Agriculture Guerrilla gardening of spuds vs tended growing areas

Does Guerrilla Gardening Work? - The Grow Network : The Grow Network (ripped off from from Survivalblog.com) [I would note that Survivalblog.com pays other authors for the content for the most part. I've had some of my work posted there - not a site I would normally recommend...]
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As I wander the web, looking for gardening article in the winter (it is winter here) I often see references to so-called 'Guerrilla gardening".
This generally refers to planting domesticated food plants on ground you don't or 'out in the wild' - with the expectation that food would be found there in extremum. The ultimate plant and forget kind of food production.

The linked article discusses this to some extent - cutting to the bottom line - it was a failure.

Gardening indicates an active role in crop management. walking away rarely works - nature in quite competitive for both sunshine and water/nutrients.
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Having said that - so-called 'volunteer' potatoes can do quite well, in old gardening spaces - once established. .
These are seen as a bad thing in both active gardens and large farms - being a potential reservoir for blight. (EB1972E (wsu.edu))
However,... It is entirely possible to harvest at least some potatoes that missed be harvested prior years and produce new plants. I place these in the same category as the Guerrilla plants - maybe you will find some, but most likely not. Harvesting these would be seasonal as well.

If you have witnessed any successful Guerrilla Garden plots, I would love to hear about it.
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Yep, could definitely see where NOT having crop rotation would eventually lead to failure, either from disease or critters hungry for your crops. Try planting squashes or pumpkins in the same area, more than 2 years running, and watch how you'll be inundated with squash bugs!
I would think that most anything that has the crop in the ground might be a bit more likely to survive, though you'd still want to rotate what's where, from year to year. If potatoes work, so should turnips, radishes, even carrots. If your growing season is long enough, sweet potatoes would be a GREAT choice, as they're versatile, and full of necessary carbs.
For above ground crops, if you could establish them, I'm thinking tomatoes, peppers and sunflowers would be good to go, once they get a fighting chance. Pepper plants will basically grow as big as the container they're in....so if they're planted outside, and given the chance to get big enough, they'll grow quite large. Indeterminate tomatoes could be started, and a natural looking trellis set up for them to climb on (the idea being, just make sure the trellis doesn't stand out, right?). Sunflowers are practically self-reproducing, as all it takes is for hungry birds to peck some seeds off, that make it to the ground, and they're coming back the following year.

 

If planted with Fava beans, the beans provide N2 from the air for the spuds and 'deter' Potato bugs. The beans should be planted 'behind' the spuds to avoid shadowing the growing potato plants.

Fava beans are also a good cover crop and can be harvested prior to planting spuds, with the chopped stems used for mulch.

We are going to try corn, fava beans and spuds as a companion set. The corn is the wild card - and will be planted 'behind' the corn.

 

Three plants that I know are plant and forget here near the beach are grapes, bamboo and rosemary. The grapes and bamboo you might prefer a distance away on accessible land because they can get out of control when left alone. They are easily spotted by a sharp eye once they have a couple years growth, but you can scatter plantings widely.
The rosemary is odd. With no cultivation it will grow a trunk along the ground toward the East, looking much like a flattened pine tree. Add the green leaves to soaps for a naturally fragrant bath.

Another food plant that seems to do well with zero maintenance is the fig tree. I think you could see mine from space. It dominates an entire corner of the back yard. It got flattened by Hurricane Isaias.
I thought it was surely dead. It bounced right back and grew bigger. I need to do some serious trimming on this monster

 

different ideas of what guerrilla gardening means - for the most part - if you take a typical garden plot veggie out into the wild and expect it to flourish - you'll be disappointed ....

if you mix a typical veggie like carrots into a flower bed - only a gardener would recognize the sprout top as a carrot - that's guerilla gardening also - with better results ....

you get root crops started that need little to no maintenance - like asparagus, rhubarb, Jeruselum artichoke - in more wild plots - you can expect some results - same with planting fruit tree saplings and berry bushes >>>> that's realistic guerilla gardening also ....

 

Cherry & Grape tomatoes are versatile perennials. Put them in flower beds that get lots of sun. Tend the beds and they will reseed themselves. I have some that were initially planted in 2003. They come up faithfully every year after the frost is finished.

 

That's what's commonly known as edible landscaping, and there's TONS of info out there, on how to do it. Mix decent looking fruit & veggie crops in with flowers (which can draw in beneficial bugs). Asparagus, when it first pops out in the springtime, looks like what you find in the grocery store. But once you stop cutting off the growths, you'll end up with some nice fern-like growth, upwards of 6 to 8 feet tall, that will stay green until the first frost (and then yellows). Plant some tomatoes in amongst them, and you'll end up with a bountiful crop of those, too!

 

Potato's would be good in an open untended area as they make deer and elk sick (night shade family) and would not be prone to being eaten by large critters. Rabbits do have their way with the leaves and can stunt the plants