In Praise of the Vegetable Collective
/This is a post about gardening, but it’s also a post about the inevitable and primal horror of growing far too many courgettes.
But I am getting ahead of myself! The horror comes later, because gardening starts with hope.
HOPE AND A SURPRISINGLY EXPENSIVE TRIP TO BUNNINGS
You plant the seed! Or seedling. Or seedlet. Or tree. And you look at how nicely you’ve planted it, and how settled it looks in its new home, and how it is nestled gently into the earth, and you think hopeful thoughts. Also prideful thoughts because holy shit I planted that like a spectacular gardening expert, I should probably ring Maggie Barry right now and let her know there’s a new sheriff in town, and that sheriff is planting the fuck out of these courgettes.
The hopeful thoughts grow with the plant (if the plant dies, the hope stops, but this is easy to fix by simply purchasing another plant and having another go).
You become fond of the plant. Perhaps you talk to it. Perhaps you give it a name. “Percy Courgette,” you think*.
You think of the delicious and inexpensive meals you will one day create from the fruits of Percy Courgette, and you look upon the plant, and it is good.
TREAD SOFTLY, FOR YOU TREAD UPON MY DREAMS AND ALSO, ACCIDENTALLY, MY SEEDLINGS.
GET OUT OF MY GARDEN!
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* It doesn’t have to be a courgette, by the way. I gather green beans and feijoas are also notorious culprits.
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Then the first fruit appears! And with it, the excitement. “Look,” you say to your friends as you scroll through your many photos while their eyes slowly roll back in their head, “There’s a tiny courgette on Percy!”
The excitement turns to triumph as your courgettes grow and you pick and eat the first few. They still taste like courgettes but somehow better because you have grown them yourself. You give Percy a proud pat on the leaf. Possibly you also brag to your colleagues about what you cooked with your very own home-grown courgettes. You may also yap on about organics and cottage gardening and urban sustainability and this is what we call hubris.
Because then. Then.
One day you stand, surveying your garden, and you see that somehow without your noticing Percy Courgette has sprawled far beyond the confines of his original bed. You look upon this now-monstrous plant and its bumper crop that would (quantitively if not nutritionally) feed a small town for several weeks, and the excitement subsides, and in its place there seeps a hideous fear.
You have grown too many courgettes, and you do not know what to do with them.
Percy Courgette has betrayed you.
LOOK UPON MY COURGETTE PLANT, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR
Everyone has their own way of attempting to deal with this sudden transformation of their nice house into a heinously prolific vegetable factory:
Some people freeze them ‘for later’ and then reluctantly throw them out in six months’ time when an excess of homegrown beans requires the freezer space.
Some people heroically attempt to singlehandledly eat the lot, creating more and more outlandish courgette-based dishes, becoming wilder and wilder around the eyes, alienating their poor courgettesick family (who have taken to sighing heavily when dinner is presented and asking “…does this have courgettes in it?”). On a small positive note, they show a noticeable drop in how much courgette chat their friends are forced to endure.
Still others abandon the whole project and spend two weeks pretending the courgette plant isn’t even there, and then they have another problem, and that problem is marrows*.
And some make a preserved version of whatever bounty they have wrought, and spend the next three Christmases forcing dodgy pickle upon their nearest and dearest.
THIS KIMCHI IS A GIFT FOR YOU! WHAT DO YOU MEAN IS IT RELATED TO THE GREAT CABBAGE GLUT OF 2017? DON’T BE SO RUDE, IT IS A GIFT. HERE, HAVE ANOTHER JAR.
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* If you know one of these people, get to know when courgette season is upon you, and don’t invite them to any family events or friendly get-togethers during this period, for they will bring a stuffed marrow. Into your home!
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But, my overabundant friends, there is another path. That path is the Veg Collective.
The Veg Collective is a Facebook group started by a friend of mine who had made a terrible error to do with rhubarb. Anyone can invite people to join, and the only criteria are that the new member should:
Live in roughly the same geographical area as the rest of the Collective (nobody wants to courier a pumpkin), and
From time to time, grow too many vegetables, and
Be open to accepting the surplus vegetables of others.
And what you end up with is a safe space where anyone can say, free of judgment, “I have fucked up, I am in possession of an excess of beets” or “something is wrong with me, I grew ten million parsnips and I don’t even like them” or “does anyone need an onion or fifty” and “Dear Lord can somebody relieve me of these blasted green beans.” It is a magnificent thing, a Veg Collective.
However, to really sum up the Veg Collective, I shall let it speak for itself:
A Veg Collector, posting on December 10: a picture of a courgette, accompanied by the text, “First courgette of the season!”
The same Veg Collector, posting on December 24: a picture of many courgettes, accompanied by the text, “Anyone need emergency Christmas courgettes?”
And somebody actually did.
All hail the Veg Collective!
(Also please email me if you need an eggplant. We have so very many.)