Total loss

[bower]

The first vegetable garden I ever had, it was my Dad's idea. Dig up a strip in your city backyard and plant a row of cabbages. They headed up perfectly and were just ready to harvest, when one night somebody came and took every last one! The whole row.
Just goes to show, gardeners are undaunted.
But the people who rob gardens, go figure that out...
Time for some security lights at your community garden, I'd say. Although froggie may not like it, I believe it's necessary.

[Gardadore]

Really feel for you! What a terrible thing to happen after all that work! Just shows that the two legged creatures can be far more destructive than the 4 legged. At least the 4 legged don’t take tools and wheelbarrows!

[worth1]

Horrible.

[Shule]

I'm sorry about your garden loss, Patti. Have you checked the farmer's markets to see if the thief is selling the stuff there?

[brownrexx]

So sorry to hear about this. My very first garden, when I lived in an apartment was a rented community plot behind a church and one day I arrived to find that someone had smashed everyone's melons with a baseball bat.

What is wrong with people?

[HL2601]

Gosh, hearing this story just makes me sick. I am so sorry this happened to you. What is wrong with people??!!

I will definitely be able to send some extra things in to MMMM on your behalf. If folks you were sponsoring want to contact me for a sponsor please PM
Heide

[MissS]

Gosh, hearing this story just makes me sick. I am so sorry this happened to you. What is wrong with people??!!

I will definitely be able to send some extra things in to MMMM on your behalf. If folks you were sponsoring want to contact me for a sponsor please PM
Heide

Heide, you are a gem! I do have enough seed processed to cover the people that I already took on. I had wanted to sponsor about 6 people this year but that now looks like a lost cause. So, if you see people looking for a sponsor, please pick them up. It's important for us to bring up new gardeners to the world.

[MissS]

I did go to the gardens today to see how everyone else's gardens were. One woman had a sign in front of her plot saying to bring back her cart or she would call the police. Four gardens close to me had pulled their fences and abandoned their gardens. Many gardens still looked great. It appears that the culprits did not want anything to do with peppers. Mine are fine and so are everyone else's. This is so sad. I wonder how many people there will not be coming back next year. I sure am reconsidering signing up again.

[Amateurinawe]

This is soul destroying, just shows even in difficult times there are some people on the make and exploiting. Many years ago, someone stole my car to get a free ride home. Then they torched it. It was my first car and I worked hard for it. I remember feeling the senseless destruction was personal, but it never is. The only thing being thought of is themselves and there really is no thought for anyone else. No room for conscience in such a small mind occupied solely with their own narcisism and greed. Bounce back, don't let the selfish losers take any more happiness. You're fantastic people - you know you are and you know who you are.

[fluffy_gumbo]

That's just really sad, Patti. I am a part of a community garden as well, but we got many watchful eyes around this neighborhood, so major theft has not been an issue. It is sad that just a few unsavory people can muck up a nice thing like what a community garden is supposed to be. It's not a hard thing to ask if you see something is aplenty. It's weirdly both hard and not hard for me to imagine not having a conscience of stealing someone's hard work.
Some automatic motion-sensing lights along with a bluff cautionary sign maybe like "we got security cameras" might help scare them off. It's kind of a lot of effort but I'd do it since the community garden is my only place to garden.

[Growing Coastal]

I did go to the gardens today to see how everyone else's gardens were. One woman had a sign in front of her plot saying to bring back her cart or she would call the police. Four gardens close to me had pulled their fences and abandoned their gardens. Many gardens still looked great. It appears that the culprits did not want anything to do with peppers. Mine are fine and so are everyone else's. This is so sad. I wonder how many people there will not be coming back next year. I sure am reconsidering signing up again.

One of my neighbours used to place 'free' plants on her cart and put it by the side of the road. No problem until one day the cart was stolen. Neighbour did tell the police and later, the cart was returned, painted a different colour. It had been used by a homeless person. Usually they use grocery buggies. Both are darned expensive!

