are encouraged to plant trees that don't get too tall and don't get too wide with their roots so the sidewalk doesn't buckle. So you get people planting a lot of fruit trees. There is a Gleaning group there that goes and gathers ripe fruit and does stuff with it like applesauce, or there is also a cider made by Portland Cider Company with juices from gleaned fruit they get off people's trees around town. It's pretty good cider.

Sturdy trees are good in the city, since they are low upkeep and very good for air quality and shade.

Sturdy trees WOULD be good for the city, yeah. Unfortunately we've decided to, in basically every major city (at least here in NA and I suspect other places), plant non-native trees that have low survival rates and are basically all male. Being male, they tend to also shit pollen basically everywhere. I'd imagine you could deal with the fruit falling to the ground in a number of ways, as well. Could put some canopy underneath the fruiting trees, as to collect the fruit more easily, you could just pay people to come and collect enough of the fruit for use in things like applesauce that the rest of the fruit really presents no issue as far as just sort of rotting and draining into the ground. You could set up a bunch of easy disposal compost boxes every couple feet, so you can just sweep all the fruit up and throw it into that.

I suspect a larger problem would probably be that inside of the city the fruit would be exposed to more than an acceptable amount of brake dust, including that which drains into the planter box, and would maybe not get enough light, but I think those are generally problems we should be solving anyways since they don't disappear just because we decide not to plant fruit trees. Brake dust on the fruit or carcinogens inside the fruit means that those things are also going to be going into your lungs.

I think it's a combination of the effort required and sadly the liability too. I would imagine anyone who is saying "feel free to come eat this food" is exposing themselves to lawsuits, to some degree. The kinds of organizations who are large enough to make a big impact by deciding to grow some food on their properties are the same ones who'd be targeted by frivolous lawsuits, costing money just to defend against, and offering the orgs no tangible benefit in return.

To be clear, I don't agree with structuring things this way and I think it's a trash way for our society to work, but growing food in "public" places seems non-viable without addressing that big vulnerability somehow.

trees don't need much of anything, they're perfectly capable of growing on their own. I can't imagine they prune any of the fruit trees in my city (beyond like, removing big damaged branches and stuff that just applies to literally any tree in an urban area) and they produce fruit just fine.

Fruit falling to the ground isn't particularly problematic either, like yeah it rots and stuff but.. okay? who cares? it's gone within like a week and if people are really so unable to handle the reality of food then they can toss it in the compost.

No-good lazy workshy people stealing food from hardworking wasps 🤬🤬🤬🤬

Fallen bananas are slippery.

I thought they were banned to prevent free food and thus discouraged homeless people.

It's worth keeping in mind though, if you want to feed people: we can just do that, we have the food and we have the infrastructure. Every person going hungry in a city with edible food in bins, produce discarded for not looking right and so on is going hungry because of policy decisions.

It is cheaper, healthier, and more successful to just distribute the food we already grow, make and transport than trying to turn everything into an orchid.

It's not terrible, but it's also not great. Fruit trees by their nature produce just mountains of fruit for a single tree. I came from a large farming family and we had a few fruit trees. So much of it ends up on the ground and rotting (which, not so bad since it was in a field, a nightmare if it were in the suburbs).

If you really want one, you NEED to maintain the tree. That means cutting branches to make sure the tree doesn't grow up and instead grows out. It also means constant maintenance to make sure branches aren't overloaded (growing out means they have a higher risk of breaking).

Regular trees are already a PITA to take properly maintain, fruit trees are another level.

And even with all that, you'll still end up with a bunch of rotting fruit on the ground. Birds, insects, etc will nibble at your fruits. You'll simply miss the 50 fruit the ripened early or late. It's just going to be a headache no matter what you do.

And it's a lot of fruit. 1 tree can easily make enough fruit for 20 people. That comes in all at once.

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.

Then I say we enforce the social contract of "don't be a fucking asshole", with force if needed.

Reminds me of a video I saw of a lady taking all the books from a “little library” someone has in front of their house. The lady thought free books to sell, but didn’t care it’s a “library” means check out books or trade books.

Somehow that simply doesn't happen in any place with public fruit trees

Also. Hemp

ironically i think this is technically not covered by nordic "right to roam" as that says you should avoid areas near housing, however if anyone tries to raise a stink about people picking fruits from public trees then everyone is going to tell them to shut up and stop being a miserable idiot.

Literally the fruits in this case.

It's only a tragedy if allowing "first come, first served" until the resource is completely exhausted is actually a problematic outcome. For urban fruit trees intentionally planted for the public, I'd argue that that isn't the case.