I mean some of us hate grass so much we started a huge reddit community about it that made it’s way too lemmy.
I’m tryin’, man. Fruit bearing plants take a lot of work compared to the manicured suburban steriscape. They’re not super easy to grow (depending on where you live), require pruning and fertilizer, soil amendment, and unfortunately pesticides or fencing if you don’t want insects or deer destroying your hard work.
That’s way more effort than most people want to expend. HOAs or even local ordinances may also restrict what can be grown.
I don’t know what your experience with gardening is, so I might be preaching to the choir here. But if it helps, No-Dig Gardening is a method that lets nature do a lot of the hard work for you.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/soil-composts-mulches/no-dig-gardening
I’m not super-experienced, but this is absolutely a viable method if you have somewhat decent soil to start with. Unfortunately where I live it’s a ton of clay, so getting the soil to a usable state absolutely requires digging. It’s just as much work to dig and amend vs build on top and import soil.
Look into native plants. There are so many edible things that you can just leave in the wasteland that is your yard and they’ll take over. Here in Tennessee we have pawpaws and maypops for fruit, tomatoes that pop up randomly, garden greens like wood sorrel and lambs quarters, and a bunch of other things that absolutely take over given half a chance. Sure, if you try and grow the seed packets from your local Lowes you’ll have issues with pests and whatnot, but there is so much more food out there than these varieties.
Absolutely. Already have a couple.
European garden with some ten different berries/fruit trees and bushes - no work needed, they just do their thing (when they are big enough.) Rotate about one every three years, sometimes move some berries from one place to another.
Strawberries are a ton of work at the end of the year (not the little wild ones though,) don’t do them unless you really love them.
It’s a stupid reason. Historically, if you were a peasant and had been granted access to land, you grew food or herbs. If however you were a lord, you got your food from your peasants. You had no need to grow your own food. So they could afford to grow lawns as a sign of wealth.
This has transferred across into the modern psyche. Lawns are a way of saying “i’m so rich, i don’t have to worry about sustenance. In fact i’ll throw money at it to maintain this slab of green rather than have it provide food, or shade.”
This is the correct answer. So many US’isms are bourgeois / aristocratic imitation.
Cars / wasteful transportation, lawns, sprawled out cities, high amounts of meat consumption, vacation homes / timeshares / exotic vacations, having servants, etc. These are things that are only possible for countries with huge amounts of land and resources, and not sustainable or doable for most of the world.
It could also be seen as rising standards of living, and aristocrats were optimizing their advantage before the standards rose for everyone due to cheap energy availability.
Saying people consume meat to mimic the rich is a little silly.
@Turturtley @Confidant6198 Its worse, because, actually, even if they wanted to, most Americans are under the tyrannical rule of a Homeowners Association (talk about liberty huh) that forces them to plant grass, and can fine them a shit ton of money if they do otherwise
It’s funny how this has come full circle - many people garden (in their back yards) to show they have the free time to do so.
Probably against HOA rules in many places.
Ok, but why?
Ismt that the universal question with moet things americans do these days? ;-)
Because of 18th century French aristocracy, no shit.
The real answer is because in America rich people buy houses, and then create HOAs in the housing deeds and contracts to force all future owners to maintain the house in a way that will increase the neighborhood property value forever.
HOAs exclusively fight to make houses more and more “valuable” since housing is a financial investment here
Thank you. So not having a proper garden increases the value?
Most older (white) Americans think having any sort of enjoyment or color in anything is “gay”. Hence why so many American die of heart disease, because eating an apple is basically like giving a blowjob.
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A lot of people are secretly cows and they actually eat that grass. Next time you say hello to someone and they respond “moo” you’ll know why.
Because having a big yard of grass that you have to mow every week while using up gasoline is the American dream and a flex for some reason.
Don’t forget about the expensive chemical treatments to maintain it so the local groundwater can become contaminated …
The answer is they were a wealthy European concept brought to the colonies as a status symbol. They are still associated with wealthier people which raises property values, so are enshrined in local ordinances and HOA rules.
The 50s happened.
And for whatever the fuck reason, they wanted houses like the ones found in pre-1789 France
There is a pretty great website called Falling fruit to map trees and other plants that you can pick from freely.
Hey. Thank you for sharing this.
Websites like this are the good part of the internet.
You’re welcome 😊😘🤗
I checked out my closest two locations on there. They were both dumpsters… “Best to come after midnight”.
Not what I was expecting…
Yeah they do add dumpsters from shops that throw good to eat food. I know some people that lived in Danemark for a year and basically only ate food from dumpsters…
Maybe you could add some close to you?
Because this is illegal in most of America. You would be fined and the city would probably send a crew out to rip it all up and give you the invoice if you defied it and left it that way.
