My understanding is that they get into the soil and can then get into the plants. Then into your body.

Depends, but most will wash off.

Not much besides crab grass will grow within 3 feet of our roads anyway because they literally salt the earth all winter with insane amounts of road de-icer in our part of the country. The only places that get a slight reprieve are homes near reservoirs or when it gets too cold for the melt temp and they switch to sand.

It’s also why cars don’t last much more than 10 years unless undercoated and carefully maintained and cleaned all winter.

yeah tbf i would not wanna eat anything that close to sidewalk anyway. dogs pee and poop there

A tractor isn't driving there nearly as frequently as cars on a road though. Also, I would imagine tractor tires are far harder and sturdier than road tires. They're driving slow, and there's no need to shed material to stick to the road like with road tires.

I have no knowledge of any of this, but tractors seem like they wouldn't be much of an issue in my mind.

(assuming you don’t always buy organic at the farmers market)?

you remember we're a bunch of weirdos here on the fediverse, right? i live in a city, right on the edge of farm country, and i go bike out to farms and flirt/banter/barter BBQ with the farmers until they let me buy a couple logs of wood off their orchard so's i can smoke with local apple and peach. the only time i get produce from the grocery store and not the fruit stand/farmer's market is when (a) my mother drops by any extra she's picked up, (b) they don't have kumquats at the local fruit stands and i don't want to drive out 45 minutes out to the good tree and pick 3 kumquats offa one of my favorite brunch spot's kumquat trees, or (c) i forget c but I swear it exists. i gotta plant me a kumquat tree.

Ah, yes, a field where any single square foot may be run over by a tire about 2 dozen times per year obviously has the same rubber exposure as a road.

Quit with the dumb, snarky retort. It doesn't make you look smart, it does the opposite.

Proximity to roads not only exposes a garden to tire dust, but also the asphalt can leech into the soil and be absorbed by the plants. Plus there's the volatiles in car exhausts.

It's common gardening advice to keep gardens at least 30ft from roads to prevent these problems. It's far better to grow vegetable in the bacl yard instead.

From low-speed, light vehicles? I can't imagine it would be significant compared to farms on the interstate with 50,000+ lb (25,000 kg) trucks going 70+ mph (110 km/h) nearby.

It's going to vary a lot depending on the road, specifically traffic volume and speed. Or, a four way stop where loads of drivers slam their brakes right in front of your property would probably also be pretty detrimental. For a quiet neighborhood street it would be paranoid worrying about micro plastic in your cucumbers imo.

Not exclusively.

Can rubber not be abraded into small particles?

One thing you’ll find out about a lot of MAGA-heads is that a lot of them just despise Democrats to their core and think Owning The Libs is more important than whatever the fuck Trump is actually up to.

Owning the Libs by... checks notes creating a neighbourhood garden for friends to have free access to fresh fruits and veggies and... Wait a minute....

Reagan Democrats George Lakoff: Moral Politics https://youtu.be/5f9R9MtkpqM?t=1821

i tried. he then walked up to my house when i was not home and asked my wife, who also complimented his garden, “what position are you in when thinking about me and my garden?”

so .. trump flag + sex pest. = he can fuck off.

My Maga neighbor will tell you how much he hates all the Black people in the neighborhood.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell people to waste their time and energy on people that are not going to be saved. You can use that energy to help your own people and it is a much better use of it.

And you know I’m going to take this a step further and ask you why the fuck you assume we’re not having conversations with those people? It’s them refusing the conversation. What rock have you crawled out from under?

You can't have a conversation with someone who is unwilling to change their stance, no matter the evidence provided in front of them.

I drive a blue car. I refuse to have a conversation with someone who tells me it's yellow. Or that I don't actually drive a car, but it's actually a horse.

Yeah, but I've been told America is the Land of the Free, not Land of the Free, some conditions apply. Not applicable in certain jurisdictions. Check with your doctor if you are in an area free enough to grow a garden.

I went to Portland, OR about a year ago, and wandered aimlessly for a couple hours before concluding that Portland is the world capital of front-yard gardening.

