Community Corner

Free Fruit in Silver Spring, If You're Willing to Forage For It

An interactive map created by foragers shows where fruit grows on public grounds in Montgomery County.

"The urban harvest." Ever heard of it? According to a couple of guys who are nuts about foraging, it's basically any place where you can find fruits, veggies, nuts and even (maybe) edible food waste—all for free. 

According to NPR's food blog, The Salt, Caleb Phillips and Ethan Welty have mapped thousands of fruit and nut trees, beehives and anything else you could eat that comes out of the ground, on an interactive website called "Falling Fruit." 

From the blog:

Find out what's happening in Silver Springwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The duo says they created Falling Fruit essentially to form a community for novice and pro foragers alike. Philips, who is a computer scientist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, says there's value in pulling a carrot from the ground or an apple from a tree to eat.

"If I can apply my skills to help people realize that there is a fruit tree down the street that they can pick, then that's just a simple thing I can do to reconnect people with how food works and get them away from the notion that food is only in a grocery," he says.

Find out what's happening in Silver Springwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Not to be outdone by the thousands of foraging entries in the Portland, OR, area, a couple of areas in Bethesda, Gaithersburg and Silver Spring have tips for free fruit seekers.

Find raspberries of "decent" quality on Colesville Road in Silver Spring, near the Northwest Branch.

And who knew there was a "solid" yield of serviceberries just south of Bethesda Row?

"Beautiful stand of three mature serviceberry trees on a tiny public park," M. Katz wrote. 

Check out the map to see if there's any free fruit in your area. If you know of fruiting trees or other edibles for the taking, you can also contribute to the map


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