Interesting concept. I reckon the Royal Botanical Gardens and Albert Park is fair game for some gardening! :D We could divert the yarra river by night and irrigate the crops.

I can't imagine who would do such things.

Just think of the potential productivity of the highway median strips.Irrigated by runoff from the bitumen.Very accessible - just watch out for the B-Doubles.

Gav,
In some Adelaide parks there are olive trees that are harvested on a regular basis. I can see a problem with trees that are on median strips with harvesters being run over.
Many opportunities in suburban streets. If trees are pruned so that fruit is out of reach this would keep the shade tree value and allow more organized harvesting ( preventing some early picking). Best to have fruits that stay on the tree or can be picked green to avoid messy fruit drop.

I'm more of a guerrilla bush regener than a guerrilla gardener. I find uncared for weed-infested Council land, spray the weeds, plant natives and follow up every few months. If you choose the right trees you'll have native forest in a few short years. Its very satisfying, especially when you get some natural regen happening ... and just think about all that carbon being sequestered away!

Excellent that someone should draw attention to this on here. I do believe a lot of 'crash-mitigation' can be done through growing food everywhere (although I realise the caloric difference between an acre of wheat and a fruiting bush next to the road are huge).

Two corrections to the article: the earliest known guerilla gardener (not counting horticulturalism throughout the ages), was Gerrard Winstanley, who is commemorated right outside the Kremlin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrard_Winstanley

And most guerilla gardeners do NOT concern themselves with planting fruit and vegetables! Most are in it for the beautification aspect, though a significant portion, like me, genuinely love the idea of growing food in the city.
For a representative sample of what guerilla gardeners are up to, check out http://guerillagardening.org
They have pictures, and their forums are full of enthousiasts.

Guerilla gardening, like starting to grow crops for the first time, can be very rewarding or unrewarding, depending on your attitude, knowledge, experience and luck (but mostly attitude!). For example, I've grown lettuces alongside a busy intersection nearby. Several neat rows grows in the grass. But I've also planted several types of seed in various places, that didn't do much of anything. I've sown flowering bulbs along trees in front of my house, that each year come up, but get cut under by the greenery maintenance men, who weed around the trees with hoes.

But it's very rewarding in the sense of being a learning experience. I've found out there's lots of open space around my area, including barren industrial plots. I've learned most good land is either well maintained, or has tall weeds growing on it, and that the open spaces usually mean crappy sandy soil. Making a piece of land ready to be built on usually involves dumping a layer of sand on it here in Rotterdam, which makes a great many open spaces very marginal. I've also learned that buried but unprotected nuts and avocado seeds will be dug up and eaten by rats, and that raising seedlings instead takes a lot of space and effort, and is no guarantee for succes.

But I persevere, because with every failure I learn something, preparing me for potential agricultural work despite not having any land to cultivate of my own.

This summer I'm going to try and grow more vegetables along the roadside, and some date-palms next to the parking lot behind the trainstation. It's sandy and dry there, and they should be hardy to the dutch climate in those conditions. Even if there's no hope of them growing any dates, it's going to be fun to try.

Sidenote: not sure eating leafy vegetables grown next to the road is a safe proposition. Anyone know what is safe to eat and what not, when grown in a polluted environment?

Where will the soil come from? I don't live in the suburbs - I live in farm country - but without my horses (and all the off-farm inputs brought into make them into 'compost-machines', I couldn't grow much here.. IOW, guerilla gardening is going to need a large 'capital investment' of soil to get to a level that reasonably can renew itself from it's own waste.

The easiest and first step in guerilla gardening is to colonize the 'parkway' in front of your house if you live in the city, the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street.

I just built a 6'x6' raised bed in front of our house in Hollywood and used layers of steer manure/newspaper/compost/soil/mulch to prepare it for planting. I'll probably just leave it sitting there for a couple months for everything to sink into the soil before I plant anything in it.

Here's a good link http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/769

Here in LA the city govt is pretty lax so we can get away with this, in some of the more uptight suburbs the homeowner's associations might get upset with you I guess, that will change in time I imagine though.

I'm trying to decide what to plant out there, at least one great big artichoke and perhaps a few 6' tall amaranth plants would be fun...probably tomatoes beans and squash too altho I will run out of room quickly. Fortunately there is more parkway to colonize all around the house...

