We’ve recently moved from a townhouse to a real house with an actual yard. Many of our plants are still sitting in pots in the yard, including a Thai pepper plant. The other day, we noticed that all but one branch of it was gone. I thought we were the victim of a rabbit with exotic tastes, but on closer inspection, we saw that the branches had been clipped off with scissors. It’s the front yard, but not accessible from the street, so someone had to come down our driveway and across the grass to do the foraging. It’s annoying and also, just plain weird!
My wife and I have a front-yard garden and experience the same thing. We always have more than we can eat, so it doesn’t effect us negatively. However, it is weird and difficult to accept. On one hand, I’m happy my garden is providing and am happy someone else is able to enjoy it too. On the other hand, hey fuck off thief!
I planted a peach tree last year, and was very excited to see about three dozen peach buds on the tree this spring. Since the tree was so young, I removed all but six baby peaches – probably should have taken them all off but I was terribly excited. Peaches! That I GREW! The tree is on the backyard side of a low brick wall that is visible from the front yard, far enough away from the wall that a person would have to jump or at least sit on the wall to reach the tree.
I watched them swell and ripen over the summer until one day as I walked out in the morning, they looked perfect. I mentally planned to pick them once I got back from work. I even rolled in early that afternoon…but not early enough. Some asshole had plucked ALL SIX. Well, not plucked – at least then I could blame an animal or something – they were cut off the branches, just like your peppers.
I was, and still am, seriously livid about it. Did they have to take all of them? I vacillate between hoping they went into the belly of a starving person who really needed them, and hoping that they tasted like shit and the thief choked to death on them.
Gotcha beat.
I used to have a kumquat tree in my front yard, very close to the house.
I looked outside one day to see a man had brought a ladder that he had placed next to the tree and climbed so that he could reach the fruit more easily.
I was almost speechless at the gall, especially when he barely reacted to my emerging from my house to ask him what in the world he thought he was doing. He just glanced at me and very casually climbed down, picked up the ladder and walked away.
It was truly remarkable.
Next time put a sign out front.
“Some of these are poisoned”
I would have seriously given thought to taking his ladder. Whether he was on it at the time or not.
People suck. I had cucumbers stolen off a potted vine on my front porch when I was in college. I was really proud of my first gardening as an adult, and some asshole took my food right when it was about ready to be picked. I resolved to not grow food in my front yard again.
Where I live now, the worst I’ve had to deal with is someone stealing my Sunday paper - the only day I care that much about, for the coupons - if I dare sleep past 8:30 am or so. (Worse yet, judging by our out-of-the-way location, it’s probably someone walking back home from the church up the block.)
I read a letter to an advice columnist recently, talking about someone seeing a grandma taking a toddler around the neighborhood, “foraging” food out of yards, including picking mushrooms out of lawns, without ever knocking to ask permission. (What a great double lesson for a toddler - trespass and steal food, and eat wild mushrooms.*) The suggestion of fake pesticide signs was made; perhaps scary “ornamental only, not meant for human consumption” or “genetically modified, unsafe to eat” signs could be made as well.
- Grandma might well be a mushroom expert. Little kids aren’t.
I’ve got one for you. My grandfather owned a decent sized piece of land out in the boonies. One long side of it was bordered by a dirt county road. The land was useless for farming. So, beside the small part with a house or trailer on it most of it was left to grow wild. Along the road were plenty of wild blueberry bushes. Gramps didn’t care if people hunted on the property, walked on it or picked blueberries.
Well, he comes along one day and here is a family with a pickup truck with the back piled high with the blueberry bushes. The family doesnt know its Gramps that owns the land. He observes that thats a lot of blueberry bushes and asks where they are going to plant all those (he probably wasnt too happy that they were stealing them but he would let it slide). They replied that they weren’t going to replant them, they were just going to take them home and pick the berries later and then throw the bushes away :eek:
Lazy fucking thieving bastards. I understand the exhange went decidely downhill after that factoid 
Holy shit! :eek:
Incidence of plant/food crop theft is why I avoid growing anything I’d hate to have stolen in the front yard. I have lost veggies grown in a community garden (more on that problem here) and had the occasional potted plant stolen over the years.
