We had a visit from our expert adviser, Sarah Wain. The immediate news was good: our tomato plants, to her surprise, have not been hit by blight. Sarah thinks this may be because the exposed position is now working to our advantage, the wind from the South Downs blow-drying the rain off all the plants. All we have to do is wait for them to ripen now.

There is worse news on many other fronts: two entire rows of broad beans have a “chocolate spot” fungal disease. There are hardly any pods and she says we may as well pull them up. Fungal attack has also hit some of the garlic (dried up and withered stalks being the clue) and the autumn onions, and we should take them all out now as they’re not going to get any bigger.

At least one of our potato varieties has blight and we need to pull all the tops off to prevent it getting down into the spuds themselves. The kale has been eaten by snails and the weeds are doing so well in all this rain that they are producing bursting pods of seeds to blow into the soil for next season’s weeds. Sarah says we should quickly cut them all off even if we don’t have time actually to pull up all the weeds.

Yet I am not downhearted, for two reasons. First, my fennel is glorious.

Sarah sounded delighted. “Look, Alice! You can grow fennel!” For the record, the most successful method is exactly as Sarah suggested: germinate in little degradable peat pots in the greenhouse, then plant those whole into the ground once you have your seedling.

The second reason is science. Like many people who failed chemistry at school (and biology and geography), I am rather in awe of science and love to possess a bit of it. Sarah told me that our aubergines need high potash tomato food to help create fruit and flowers, while the chilli plants need a balanced fertiliser general feed (sorry if this doesn’t make any sense, it’s what my notes say) to promote growth. Then she said this: all plant feeds have an NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) ratio. N should be higher than PK for growth, K should be higher than NP for flowers/fruit. P should be the high one for root development. It’s tremendously exciting.

Armed with my bit of science, I am off to the garden shop.

Explore Gardens

• Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

• Chelsea Flower Show

Times recommends

• Here comes the glass sun – garden honours Beatle
• Gardening tips: 10 things to know about Horny Goat Weed or Epimedium
• Diarmuid Gavin shares tips on how make your garden fun and funky