Extreme gardeners, 'fess up: have you ever?

I feel the same way about cuttings sticking through a fence... if it's not inside the fence, it's fair game!

I vote for all of the above too! I have even stopped to ask a stranger where he bought his greenhouse and could I look it over.

I have done all of these things except knock on doors. Which I ought to start doing! When I broadcast wild flower seed I used a local mix and threw it on vacant lots in the early spring when there was still snow on the ground. Maybe some sunflowers and asters came up or maybe they were there already.

just remember, wal mart has a camera at their dumpster & I was told if they catch anyone getting plants or flowers out of it there is a 10,000.00 fine. But I have had the garden manager at 1 of the wal marts to sell me plants for half price or less at the end of the summer. I have met a lot of nice people by asking them about flowers in their yard & have made a lot of exchanges with them.

bebop672

Couldn't find the "all of the above" button, so I checked the other.
Guess I am not alone from reading all of the other! LOL!
I have often seen something in someone else's yard in my neighborhood and have thought about getting a plant as an offering and knocking on the door and asking them if they would trade me a start for my plant. Just haven't taken the step yet. I will speak to people in their yards without hesitation though.
Good voting topic! Fun read. I especially liked your's BocaGinger.

YET!

One of the problems with dumpster diving at nurseries is that the nurseries are REQUIRED to DISPOSE of plants for which they get "credits" (refunds) from the suppliers. Under the refund policy, the nursery is not allowed to discount the plants for sale or offer them for free. The plants must go to the trash. One of those situations where, "It doesn't matter if it doesn't make any sense, it's the policy."

I was ordered out of a nursery dumpster by the store owner after one of the employees had told me that it would be o.k. for me to rescue some plants. The above policy was stated by the store owner as the reason I couldn't take the plants from the trash and I've heard it repeated by other nursery owners and operators.

"Once ordered out of a dumpster".....now there's a new sub-line for my resume. LOL

Jeremy

This message was edited Oct 5, 2007 4:08 PM

Although I've not done any of the things listed, I've thought about doing most of them. However, I did recently pull weeds from a neglectful neighbor's property that were abutting my property line!

That dumpster policy makes no sense--they did what they were "supposed" to do, by putting them in the dumpster. So they aren't giving plants away that are already thrown away! Pretty stoopid ... But many dumpsters have a sign on them that says it's illegal to raid them--probably a safety/insurance issue??

This is kind of off the subject but I recently found out that a local grocery store throws out magazines when the new issues come out. They tear off the covers and toss them. I was able to convince an employee to salvage them for me. Now they get passed around. This probably isn't "legal" either.

Yep, you're right, it's not.

Waste not want not.

LOL.

I'm sort of with WUVIE on this one, "Waste not want not". I say dive in... particularly if it's at the curb.

Hello All, I had "clicked" on all but extreme gardener... and then I thought, who am I kidding. About 3 years ago we (my family) were in France for Christmas. I picked some palm seed in Montpellier. I took these seeds home, started them in the basement, put them out for the summer, then back to the basement light table for the winter. When they were two years old I took half a dozen back to France to plant. After reconsideration, perhaps I am an extreme gardener. Robb.

Robb, I think that's extreme in a good way--you gave back to them for giving to you! What a nice gesture!

I picked 'other'. There is a community garden one street over from us. Every time I walked our dog past it, I drooled over a patch of TALL cannas. Well, as of Oct. 15th, everything is mowed down. (Canna rhizomes will not survive in this zone over the winter.) Sooooo.....sometime in early November, (very cold and rainy) I casually walked into the garden space and......dug up a few (just 3) canna rhizomes. This year I had fantastically tall cannas! This summer, there are even MORE cannas growing in the same community garden spot! If they leave them there, I'll have more next year. Does this qualify as extreme???

that may be borderline stealing (LOL)...............they obviously wintered over in dormancy for the community garden............but the good part about cannas is they multiply so quickly from year to year....................

Noooo. Cannas do not overwinter in our zone. They would die if not dug out. So I figure take it or leave it.

You just taught me something...................Did the community garden dig theirs up???? because you said they had them again?????

I am in a such a warm climate we have trouble keeping them from taking over a bed and the whole yard....................

I was thinking about the magazine thing too. I have deadheaded at a nursury and in people's yards and my friend and I used to go on midnight raids and take seeds on our walks, one time the motion detector illuminated my friend and we ran. How embarrasing. My seedlings never fare well anymore so I don't do it so much. When we had a record freeze last winter, Home Depot and Lowes had practically given away many plants that were dead or dieing, but they do not usually.

If you can dig in a celebrities trash as it is public property when it goes out on trash day, that seems a safe day to infiltrate the trash.

Where was the 'All Of The Above' choice???? Truely extreme gardeners need that option! LOL! I used the 'other' choice in it's stead.

lol I saw people buying dead rose bushes at a local store once. What a bargain!!! They were on sale!!!, but they were dead. Black is not a good color for rose bush branches.
Martha

If law enforcement can raid dumpsters for evidence and that is legal I think that once in the trash is anothers treasure. LOL

One of my teachers, who is a retired sheriff, says that once it hits the curb, it's up for grabs. We were talking about stuff put out for the garbage man in residential neighborhoods, though.