[MissS]

I did go to the gardens today to see how everyone else's gardens were. One woman had a sign in front of her plot saying to bring back her cart or she would call the police. Four gardens close to me had pulled their fences and abandoned their gardens. Many gardens still looked great. It appears that the culprits did not want anything to do with peppers. Mine are fine and so are everyone else's. This is so sad. I wonder how many people there will not be coming back next year. I sure am reconsidering signing up again.

One of my neighbours used to place 'free' plants on her cart and put it by the side of the road. No problem until one day the cart was stolen. Neighbour did tell the police and later, the cart was returned, painted a different colour. It had been used by a homeless person. Usually they use grocery buggies. Both are darned expensive!

Gosh that's so sad. After the cart was returned and learning who had it, I would have gone and bought them something else to pull their things around with. While it was wrong for them to take the cart for sure, they did really need it. In this instance taking the food and stuff was not an amount needed for someone's meal this was out of greed and for personal profit. Sadly, I think that it was someone who gardens there too. How else would they know what plants to dig and where they were and which plots to go to harvest from.

[Growing Coastal]

Oh, that lady with the cart did a lot for the homeless in past years as she thought her alcoholic dad, who left his young family, may have been homeless himself. She used to take food to the homeless here, hot baked potatoes, etc until it got to be too much, I guess. The cart being a final straw. She hurts. She needs it for her garden.

One must be compassionate wisely.
Our homeless, in large part, are transient addicts. It is simply a fact that the crime rate has gone up a lot since we have had such a large influx of them. They need drug money. Maybe I notice more because I live not far from the library where there are usually services available. Since COVID has reduced access to that and many public places it is much quieter on the streets around here now.
I do feel sorry for them but do not trust the drugs in them.
Our town has now housed a number of people in a new building. Most of those are local homegrown homeless ones. We live in the warmer part of the country and so, people come but we simply cannot house every homeless person in Canada! Nor supply them all with carts. Our grocery stores are doing a great job of that and charging us all more for our groceries. Broken, abandoned carts abound.
So, no garden carts!

[MissS]

It seems that the homeless issue is a difficult one everywhere and with COVID it will only be getting worse. I don't know what the shelters will do this year with the people due to COVID. The drugs and now the threat of disease, it's problematic and frightening.

[worth1]

Someone executed a 60 something year old man the other night in Austin.
Walked up and shot him in the head and walked off.'
I think four shots were heard fired.
He was asleep on a bench at a bus stop.
The problem with being homeless is the people that dont use drugs have to put up with people that do.
It's like a community all its own.
One place on shoal creek they are camped out and when the rains came all the trash and human waste washed down stream.
The people that live in houses there can hear and see all manner of things going on day and night.
But this isn't limited to shoal creek it is everywhere.
Places where even I use to walk years ago I wouldn't go into now without a weapon to protect myself.
Like the many trails in the woods along the creeks throughout Austin.
What baffles me is the fact there seems to be no leadership within the homeless and no structure to keep the camps clean.
This is a sure sign of drug use and or no hope.
If they wanted to they could have a community within a community with some sort of structure and meaning.
The other problem is many are mentally ill.
I drive by homeless camps every day right next to where I work.'
Right next to them are well to do people living in apartments.
So it's like you live in a place that is nice but right next to you there are tent and shanty towns with trash everywhere.
In my opinion our whole system has collapsed and left these people behind.
Don't judge too harshly the next one could be anyone including one of us.
And what a better way to numb the felling of hopelessness than with drugs.
I guess to get to the point, in my opinion is, to just come out and say a homeless person did something is just like blaming it on a person of any race.
This in a way criminalizes all homeless people.
It would be like constantly saying a construction worker did it and only picking out crimes that construction workers did.
There is a lot of crime going on but when the news picks out the homeless to report on it makes it look like we have a homeless crime problem far beyond the other crimes going on that aren't homeless.
We need to get back to putting a face and name to people and stop pointing out who and or what they are by race homelessness and occupation.
Or if we do, be fair about it with everyone not just one demographic group.
As for the vast amounts of stuff stolen in the garden maybe it is a homeless gourmet cooking for the whole camp.
One of the biggest thieves I was ever around was a spoiled rich guy, somehow he seemed deserving to everything he stole.
So what if they put the camping ban back in place then what would happen?
Now we have homeless folks without a tent over their head.
What good will that do?
Nothing, it will just make it worse.
To be honest I'm all for the folks camping under the overpasses, the city has put in porta jons, hand washing stations and trash cans.
They are people too and it is better than the alternative.

