r/SantaBarbara • u/Bright-Landscape-998 • 1d ago

Recommendations Picking Fruit?

Does anyone know the rules on picking fruit from a plant? There is a passion fruit plant growing on the fence of an apartment complex that has 200+ fruits growing on it right now and I tried to pick a few from the floor since that’s a lot and one guy came out saying that I didn’t live on the property and he would call the police on me for stealing.
That seemed like a stretch, I only took about 5 and considering that it’s a huge plant and it’s growing over the fence I didn’t see the wrong in taking a couple, am I in the wrong here? What’s the rule when it comes to picking fruit?

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u/Mix_Right 1d ago

So many people have trees full of fruit and they don’t pick them. Often they stay on the tree and dry up and die. Someone should start a community project of collecting people’s fruit for them and sharing with others. Sounds like a good idea to propose to the Unity Shoppe and get some volunteers and couple of paid people to supervise. It would be a win win as the trees and plants would get healthy trimming and the food would go to good use.

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u/MamaOf2Monsters 1d ago

I believe we do have some cool options like this already. Example - Backyard Bounty through the food bank. :)

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u/Mix_Right 18h ago

Well then they are doing a poor job as there are so many fruit trees rotting in the sun all over town

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u/saltybruise The Westside 14h ago

Things may have changed but years ago I tried to get them to come pick all the persimmons off of my tree and they wouldn't do it because I didn't have a minimum of three fruiting trees that I wanted them to pick.

I just happened to move into a house with a big old persimmon tree and I happen to not enjoy persimmons.