Vegetables under the weather

Hail in Pukekohe and cold, wet weather throughout the country have hit vegetable crops but it is too soon to say how much more consumers might have to pay for potatoes, lettuce and cauliflowers this spring.

Pukekohe grower Bharat Bhana said the hailstorms which came through the region in the last few days had done more damage than wet weather, but in other parts of the country a wet spring has come on top of a soggy winter.

Potato growers who usually harvest 15 to 18 tonnes per hectare would probably only dig up eight tonnes when they came to maturity in Late October-early November. ‘‘Lettuce, onions, potatoes – the hail’s taken a toll on them, bruised up all the leaves and some of those crops won’t recover,’’ Bhana said.

He predicted vegetable costs would rise in stores because, even though they had smaller crops, they still had to put the same work into growing them.

LeaderBrand national sales manager Bevan Roach said it was not all ‘‘doom and gloom’’.

‘‘We’re coming out of a really wet period so anything that comes on top of it just adds to it. But we are into spring and in between the rain it’s warm so you’re not getting cold on top of cold.’’

‘‘We’re hopeful we’ll be able to catch up on some aspects and fill in some of the gaps.‘‘

Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman said consumers needed to understand that lower than normal supplies impacted on availability and cost. ‘‘Our growers use very sophisticated farming techniques to manage as many environmental factors as they can, but something like hail at the wrong time or rainfall of a metre more than previous years cannot always be mitigated.’’