Yeah, for example, Earthships are more difficult to build here in Europe (regulations...) than in, for example, New Mexico where they originated.

Hell, it even depends on the HOA. I live in an HOA and there are plenty of yards in the neighborhood like this. We have a pretty chill HOA. It doesn't do much beyond taking care of a few communal spaces, organizing a couple of annual events like a community garage sale, and enforcing the most absolute basic of yard maintenance requirements. (A well-tended garden on the front yard is perfectly fine. Turning your yard into a junkyard or having three foot high grass in your front yard isn't. You can do what you want with your property, it just needs to be clean and intentional. You could convert your whole yard over to zero-maintenance clover, and that would be perfectly fine.)

And that's the kind of HOA I like. I do want my neighbors to maintain their properties. I want people to be free to mold their homes into whatever form they want, but no one intentionally sets out to have a yard filled with junk cars or three foot high grass. People plant grass with the intention of mowing it, it just gets away from them.

If you want grass, mow it. If you want a garden, plant it and tend it. If you want the lowest environmental impact and least effort, plant clover or other low-maintenance ground cover. Do whatever you want. I don't care. Just keep it clean and intentional. Hell, one of my neighbors keeps a giant demon skeleton in their front yard year-round. It's weird, but it's intentional, so it's fine.

I don't want to live in a neighborhood where every house is the same. I want the freedom to express myself through my home, and I want my neighbors to have the same freedom. But at the same time, I want to live in a place where people maintain their homes. I don't care what form you maintain your home to. But I do want it maintained. Grow as big of a garden as you want, just don't neglect it and let it get overgrown. If you just don't have the time and resources for a lot of yard maintenance, plant something like clover. It doesn't take a lot of effort or resources to keep a yard neat and clean.

lol I just noticed that comment after i did post a very similar comment...

But for example suburbs are indeed a little bit well... badly regulated...

Is it normal in suburbs / cities?

In Massachusetts near Boston I do not have to deal with any of that shit so my front yard looks exactly like this.

There are municipalities and counties that have classist lawn laws, too. In some places you either have to fight them and win or leave.

But can you make a trellis maze? Get lost in your grapes

It's because something something business activity.

Maybe that's when to feed your neighbours.

Ours just gave us a load of tomatoes and aubergine. Lovely.

If we'd had more than 6 strawberries we'd probably have shared too lol.

Right now I have about 16 very large cucumbers. I don't even like pickles that much.

I have a 12-tray Cabellas dehydrator and have made loads of jerky. I even bought a slicer.

I've pickeled, I've helped my mother can back in the day.

I love my neighbors, but fuck no, that's WAY too much work.

At my last house I did hydroponic swiss shard. I'm thinking about cranking that up inside this winter.

I tried lettuce, but could never get it to harden off. as soon as I plucked the leaves they just went limp, it was like they were inflated by the water.

Back yards work well to for block parties

My initial thought too. Something will eventually have to happen to suburbs

Didn’t even know that was a thing, where I live one side still requires a sidewalk.

This drives me nuts, I know sidewalks are an extra cost. But I'd happily pay a portion to get some put in around us.

I don't live in an HOA, but I swear all the surrounding neighborhoods just don't want them to keep the "riff raff" out. Still I ride bikes with my kid in the mega HOA neighborhood across the street, a lot flatter. Have to ride in the storm gutter if a car comes by.

They are building another mega HOA housing development next to the current one, houses at double the price. They certainly won't have sidewalks because it's targeting 60+. No restricted by age, but by money. They'll probably put a gate on it too.

I don't know, My nieces are in VR or on their phones alot, but outside is still on equal footing. And they are meeting other kids out there.

I think for people that can sustain their social needs with indirect relationships, maybe. But anyone that needs in-person socializing, they are gonna go get it. They don't go outside as much extra during the school year, but they spend the majority of summer break out there.

GenZ would be the first generation that didn’t play outside all summer like we used to.

