As community gardeners harvest their season's bounty, thieves are brazenly carting off tomatoes, plums, peppers and cucumbers by the bagful from plots others have lovingly tended. When fruits and vegetables are at their peak, gardeners are often inundated with more than they can eat, and many are happy to share — at least with those who ask.
Neighborhood Fruit, based in San Francisco, was created to help people find and share fruit. It provides a way for those facing a too-abundant harvest to share the wealth. It also provides tips on where to find fruit growing in public places that is free for the taking, though the rules vary city by city. It even has a mobile phone application and a video on fruit-gathering etiquette. With the real-estate crisis has come a new type of urban foraging: taking fruit and vegetables planted by the previous owners of foreclosed homes, figuring that the lenders won't care. The goal of the urban-foraging movement is to collect food and vegetables that would otherwise be wasted and share the produce with people who will appreciate it, whether it's the foragers themselves or a food bank. Defining just what constitutes a public place has led to arguments. In most municipalities, while the land between the sidewalk and the street is yours to mow, it technically does not belong to you. That means your neighbors can harvest the fruit, it's still polite for them to ask before hauling off bags of fruit from in front of someone else's home. Don't bother complaining to the city: You may lose the tree entirely. Most cities prohibit fruit trees in the parking strips or swales because of the mess they create.
