What Courgette Shortage?

Is it April yet?   

 Last week’s warm sunny weather would have you think so and so would the shops.  I was down at one of our local bargain stores the other day looking up and down the “buy cheap, buy twice” isles when I came across the huge range of products dedicated to gardening. 

These displays appeared straight after Christmas, the leftovers of which are now demoted to the end of the isle in the reduced to sell section.  Most of the garden products seem to be impulse buys and it wouldn’t be long before the basket was full of things that you didn’t need and probably never use. It seems as long as it’s under a couple of pounds it doesn’t really matter if it breaks or never used. It really does, especially if you are putting all your trust in a dodgy hand trowel that snaps when you are putting pressure on it. Not good.

Anyway, I digress, I’m not here to rant about the disposable direction gardening devices are going, it’s more to highlight the fact that I am no way near to even thinking about buying anything, not even a ball of string or a seed packet yet, my hessian string from last year is still dangling on the bean poles near the compost bags.

Jobs to do in February

I used to welcome the dormant season in the garden but we just don’t seem to get one now. It’s a mad rush to get growing again even though in my mind it’s still the middle of winter. The list of jobs to do below then is only a recommendation. I might actually do one or two of them myself in the coming weeks.

Actually, you know what? I’m not even going to bother writing them down. If you want to go and do a bit of spring preparation you are on your own, I’m staying indoors for a while longer!

Courgette , what crisis?

One vegetable that doesn’t like cold snaps is the courgette. So much so that they are apparently in short supply this year. The growers in Europe had a lot of their crops fail because of the drop in temperatures. This isn’t the main reason we don’t see them on the supermarket shelves though. It’s down to pricing, the growers needed to at least triple their prices to get a decent return on their investments but the supermarkets felt that customers wouldn’t be prepared to pay €5 a kilo for them and refused to buy them in.

So for this season at least we’ll cast courgettes into the same void as asparagus and avocado which are classed as “Treat vegetables”, Pay day vegetables or “not for the likes of me vegetables”.

Benefiting

Just like in any type of crisis, be it financial, emotional or geographic, there’s always someone to benefit from these types of issues.  One company has started shredding the courgettes into spaghetti shaped lengths, putting them in a plastic bag and fancy cardboard box with a little window in it. It says on the label “made from one whole courgette”, although it can’t be larger than a pencil as the dried material would fit into an eggcup. It weighs in at 20g and retails for about €2 so I reckon the courgettes in question would go for around €100 a kg at my calculation. In fact I’ve missed a marketing opportunity here as I had loads last year and could have made mine into spaghetti. A few of mine are still on the microwave turning from green to yellow as I’ve not got around to eating them yet, at the current rate they are going for I’d get about €50 down on the market, they’ll soon need to lock then in protective cabinets or tag them with an alarm. 

I also have one in the back garden that I have watched with interest over the last few months as nature reclaims it. All that is left is the hard outer shell which is so fragile you could poke a finger though it. 

I’ve just realized that the whole of this week’s article is about me having a bit of a moan. I think I know the problem; I need to get into the garden and do a bit of preparation.  Marketing and advertising aside, I think it’s actually just good for my health to be stood in the garden pottering around regardless of what needs doing. There’s no right or wrong time, we gardeners just do.