The cabbage patch convert

First-time gardener Alex Mitchell finds herself getting over-heated about winter vegetables

Water, water and yet more water. Not for the thirsty aubergines, tomatoes, peppers and courgettes. No, for me, wandering around the polytunnel at 45C in a bikini. I knew I'd overdone it when the headache and trembling started.

Heat exhaustion, though, is a small price to pay for a Marconi rossa pepper that I've been nurturing since mid-January, and I console myself with the fact that all that sweating must be very good for the skin. To me, the odd thing about this situation is that, on a blistering July day, I've got to start thinking about the sort of warming stews that you prepare on a dark-December afternoon at 3pm. For it's time to transplant your leeks and to sow 'Autumn King' carrots. It doesn't seem right, especially since I haven't even had my first Pimms yet. But, as I'm beginning to realise, nature has an eccentric timetable.
Alex Mitchell

Want Brussels sprouts for Christmas? Better sow in March. Leeks and parsnips? February. Rhubarb? That'll be a year. As for asparagus, try coming back after your first hip replacement operation.

We're not used to being this patient. It's like putting in an order on Ocado, the online supermarket, in January for a Christmas delivery in two years' time.

Which makes me think that the shops have their pricing all wrong. The high cost of asparagus, the truffle of the vegetable world, I can understand. But I'd like to propose a new value system based on hassle. So rocket, radishes and baby leaf salad, which go from seed to harvest in a couple of weeks, -would be free. A peach? £5 each. As for Brussels sprouts, I think about £10 per sprout would be fair.

Does anyone have any idea how difficult it is to grow the sort of green, round, mushy things that end up left at the side of people's plates at Christmas? The heartache that goes into each unopened flower bud (for that is what a sprout is)… Nothing in the plant world is as beleaguered as this brassica. Not only do they take almost a year to grow, but everything in the animal kingdom wants to destroy them. Unless you cover them with a net (which looks about as attractive in your garden as a row of Brussels sprouts covered with a net), the aphids, caterpillars, slugs or pigeons will eradicate them. That's not all. If you grow them in the same place for more than a year, you'll probably get club root disease, and other gardeners will back away from you in horrror making the sign of the cross.

If the world were sane, French gourmets would flock to Norfolk for cabbage tastings and sprouts would be exported to Tuscan delis, while piles of baby lettuce leaves would be pushed aside by disgruntled schoolchildren. But then what do I know? I've got heat exhaustion.