That’s a bit extreme? I think that you are correct that this may be the case in front yards depending on location, but backyards are usually fine for whatever barring some HOA BS or unusual local rules.
I’ve seen this happen before in real life so extreme or not, it’s definitely the norm in upstate New York at the very least. Had the city called on us while we were out of the country and we came back to all 6 of our small fruit trees dug up and tracks all over the front lawn from an excavator and a $2500 bill from the city.
So front yard? Yeah, not super surprised at that. I’ve heard plenty of stories about front yard cultivators running into problems with the city. I live in a more rural/urban mixed area so it’s a lot more forgiving. Plenty of people here have apples or other fruit trees in the front yard - not aggressively farming the yard, just as part of the plantings.
Ya front yard. We didn’t aggressively plant either. We had 4 or 5 fruit trees planted with beds around them
That really sucks.
Shoulda gotten a tree lawyer. Tree law is not to be fucked with.
6? What are you trying to make an orchard? That’s pretty aggressive. How big is your front yard? How long were you gone for to make the city take action? You wouldn’t get one notice, then a day later, they tear up your yard. You had to have been gone for a long time.
I have a fairly large front yard, and if I planted that many trees, yeah I’d get sited.
It doesn’t matter if you had fruit trees or not. That’s not a “you can’t plant trees in your front yard”, thats, “this many trees in a relatively small area can cause safety issues”
Wow haha you must have been the city bylaw officer with the way you are so gallantly siding with the city and telling me off for planting 6 fruit tree saplings on 1+ acres of front yard. You must have been to some very small orchards! You sound very intelligent. I am truly humbled.
Yeah I would’ve been intelligent enough to look up my city’s ordinance about planting multiple trees in my front yard. Especially if I’m going to be leaving for several months afterwards.
Like it sucks you got your trees ripped out my dude, I’m sure you can try it again. Just search it up on the interwebs of your city. 100% you’ll find it. If you want Ill search it for you. You can plant some awesome stuff in upstate.
All the best to you my man.
Growing crops is quite a bit of cost and effort and time. I have a little garden, but it’s not like you just plant some seeds and you’re all done.
This is the answer right here.
Everyone is saying “it’s a sign of wealth” or “my HOA won’t let me”. Which yeah ok is more or less true.
Though, the real reason is it takes time, money, and a lot of effort. Which most people don’t have.
Zoning laws in a lot of places.
HOAs say “ew no that’s for the poors” and good luck finding a house that’s not in an HOA within a reasonable commute to your job
My HOA:
Looks like you are stuck with fruits, grains, herbs, and ornamentals in the front yard, then, lol.
Sadly, bad behavior from owners are the cause. I have several fruit trees in my backyard and the pest presence is high. If they aren’t harvested and maintained the impact on your neighbors is high. I hate HOAs, but I get why they would prohibit it, and it’s not a class thing, after all…you’re a property owner.
I can imagine a few reasons.
I have a dog, she needs some running around space in our yard, so we make sure she has it.
Otherwise we do have a raspberry… Thicket? In the corner of our yard, and some smaller raised beds along the edges. Every year the local squirrels steal the veggies we plant, but not the raspberries, no matter what we do.
Every year the local squirrels steal the veggies we plant
This has been my experience as well, along with raccoons decimating all but one season’s attempt at a water garden.
When I first started gardening I had this idealistic view of, “I will just grow a surplus, if the animals take some I will still have enough.” Nope. They eat everything, to the ground. They can do it in one night. There are different pests that specialize in eating the seeds, the roots, the stems, the leaves, and the fruit. Deer will “sample” entire plants just to confirm they don’t like them. Squirrels will take a single bite out of every tomato. Bears will push down an entire fruit tree just to get one fruit. Energy is scarce in nature and these organisms aren’t fucking around.
Took me awhile to finally admit that barriers aren’t just nice, they are required.
We get them all. Deer, birds, chipmunks. The entire garden needs to be protected by hardware cloth. The chipmunks got through the original chicken wire we had. We had to enclose the top as they climbed over. Plus the small birds eat any berries. A constant battle to be able to harvest anything.
We do? Some ppl dont, we have sugarcane, oranges, lemons, eggplants, peppers, and I forget the rest, my dad/grandpa are more into gardening. Its just not realistic to do a lot, cheaper and a lot faster to go the grocery storec more variety, hoemgrown stuff is ususlly more of an addon.
Yeah, I have a lemon tree and a small garden that gives me some herbs and some strawberries (that are pretty but don’t taste great). My parents were into gardening so they always had a big garden. I remember one of the problems they had is that a single crop would ripen in a short period. Like they’d get 200 tomatoes over 2 weeks. Not ideal (unless you’re into canning/jarring), but a good way to make friends with your neighbors.