It likely depends on the area you live in. In an uptight area
you may very well be in trouble. In an area such as
where I live, the cops would chalk you up to a little on the
interesting side, telling you to be on your way at most.

If I were a policeperson finding a trio of grown women
with pots of helpless looking plants in the back of their car,
having obviously been rescued from the trash, it seems likely
I could figure out they were not plotting anything too criminal.

LOL.

No, Gardeners can rarely be described as members of a terrorist society. Just a 'bit on the interesting side' as you say, Wuvie!

I really thought I was the only one who saved a plant from an abandoned or repo home. lol Not really my friend and I would fight over them. In the desert you can see a shack and it has been a squatters hut for a while and the only thing that stops me from digging up the sole survivors are thinking some squatter will get me while I'm not looking. I always take seeds from the casinos in Vegas and our movies parking lot, but today I left without a shovel and some wet paper or plastic to keep the roots damp and saw some plants I want to nab in the woods, but here you have to pay for a forest pass to stop your car in the forest, with my luck I'd get a ticket to jail and some obsolete felony for stealing wild plants or something. I still may try though.

helln, be careful! It probably is illegal if it's a park or nature preserve. If you end up in jail, ask to use a computer, and we can round up some bail money here at DG. LOL

Hmmmm. maybe they'd set your bail in "plants" 8 )

You know, with my luck, I'd produce more plants for bail and find out THOSE were also protected and I was NOW facing more charges!! Besides you know how attached we get to our plants. If we didn't think they would be taken care of, we could not give them up!

LOL, true, it's like they're our babies!

Just a little thought but there are lots of people volunteering in those natural areas who are sort of trying to "put back" what ends up being dug up or over taken by invasive species. You don't see these people a lot because they come and go time allowing- most work full time and have gardens of their own so they snatch an hour here or an hour there to go work. I sort of am one of those people who snatches an hour here and there to volunteer so please try your best to check with somebody before you dig. Lots of volunteers use their own money to get those plants to maturity before they put them back under the direction of a land steward. Sometimes when I go back to check on my plants to see how they are doing a few years later it sort of breaks my heart to see spade marks.

Now, an abandoned or a repo home.... hmmm... I'd have to think long and hard about that one. I think people here have corrupted me so if a house had been obviously abandoned for a few years and if there were some say... really nice iris that were growing on the property... I suspect that I'd probably snitch a few if I could round up a partner in crime to go with me which obviously wouldn't be that hard based on what I'm reading here ;)

For what it's worth, I'd help bail any one of you out if you got a little overzealous!

Now celia! I think you are missing an opportunity if you are only getting three cannas. No way is that place going to spend the money to dig those cannas up every fall and you're sort of doing them a favor by pre-tilling the area for them to replant next spring so why don't you just go and ask somebody if you can dig them up and take them home? My guess is they'll tell you to take them all. I'm pretty bold about situations like that and cannas are sort of expensive to be totally wasted by being left in the ground.

The garden is a community garden. Everyone rents a plot or plots. The garden closes for the winter on Oct. 15th. Next spring the City comes and tills the ground with a large tractor and marks off the plots for the season. The canna person keeps the same plots every year. I know he didn't dig them up last year, and I know they didn't survive the winter, but there are even more cannas this year! Soooooo, I think they're fair game for me to dig. LOL!

In the middle of town, a new construction project began where a
large flea market once stood. The bulldozers literally came in and
began mowing things down. It's almost as if they took the items out,
walked away and zoom! It was mowed down.

In the entire project, one shrub has stood it's ground, refusing to
budge under the weight of everything piled on top of it. One day it
was practically laying horizontal from being buried in destruction.
Yesterday I noticed everything was cleaned up and flattened, yet
there was this one single shrub still clinging to life. They didn't do
a thing, just mowed all the plants and such down with everything.
Jeez!

I would be tempted to stop and rescue the poor thing, but it is truly
in the absolute middle of town, right at the four corner stop for all
to see. Maybe I'll see if I can contact about taking the shrub. It is not
that big, but determined to live.

KM

I would call the local city building if there is one, and ask them. I'll bet they wouldn't mind. It certainly deserves to live after all that!

I go and get the pin number of the property and contact the tax assessors office for contact information to property owners. If it's not a trust, you can generally track the owners down pretty easily. I've never been told no by an owner although I must admit some of them laugh out loud when I tell them what it is that I want. One guy yelled out to his wife that there was some woman on the phone who wanted the Redbud Seedling and wanted to know if that was ok. I could hear her yell out that she sure as H E double hockey sticks didn't want it. He then asked me what a Redbud was but told me to feel free to go dig it up.

Come on WUVIE, waste not want not! Don't let it being in the middle of town stop you. You can find out who owns that property.

Wonder if they would mind me digging it up with a flashlight, LOL!

If it is still there tomorrow I'll see what I can do.

Hold tight, shrub, here I come!

WUVIE, I would recommend in daylight, looks less I'm like snatching something and more "authorized".

You have a valid point there psychw2, I've had permission and have been digging in broad daylight and not only has no one ever stopped me but no one has even bothered to ask me what I'm doing by slowing down and rolling down their window. It's kinda obvious what I'm doing when I've got a shovel and a 5 gallon bucket but no one has ever stopped to ask??? Every once in a while I do get some rubber neckers driving by but that's about it.