One note of caution - old railway corridors and former industrial sites may be contaminated. Railways used arsenic herbicides quite heavily. Roadside areas might have lead and/or heavy hydrocarbon contamination. Get your garden soil tested!

Thanks for the post Big Gav.

Thanks for mentioning Gerrard Winstanley, Egregius. I'd heard about him before, but only recently was I able to get a copy of the movie "Winstanley" (1975) from Netflix. It's a low-key, haunting piece by Kevin Brownlow. I think he is a key figure for the beginning of a lot of movements (Quakers, Dissenters, agrarian reformers, communists, socialists, English radicals).

Nate Hagens wrote:

guerilla gardening is going to need a large 'capital investment' of soil to get to a level that reasonably can renew itself from it's own waste.

Important issue!

The bulk of our food will continue to be brought from rural areas into cities. The problem is that food leftovers and human urine/excrement mostly go to waste right now - e.g. landfills and sewer treatement. All those wonderful nutrients buried or flushed out to sea!

Hopefully as a society we'll become smarter about recycling nutrients.

In the meantime, individual households can create vermicompost by putting food scraps and paper into worm bins. (Easier than regular compost piles in my opinion.) More adventurous types can also use urine (either composted or diluted).

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Hey y'all

A word of caution... was engaged in some late night food planting activities on a piece of vacant land last month with some fellow conspirators, beans corn and pumpkins. Couldn't for the life of us work out why such a prime piece of growing land was abandoned in the centre of an expensive suburb? It turns out that the land is seriously contaminated due to some questionable industrial activities in years gone by.... (timber treatment amongst other delights)

Beans are growing well though, just don't think we'll be eating them! May have to strip the plants so some unsuspecting forager doesn't end up ingesting dioxions..

Targeting abandoned houses and house lots now, much less chance of nasties in the soil. Results are so far patchy, but good for set and forget gardening I reckon...

Cheers,

Ben.

My interest with regard to my small town would be along the margins of public lands, utility right of ways, etc. The typical situation here is that nothing has been planted in any sort of deliberate way, but neither has anything been cut down unless it becomes a hazard (trees leaning over a roadway after a storm, for example). Very laissez faire, in other words.

What I would like to do is to sneak in some seedlings of native nut trees like Black Walnuts, and some of the larger native fruit trees like Persimmons. These should thrive in such an environment of total neglect, and will eventually (beyond my lifetime, unfortunately) reach bearing size. They will be a good asset for the local community. People don't tend to plant these in their yards, because they are large trees -- too large for the typical residential lot, and because it is unlikely that they will harvest anything during their term of residency. Thus, these magnificent, valuable old trees are slowly disappearing from our landscape. Planting them would be a particularly worthwhile project.

Reading the Nate Hagens article on renewable ammonia it stuck me that we will not be able to grow enough dryland crops several hours drive out of the cities. The combination of PO and GW means
- less energy embodied in material inputs
- less effort by machines
- greater seasonal rainfall variation
Perhaps add to that a general reluctance of young people to take up broadacre farming. Therefore suburban food production though not of the guerilla form will have to make up for the inevitable shortfalls of remote farming.

One approach that may solve these issues and perhaps that of contaminated soil is farming by gantry systems over raised beds. A Melbourne area nursery system is
http://www.boomaroo.com/tour.php
Simpler uncovered systems might even be able to speed grow wheat and corn in the suburban fringes. The advantages are less tractor fuel, fertiliser, water and labour. Some of these inputs as well as artificial soil could be derived from sewage. The killer is high capital cost. I think a State government should allow a private operator to set up a trial farm in a failed suburb and give them a break from state and local laws and charges. Ideally the site should be on a transport corridor with a beeline to the city markets.

There are at least 25 different edible "wild" plants that can be found in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. I have picked blackberries until I was (almost) sick of them.

Ginger, miners' lettuce, bay leaves, rosemary, and many others are free for the taking (outside of the Botanical Gardens, at least) in the more wild areas. I have rarely seen anyone else picking, even at the top of the blackberry season.

