Edible or Ornamental?

nobody@vox.com(spidra) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:38:32 -0800

Why do some gardeners always assume you have to be either/or? Yesterday I made an impulse stop at Orchard Nursery in Lafayette, CA. I was stopping by hoping I'd find some Tuffits at a price I could afford. I figured I probably wouldn't, but since I'd spent the gas money to do an errand out in Pleasant Hill, I was trying to get the most bang out of my gasoline buck as possible.

While there, I saw a couple thing I was interested in that didn't usually appear at Berkeley Hort. Strawberry "Pink Panda", a variegated alpine strawberry, and Fragaria virginiana "Donner Lake Blue". I'm trying to get better about tracking my garden purchases so last night I took out the receipt and was about to write down details in my garden journal on MyFolia.com I discovered I'd been charged tax on the strawberries. Now, in the state of California it is illegal to tax food, including food plants. Many bigger nurseries don't make any differentiation. I was surprised that a nursery as good as Orchard is didn't, but I chalked it up to an inexperienced cashier or an overly-computerized system. In the past, I would have just sucked it up. But I'm trying to be more assertive so I called up to see if I could get the money charged back to my credit card without having to waste gas money driving out there again.

It took a bit of phone-switching until I reached the person with the power to do this. The first person I talked to said "are you going to eat them?" "Of course!" I said. "I'm an edible landscaper and I wouldn't have bought strawberries that don't bear edible fruit." When I reached the fellow in charge of approving the refunding of the mistaken taxing and he heard the varieties I'd bought, he snapped back to me "Those are ornamentals". Well, if they happen to be used by some ONLY as ornamentals, that's their loss. I'm interested in edible landscaping.

I was surprised at the amount of proving I had to do. Look, tons of people buy kumquat trees for ornaments and never eat them. Do the state tax police go around making sure that someone eats every lemon off the lemon tree you just bought? No. I can't help it that some people are narrow-minded enough not to consider alpine strawberries worth eating. They're strawberries, they're food, and I eat them. So there.

Coincidentally, the subject of this month's CRFG meeting (to be held at my house) is: Edible Landscaping.

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The Gimpy Gardener

Edible or Ornamental?