Idk where you live but going outside in August is absolutely brutal down in Texas. All the kids go out in Fall and Winter, when the weather is much more bearable. You'll have the running trails packed shoulder-to-shoulder for half a mile as soon as temperatures get under 90. But not a degree before.

My city only requires sidewalks depending on how much vehicular traffic, how much foot traffic, and if kids are expected to navigate that street to get to school. And even then "one side" doesn't mean "same side." My house and the one next to my neighbor have the unfortunate yards missing sidewalks, meaning people have to use my next-for neighbor's sidewalk, cross the street, use my neighbor's sidewalk, and then can continue down until they have to cross the street again because the sidewalk is unusable at a certain point.

The reasons we have missing and broken sidewalks are that:

1. The city won't help pay for them
2. The city has strict regulations on how they're installed
3. The 50-foot run of sidewalk would cost more than a car to install, and since they're often seen as insurance liabilities, it's practically impossible to get a reasonable loan to cover the up-front costs.

"My yard is the shitty impediment because I can't afford to fund a public service" is not one of the sad realities of home ownership that I expected to encounter.

Hahaha! I love it!

An actual house so ugly it looks like AI slop. Thanks for looking it up and sharing.

McMansion. They look like mansions but arent. However that's beside the point. The point here is anarchy and nice townhouse area dont fit. Other ppl in that area can very well feed themselves.

In my area, besides things getting stolen, which OP is promoting here, your house'd get tagged, windows broken, fruit they couldnt carry smashed. Unfortunately in communities where not all people think they belong or others belong to theirs, vandalism is prominent.

but anarchy is the freedom to break out of neat prescribed rows if they don't fit us

I didn’t mean to upset the very serious anarchist.l in the meme comm.

I live in a town that is experiencing significant growth. The plot of land across the street from me had one house on it, it was torn down and they're building four in its place. My own house sits on two lots, so I have an above average amount of land for this suburban town. My yard, all told, is 8-10 times the size of what is pictured above.

I couldn't grow a year's worth of side dishes for myself on my land, if I knocked down every tree and shrub and replaced them with something productive. I do some backyard gardening, I can a year's worth of jelly (in fact that's a project for this coming week) and I raise a summer's worth of peppers and tomatoes.

I miss giant zucchinis. The groundhogs have defeated everyone in my neighborhood.

Having a hobby is good, nobody is saying otherwise. Pretending that your hobby is actually a community service is not. You're not more or less of a people connector and community builder when you chat to your discord kittens from the basement than when you sit ass up picking weeds on your driveway cucumber patch.

Absolutely nothing wrong with a hobby, everyone should have a lot of those, and gardening is amazing hobby if you're into that sort of things.
When I ride my bicycle, I don't pretend that I am a messanger of the solarpunk future riding for my neighbors, I just do my hobby for fun and health. If your idea of a good time is to fuck with the greenery, more power to you. Unless you believe you're feeding a neighborhood with your driveway dirtpatch vegies, then I will start to get worried about your grip on reality.

You eat your five tomatoes that you've spend 10 months growing of course. Other people will eat food that they bought with strike funds they allocated prior to a strike. They could've told you about those but you were too busy growing tomatoes on your driveway.

Someone who grows food for their neighbors I guess

Anyone I disagree with. Look, I drew them as the virgin and I am the Chad.

Someone who doesn't need to have the threat of violence to do good things. That's the issue it seems.

Indeed. I'm just criticizing OP suggesting this might be a way to structure society in general. I'm a fan of anarchism, but like many idealized political systems it doesn't work as advertised. Same for communism and capitalism. That's why sensible nations have long chosen social capitalism.

Except the blame minorities part, I don't mind the sit inside on my own bit, as a hermit by nature. I'd still grow stuff to share with the community as much as I'm able though. Just because I don't want to interact with people face to face doesn't mean I don't care that they are fed

I would probably turn it into alcohol

O.O

I've seen how my neighbors park their cars and look after their kids. I would not trust them to make anything that requires precision and attention.

Botulism is no joke.

I enjoy that immensely myself when gardening. I'm just not suggesting this as a generalizable way to feed (or organize) society which the word anarchism suggests.