While not the suburbs, I’ve been planting the tree lines and fence lines in and around my very rural property with herbs, Jerusalem artichoke, fruit bushes and trees. Asparagus particularly likes the old fence lines. I’ve got a new batch of elderberries, paw paws, aronia, persimmon, and sea buckthorn stratifying in the fridge for next spring’s planting. Once in they grow wild. The sea buckthorn are an excellent erosion control plant and produce fruit very high in vitamin c. I’ve also re-introduced native species, such as ramps (wild leak) in my forest and the adjacent woodlands . Don’t forget mushrooms. I grow shitake, bolete, and oyster mushrooms on my property; spores travel widely, so these mushrooms should start appearing elsewhere. By using adjacent properties which have untended sections I could possibly expand my growing area tenfold. The irony is what is growing in the area wild is ignored, except for American ginseng, which the locals will drive to extinction shortly because of the high prices paid by Asian customers.

Good post.. I'd recommend people stock up on propane instead of charcoal, but be careful for obvious reasons. I'm investigating solar cookers as well.. seems like the most sane of alternatives...

I'm noticing a fork in the road between media types. On business channels the suits talk about building new highways and coal trains. Maybe that train already left and they should have been on it. In the public media not only does TOD regularly discuss food localisation but the BBC talks of a major rethink on food. The Australian ABC just ran a show on primary/grade school kids growing and preparing their own lunches. They said they had to put together a show on home food growing due to popular demand. Time will tell how the ABC's UK imported show hosted by Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall will rate with its greater emphasis on meat. The local paper has a two page spread on 2008 as The Year of the Potato particularly on the reduced need for inputs.

All of this says some of the stimulus money should go on helping set up community gardens or other forms of urban food production. That help should be a one-off for materials. If the locals can't get it to work then leave it idle until others can.

wood vinegar from production of charcoal or biochar

wood vinegar, pyroligneous acid, cas 8030-97-5
stcc 4910428

vinegar is pesticide, in sufficient strength herbicide.
could it be considered over plastic mulch ?

http://www.hort.wisc.edu/mastergardener/features/weeds/vinegar/vinegar.htm

on weed control using vinegar

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/farming-north-wales/farming-news/2008/12/08/e...

European Parliament is due to decide on a new Regulation on the placement of pesticides on the market, concern over the removal of established crop protection products from the market.

Wood creosote is a colorless to yellowish greasy liquid with a smoky odor and burned taste. Other than looks and taste, the chemicial makeup is totally different than coal tar creosote. It is made of guaiacol, creosol, o-cresol, and 4-ethylguaiacol, plant phenolics, rather than petrochemicals.

Wood creosote has been used as a disinfectant, a laxative, and a cough treatment, but these have mostly been replaced by newer medicines.

The popular Japanese Kampo anti-diarrheic Seirogan has 133 mg wood creosote (from beech, maple or oak wood) per adult dose as its primary ingredient.

Our local council (Nelson, NZ) has a policy of planting nut and fruit trees in amongst its other plantings on communal land. Its such an obvious an easy thing to do one wonders why other authorities are not doing it. Many of the trees are visually stunning when flowering and the benefits are obvious.

Humanure:

All my output, liquid and solid, goes back into my permaculture operation here. The pee goes first into a collector bottle, then out on to the comfrey plants, who convert it to superfood for both my other food plants and my livestock, with excelllent high nitrate content. The solids go into a dry composting loo, sweetened after each use with a small scoop of sawdust or woodash-plus-biochar, (from my cooker/heater Winiarski-Rocket stove), or dryish forest-floor soil, to keep it inoffensive. (They each do that, very well). When full, this goes into my composting bins, then eventually into the raised beds.

We have no phosphate bottleneck here. Nor potassium, nor nitrates either, for that matter. As well as the nitrogen in the pee, I use a lot of perennial, creeping white-clover ground cover around the food plants, to fix atmospheric nitrogen. (I also happen to like peas and beans a lot, fresh and for drying for stored staple foods. So more air nitro-fixing there)

Cuba blazed the trail:

During their 'Special Period' (when the USSR was collapsing, and could no longer take the bulk of their sugar monocrop and send them lots of oil, and the imperial gics (gangsters-in-charge) in Washington were continuing their long effort to starve and bully and terrorise Cuba back into the US empire), the food supply in the whole island got very hairy. Part of the solution was getting people to grow food everywhere. City and suburban intensive organic (that is, low oil-input) gardening became state policy, improvising growing places in every nook and cranny that people could think of. Quoting from memory, I believe that Havana now grows something like 80% of its own vegertable food, and a considerable quantity of smaller meat, eggs and dairy animals, within the city limits.