There are various strategies for preventing theft (warning signs about toxic pesticide use, chaining down valuable woody plants, spraying evergreens with a temporary orange dye around Xmas time etc.).
I might share with someone who asks nicely, but if I catch a thief in the act, it gets the hose*.
*there are motion detecting devices that spray water on intruders. They are meant for creatures like deer, but I imagine the effect on human grazers would be fun too.
I hope it wasn’t a peck of pickled peppers.
My story: A few years back, a neighbor (who I know, but not all that well) asked if she could come into my yard and pick a few lemons from my tree. Sure, I said. She replied: Thanks, I already picked all the ones I could reach from outside the fence.
I’m happy to share, especially since I don’t use that many lemons, and I got quite a few on that tree. But how could you not ask first?!?!?
Speaking as a neighboring San Diegan…they were delicious, thanks…
No, no, of course I didn’t… I detest this kind of thievery. My paw had a row of fir trees in front of his house, and, every year, some rat-bassard would cut down one or two for their Christmas tree. How anyone can sustain the cognitive dissonance of stealing a Christmas tree staggers my imagination. That ain’t keeping the Christ in Christmas, nohow!
I don’t have a garden… But I did once have a full load of laundry pilfered from my apartment laundry room. During the wash, too, so they carted it all away wet and dripping. Sheesh. May they have much pleasure of my skeevy skivvies!
Trinopus
Once I was walking home and about a block away from my front yard, I saw someone walking with a bunch of yellow mums. When I got to my house, I realized they were MY yellow mums, which she cut right from the middle of the plant, so the rest of them were just sadly sagging to the sides instead of being a nice round mass of flowers. I turned around to chase her down, but she was gone. Damn that made me mad.
Awhile back I was reading about a guy in upstate New York who was sent to prison for abducting and murdering a young girl, was eventually released and started a new career murdering prostitutes. The book mentioned that during the holiday season he came home with a Xmas tree that (as he proudly told his family) he had cut down from a neighbor’s yard.
I mean, serial killing is one thing, but ripping off a tree like that? What a sociopath!
Wow, it seems this isn’t as uncommon as I would have thought. I still can’t quite picture the person who would come in and cut the peppers off a potted plant, and not just take the whole pot. It’s either a very specific yet oddly-tuned code of ethics, or possibly he/she just wants us to grow more to facilitate next month’s foraging.
Perhaps the thief hoped that the missing peppers might get blamed on the local wildlife, rather than the local lowlife? It’s a lot harder to blame garden pests if the whole pot goes missing.
When I lived in Austin, the rental house had a big ol’ loquat (similar) tree that put out an enormous amount of fruit. One evening a couple came by with a stroller, explained politely the previous tenants had let them have some fruit, and would we mind if they took some?
No, of course we didn’t mind. All well and good.
A few days later, the Other Shoe and I hear a funny noise coming from directly overhead while we were watching TV. Stepped out front to find a white-bearded semi-homeless-lookin’ dude ON OUR ROOF picking fruit. He looked like Santa, except with decidedly less Christmas spirit.
Pretty sure the tenants hadn’t given him permission to do THAT! Apparently, it was a popular tree with the locals. 
Last time we had a sizable garden, it was fenced and we had both a husky shepherd hybrid and a 130 pound wolf hybrid. Nobody bothered our garden. Hell, the deer didn’t even bother our garden
Every time my brother-in-law’s father comes for a visit, he brings a couple of shopping bags full of fresh-picked oranges. Lucky guy, he “found” them in other people’s yards.
At least he’s to frail now to do that sort of thing anymore.
There’s an old story of a farmer who’s upset with people stealing his watermelons, so he puts out a sign that says “One of these watermelons is poisoned.” He goes out to the patch one morning and someone left another sign stating “Now two of these watermelons are poisoned…”