Skip to content
Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Keyword: Food crops

Gleaning and the law

Is it legal for me to glean fruit from private gardens if the fruit is overhanging a public sidewalk?

 

First and foremost, it is essential to ask the homeowner’s permission. If they are not available to discuss your request, or if they do not consent, you should not glean fruit from their tree.

I consulted the King County Law Library, and they referred me to a chapter in the book Neighbor Law which addresses a slightly different situation, of fruit overhanging a property line between neighbors. In that case, “the location of a tree’s trunk determines who owns the tree. If the trunk stands next door, the tree, branches, leaves, and [fruit] belong to your neighbor. You may not legally help yourself to the fruit.” Each state may have slightly different laws, and they do not always address branches that overhang a public sidewalk. (In some states, like Mississippi, where pecans are a high-value crop, it is a misdemeanor even to collect fallen nuts on a public sidewalk during harvest season, and doing so can result in a fine and up to a month in jail.)

Given the dubious legality of gleaning from private property without permission, it makes more sense to join organized efforts to harvest unused fruit and vegetables. City Fruit is one place you can volunteer, either to contribute fruit from your own garden, or to help harvest from gardens that have signed up for the program. Sharing Abundance is an effort associated with Seattle’s community gardens, the P-Patch program. You can also join the Seattle Giving Garden Network.

The City of Seattle has information on additional ways of donating food so that it doesn’t go to waste.

 

, , ,

Corn: A Global History

[Corn: A Global History] cover

Do you ever wonder where the ingredients in your tamale came from? Each volume in Reaktion Books’ Edible series explores the global history and culture of a type of food. These little books pack in several chapters on various cultural histories around the crop they explore. It is essentially a food memoir and at the end of the each book, recipes are provided.

In Corn: A Global History, readers learn it is hard to determine how corn originated, due to its need for humans to cultivate it. Corn cannot grow wild. We also learn that maize is classified based on the grain’s appearance and starch content. The book contains a large section on Indigenous foods based on corn.

In Tomato: A Global History, by Clarissa Hyman, we learn that the word derived from the Nahuatl ‘tomatl,’ a generic term for a globose fruit or berry with seeds and watery flesh sometimes enclosed in a membrane. This ambitious memoir explores the tomato’s migration throughout the New World to the Old World, including Italy. One of my favorite pizzas, the Margherita, was created in 1889 in Naples to honor the Italian queen of the same name. The book investigates tomato cultivation today, including how scientific advances are changing the fruit, while conservation of heirloom varieties continues.

Avocado: A Global History, by Jeff Miller, explores the history and current social media craze of the fruit and describes how it has been grown on every continent except Antarctica. What I found the most intriguing is how avocados are in the laurel family, the oldest group of flowering plants, with the term laurels denoting excellence. Like corn, beans, and tomatoes, the avocado’s history can be traced back to the ecological conditions of the Neogene period, which created the Mesoamerican land-bridge that joined the continents of North and South America, creating a habitat for these foods to evolve into what we know today.

Beans: A Global History, by Natalie Rachel Morris, explores the staple food’s humble beginnings over 9,000 years ago. The diverse genus includes many different varieties and the food can be used in many forms: dried, frozen, or canned. The substantial nutritional benefit of the food led to the people of Tuscany being known as “bean-eaters.” I especially enjoyed the chapter on the lore and literature of beans.

Together, the books are a feast of knowledge. They are best enjoyed before a meal.

Written by Jessica Moskowitz and published in the Leaflet for Scholars, October 2020, Vol. 7, Issue 10.

safety of wooden pallets for vegetable gardens

My son wants to use wooden pallets for a vegetable garden. Is the wood in these pallets safe for contact with food crops?

 

Pallets (especially those used in international shipping) are very likely to be treated, since wood packaging must now comply with the International Plant Protection Convention’s International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures Guidelines for Regulating Wood Packaging Material in International Trade (ISPM 15). Here is more information from an article by Wendy Priesnitz, editor of Natural Life Magazine:

“Pallets made of raw, untreated wood are not compliant with ISPM 15. To be compliant, they must be debarked and either heat-treated to certain specifications or fumigated with methyl bromide, which affects the central nervous and respiratory systems. Heat-treated pallets bear the initials HT (or sometimes KD for kiln dried) near the IPPC logo. Pallets treated with methyl bromide bear the initials MB. In 2010, a phase-out of the use of methyl bromide began because it is an ozone depleting substance under the Montreal Protocol. However, many pre-2010 pallets are still around and, in fact, are likely to be the ones nearing the end of their useful lives as pallets.

“Older pallets could also have been pressure-treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA), which has been phased out for many residential uses. The arsenic in CCA-treated wood can be dislodged so that direct contact with wood can lead to exposure, thought to be a problem especially for children, and it can leach into ground water. A 2008 Australian study found that one percent of pallets tested contained CCA. Copper-treated wood varies in color from a very light green to an intense green color, depending upon the amount of chemical impregnated into the wood. However, it ages to a silver color, as does untreated wood, so color is not a reliable indicator, especially with older wood.”

A related question about reusing wooden pallets appeared in the online journal Grist, and their columnist raised the issue of chemical treatment as well as the possibility of the wood having absorbed dangerous bacteria, so I think it’s wise not to use wooden pallets for growing food.

If you want to recycle the pallets, there are places in King County which will accept wooden pallets for reuse, listed on the King County Solid Waste website What Do I Do With…. ?. If you know where the pallets came from, you might ask that business if they will let you return them.

Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides

A guide to fruits and vegetables based on pesticide contamination, from the Environmental Working Group (includes criteria used in rankings)