Guerrilla gardening: Difference between revisions

Anyone who cringes at a barren or neglected planting bed can become a guerrilla gardener. They quietly fill a barren urban landscape with greenery.

The philosophy of a guerrilla gardener includes some or all of these ideas:

• To create an "urban foodscape" and allow for foraging.
• To increase local food security (an important part of resilience) and self-sufficiency.
• To demonstrate how easily food can grow in underused places.
• A political statement, similar to very informal community gardening
• Reclaiming urban land for public use and public good, bringing back food-growing skills, and restoring plant life to over-developed areas.
• Opposition to the industrial food system and geographically dislocated food supply systems.

Considerations

Guerrilla gardening differs from ordinary gardening since exclusive access to the land is not guaranteed. The best plants are fast yielding, low maintenance, and not sensitive to other land uses. Points to note about the land are:

• Current condition (Soil, pollution)
• Prospects (Flooding? Pollution? Other land users?)

Points to note about the crop are:

• Growth habit (How long until fruiting/blooming? Sun or shade? Water? Temperature?)
• Environmental impact (How will it affect the soil and neighbouring plants/animals)
• Social/cultural implications (How will it change people's behaviour?)

Species

No single species of plant grows everywhere on Earth, but only in regions with the climate and other conditions it needs. Agronomists working for the USDA^W have defined a set of hardiness zones^W which provide a rough guide to the types of plants that can grow in various regions of the United States. Other nations have drawn up similar schemes. The local hardiness zone not only determines what plants can grow in a given region, but also how some of them can grow. For example, some tender plants that grow as perennials^W in tropical climates may only grow as annuals^W in temperate climates (e.g., tomatoes, peppers).

Some regions have additional microclimate variation, due to urbanization, vertical relief, or proximity to the ocean or a large lake. In such regions, a plant that grows well in one location may fare poorly in a neighboring location just a few kilometers away.

Generalized gardening information resources such as books provide lists of prospective plants to consider, but there is often no substitute for the knowledge of expert local gardeners, who learn from experience what to grow in their locality and how to grow it. If you are not an expert gardener, seek out your local experts and study what they do.

Guerrilla gardens may receive little care after planting. Since the gardener typically does not own the land, and may not have regular or legal access to it, plants in the garden may have to do without some or all of the typical garden services such as watering, staking, weeding, fertilizing, etc.

Perennial plants may be especially advantageous for the guerrilla garden, as they typically require little care once established, can grow productively for years, compete better with weeds, and put down deep root systems that resist drought and draw nutrients from the subsoil to the surface.

Papaya

Papaya is an excellent species for guerilla gardeners in tropical urban areas, since

1. Its shallow, soft roots, mean it can grow right beside walls and buildings without difficulty.
2. Its sap makes it unappealing to cows.
3. It quickly grows an attractive fruit (often within a year).
4. It does not need much attention.

The main points to watch are

1. It cannot handle standing water, so plant on higher land.
2. It is usually dioecious^W (male and female), so plant several together, and remove some of the males.
3. It cannot handle wind, so right beside a wall is good.
4. The more sun, the better, so a south facing, white wall, is ideal.

Methods

• Seed bombs
• Cardboard mulch. You may wish to plant an area covered in weeds. In this case, cover the weeds with a sheet of cardboard. Cut a small hole in the sheet and insert the seedling you're planting through this hole. The cardboard will kill the weeds by blocking out light. The weeds will then decompose and become nutrients for your plants. The cardboard will decompose too, though it takes a little longer.

Interwiki links

• Wikipedia: Guerrilla gardening
• wikiHow: How to Start Guerilla Gardening (Note this is an incompatible license - do not copy between the Appropedia and wikiHow pages.)