Gleaning, Wildcrafting, and Cache Gardening

[talon]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/16/AR2009111601598.html?hpid=topnews

Last spring, because I was not able to continue my Sandwich Saturdays program (lack of vehicle, physical injuries), I switched to guerrilla gardening and teaching wildcrafting. The teaching the wildcrafting is a harder sell than I expected - too many people have been taught that food comes from stores and put of boxes or tins and not from plants. This is especially true of the hungriest people. I'm not quite sure of the forces behind this flawed reasoning and the resistance to finding and picking your own food. Until I do, that part may not be useful.

But I did plant hundreds of edible seeds and had the pleasure of seeing most of them sprout and grow in vacant and accessible places. I did get some people to harvest and eat them. I am making a small dent in the hunger problem. A very small dent.

I hope that dent will grow. I am devising ways to get both the seeds and the word out to more people. Guerrilla gardening isn't the answer to hunger, but it can certainly be one of many answers to it.

Guerrilla gardening is simple: mix a few seeds into a rich growing medium (I pack mine into egg shell halves, then tie shut with a bit of raffia) and lob the "seed bombs" into areas where you think they will grow. They won't have ideal growing conditions and won't get regular watering. They certainly won't be as fruitful as they would be pampered in a vegetable garden, but they will grow and will produce some food - and they'll set seed and grow again next year. Almost any edible will work - including tubers like potatoes. One potato "eye" will fit into one egg shell, packed with compost. There won't be a lot of potatoes, but there'll be some. One potato plant I lobbed this was produced only 6 potatoes from the plant, but if we leave those six potatoes alone, next year, there should be enough potatoes to make several hearty meals. Most of the beefsteak tomatoes I lobbed didn't sprout, but almost all the cherry tomatoes did and they grabbed onto nearby trees and bushes and produced tiny globes of red or yellow tomatoes. The yellow pear heirloom tomatoes did the best and survived the insanely high summer temperatures we had this year. Radishes, lettuces, and carrots popped up in secret places. The squashes and pumpkins spread out to make ground covers in some places. I picked places that didn't get mowed regularly (or at all, in some cases), and places where we could get to them easily living in a mostly urban/suburban environment.

Virtually untouched this year, they will be more bountiful next year. And of course, I'll be lobbing more seed bombs. I'd like to see edible plants growing freely and unbound all through the landscape, freely available to those who are hungry.

I was shocked to learn that gleaning was a crime in California. Gleaning is what people do after the owner of the field or crop has harvested. The gleanings are the left-overs, the produce that was missed by the harvesting machines and people, the fruits the fell off, and the under or over-ripe foods deliberately left behind. It's not the best of the crop, and it's often in need of immediate eating or processing. It's bruised, damaged, broken, but still edible. And in California, it's a crime to collect it.

Gleaning is allowed in Oklahoma, but most of the gleaning has been taken over by a few charities, and those charities are jealous of their gleaning privileges. I suppose the hungry could go out and glean from whatever the charities leave behind.

It's theft to collect any produce before the owner does his/her harvest. That's not "gleaning".

Wildcrafting is also acceptable, but there are restricted areas, unsafe areas, and plants on the endangered and threatened lists which cannot be harvested under any circumstances. Roadsides, for example, where cities and highway departments heavily spray herbicides and pesticides, are totally unsafe for wildcrafting. Some public parks prohibit wildcrafting. Some private landowners consider wildcrafters to be trespassers, making those lands unsuitable for wildcrafting. But everywhere else is OK.

I haven't looked up the gleaning and wildcrafting laws in other states than Oklahoma and discovered the California gleaning stance entirely by accident, so if you want to engage in gleaning or wildcrafting (or guerrilla gardening for planned wildcrafting), you need to know the laws in your state concerning them.

Next to potable water and breathable air, food is important for our survival. Guerrilla gardening, also known as cache gardening, is one of many ways to insure there is a growing food supply.