The year of the choko

Ash Uncles is running out of ideas and, in a town of 14 residents, neighbours to give his hundreds of chokos away to.

He’s just harvested a whopping 100kg of the bland green vegetables from the garden beside his 111-year-old cottage in Whangamomona, eastern Taranaki. The vine lurked, quite well behaved, in his garden for several years, but this summer it unleashed a flood of green tendrils.

‘‘It took over my garden, it climbed all over my lemon tree and all among my silverbeet. There’s some blackberry and it grew all over that too. I’ve never seen them that prolific.’’

He’d begun to suspect there were going to be a few more chokos than usual when he found himself stepping on the knobbly fruits hidden under long grass, he said. Then the first frosts of winter killed off the vine leaves, revealing hundred of spiky green fruit dangling off the even thornier blackberry canes.

‘‘The blackberry canopy acted like a frame. I wore gloves but I still spent the evening sitting with a needle picking out all the prickles,’’ he said.

Wondering what to do with them, he rang the NZ Gardener magazine, and staff writer Barbara Smith offered some helpful advice.

‘‘She said it had been a good year for chokos, not just here but all around the country.

‘‘She said to treat them like a potato or a courgette, pickle them, fry them like a courgette. I’ve been doing that, putting them in soups and stews, but I’m just about choko-ed out now,’’ he said.

‘‘I’ve just been giving them away to anyone I can find, even ones that don’t want them.’’

‘‘People are pulling their curtains when they see me drive up because they don’t want any more chokos.’’

He’s also dropped off boxes of the fruit to the Salvation Army in Stratford, and also to Foodbanks in Stratford and Ha¯ wera.