This example is now urgent for the rest of us, and -- whaddya know -- erupting spontaneously from the -- erm -- grassroots all over the place in the over-rich -- no, make that the ex-over-rich -- countries.

For the deepest of deep green guerrilla gardening, google 'seed-bombs'.

The opportunity cost of the ornamental tree industry must be high. It seems we could increase local food production if we could convince people to plant fruit and nut bearing trees instead of ornamentals. Add in berry bushes instead of the typical shrub found in peoples yards and people would increase their local food production at little or no cost.
Non food bearing plantings must be a product of an energy abundant age. It makes no sense.

This is the re-application of old model of the hunter-gatherers-part time agriculturalists, where all the land and its use was only limited by what the people wanted/could do as well as the competition of other groups (or even animals, the weather, etc.) In a modern setting, totally different, as food is grown by big corps with big org. and trucked about..

Various revolutions have had the aim to re-claim, or re-distribute, land. That is, changing the laws etc. that regulate its use. Often killing the despots who owned it. Or kicking them out!

Use by stealth, with the exception of quick forays (poaching, for protein, foraging for veggies) was, afaik, never terribly common, in total calorie terms or other such measures (?)

Usually, informal, or even contracted arrangements did the job.

Because growing food takes time, care, work, and can’t be hidden.

If the Gvmts. and the Corps have it all locked up, what is to be done?

This mildly subversive and minor move is timid and marginal. Naturally conditions have changed and comparing with the past is perhaps not useful.

Politics, anyone?

Not being sarcastic, I think it’s great. Long term effects, scope, that is another story. Change usually comes from way below or high up - from the middle not so much. (Pardon the wild generalisation..!)

Hi, I was brought to this site via two or three hops from an article I was reading on the subject. This is stuff I've been active in for more than a decade, and have become a designated "dead horsebeater" on the subject, as well as being ridiculed for my continual admonition to "plant beans" [they return nitrogen to the soil, are easy to grow, and are an excellent source of protein to boot].

There were several comments above regarding areas where pollution is an issue, and the safety of the food raised in such territory. The "takeup" of heavy metals, dioxins, etc very much depends on the plant in question, and the process whereby the food-portion of the plant is developed.

Reed beds are the newest high-tech/low-tech method of processing human waste- they are actually more effective than chemical methods [according to a waste-management professional friend of mine], and the water that flows out of a reed bed tests out as purer than most groundwater. The reeds provide habitat for wildlife as well... and hey, maybe someday thatched roofs will make a comeback.

Regarding pollution treatment- I saw a video with fascinating content on TED that I highly recommend. The url is here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_...

I think it's 17:44 minutes extremely well-spent, and the results he shows are amazing.

Nice to see others thinking the way I have been doing. If people laugh at you for it, laugh right back at them! You're on the right track.

Cultivating every patch of land available within a city is not unheard of.
The russians did it during WWII in Leningrad.

The city was under siege by the Germans and russians couldn't get resupplies in through the blockade fast enough.
They were able to drop seeds. So they planted everywhere. And saved thousands of lives that way. Mostly civilian lives that would have been lost due to famine.

Allottmets are alive and well in the UK. If you go to google maps and soom in on london, then pan around a bit, it wont take you long before you hit a patchwork of allottmets.

Cheap as well. £16 a year for 125m^2. Best of all the council is legally obliged to make land available for cultivation if it is demanded.

Personally I dont have one as its easier and cheaper to buy a kilo of carrots from tesco.

Another option to grow food in urban areas is to legally lease small plots of land from homeowners. Spin Farming is a way for a farmer to make a decent living without a huge investment, simply by finding people who would rather have vegetables in their front yards instead of lawn.

www.spinfarming.com

Its a national law, but you have to have 6 signatories to petition the council. After that its all down to availability, legal precedent and boring stuff like that.