[Growing Coastal]

It seems that the homeless issue is a difficult one everywhere and with COVID it will only be getting worse. I don't know what the shelters will do this year with the people due to COVID. The drugs and now the threat of disease, it's problematic and frightening.

Our provincial gov't has given money to communities to build housing for these people. Always an issue when one is proposed in a community and people protest. We got one and so far, so good with not too much trouble there.
Our public health top official has led gov't to allow prescribing drugs for known addicts. We have had more deaths from drug od's than from COVID in these past months.
In the big cities some of the hotel/motel spaces have been bought this year to provide more safe housing but it is never enough.
On the bus one day pre-covid I spoke with an 80 yr old woman who was granted space in the new housing. She is not an addict but had led a very harsh life (husband/sons) and went through a rigorous interview process to get her space as all residents did. No longer do I see the local man afflicted with schizophrenia sitting out on the street all day.
No more do I go to look for mushrooms in a woods not far from my home. Too many signs of campers I do not know.
My son lives near a place that rents space to some. Son has met a few of these people and has found them to be quite damaged from the drugs they have taken, brains not functioning properly anymore and never will.

Sorry Patti. I did not mean to hijack your thread into the misery that is homelessness.

[worth1]

It is just as much my fault as it is yours [mention]Growing Coastal[/mention] for hijacking thread and the reason it took so long to post.
Simply because it was so infuriating.
Personally I dont think it was a homeless person that did this but who knows.
We shall more than likely never know.
This reminds me of the time I spent countless hours building and welding a BBQ grill pit thing only to have it stolen right after I finished it.

[GoDawgs]

A total loss that is totally reprehensible. I'm wondering if the stolen veggies and the equipment made it to a flea market somewhere. I don't care what circumstances the thief is in. Theft is a criminal charge and to be prosecuted. It's bad enough when four legged critters barge in but two legged varmints are especially odious. Anyone in my garden at night would experience a shotgun blast over their head. They'd probably "fertilize" the garden while running out and not be back any time soon.

Next year perhaps one of those motion detector night lights can be installed along with one camera. Just having a light come on all of a sudden can be a deterrent. Those lights aren't all that expensive and fellow gardeners would probably be willing to chip in a couple dollars each.

I'm really sorry you lost all of your precious tomatoes and for the losses all of your gardeners had. But I hope everybody will be back next spring and not let this, uh, "person" (thought better about what I was going to call them) spoil what may be their only place to garden.

[Hilldale]

I'm so sorry to hear that all of your hard work and love of gardening has come to this. As a gardener, I feel your pain!

[Sue_CT]

I agree, Worth. It sounds like it had to be someone with a large enough vehicle to put all that stuff in, like a truck or van. Because crime is rampant in some segments of that population, it is tempting to blame all of them for it, when in truth they are at least as often the victims as they are ciminals. There are some kind, honest and gentle souls living on the streets as well as desperate drug addicts and hardened criminals. The same can be said of any race or ethnicity. That said, sometimes the reasons people are homeless, such as drug addicts, as well as the homelessness itself can make people desperate. But that is not what this sounds like to me. I also would have checked local farmers markets and flea markets, etc. I hope the police were called. At least they if come upon the stuff they will know where it belongs. It is never fair to make assumptions and blame any group of people for problems without any real evidence.