Published: 6 April 2026 - Watch on YouTube
Welcome back to the garden. It is the very end of March here in West Sussex, and although the equinox teased us with a bit of spring, the weather has slid straight back to something that feels a lot more like January. It is around five degrees, the wind is bitterly cold, and I am very glad to have my shed to hide in. Today is a proper potting up day, so let me tell you what I got up to.
I sowed my sweet corn and pumpkins on the 21st, the same day as my tomatoes, and they have germinated really quickly. The pumpkin roots are already coming out of the bottom of my little Activia yoghurt pots, so it was time to give them bigger pots with more room and more compost to feed on. One of the pumpkins is Big Max, which is a big variety just as the name suggests. I have never grown it before because I have always kept to smaller types in my little garden, like Small Sugar and the cute Japanese Uchiki Kuri. Now that I have the allotment and the space, I thought why not give it a go. The seeds were a gift from Leanne, so thank you so much if you are watching.
The sweet corn is another first for me. The roots are not quite as developed as the pumpkins, and this one seedling was on the smaller side, but they are all coming along nicely. I need to do a bit more research on what corn likes and does not like. The seeds were gifted to me by a friend as well, so I am giving them my best go.
The tricky part at this time of year is deciding where these tender plants should live. I was tempted to move them into the greenhouse, which is safer than outside, but I am not sure how the sweet corn copes with cold, and even here in the very south of England the temperature still drops to around zero on some nights. At the very end of March, which frankly is bonkers. I do not want to risk all that effort to a random frost that sneaks in when it is not supposed to, so most likely I will keep the corn and pumpkins at home for a week or so until the weather improves.
The allotment is still not ready for planting. The soil there is heavy clay, so when it was wet it turned into mud deep enough to nearly pull your boots off, and now that it is a little drier it has gone rock hard. It really is two extremes of the same clay. One of you kindly suggested in a previous allotment vlog that rather than piling on more and more compost, I should bring in a solid layer of topsoil to build a proper structure on top of the clay. That is such valid advice, and honestly I had not thought of it. Compost eventually disappears because the plants feed on it, so it does not give you the lasting structure that topsoil does.
So the plan is to order a big bulk bag of topsoil and wait for a decent window of weather to shovel it into the beds. I have also registered my interest with local tree surgeons for any spare wood chip from their jobs, which will help me create a bit of structure around the plot. It will all take some organising, but we will manage. I just have not been able to get up there much lately, not since I planted the onions and did the weeding and mulching of the flower bed.
My tomatoes are still at home and germinating beautifully, some of the varieties at one hundred percent. I sowed eight varieties, five seeds of each, telling myself I was being restrained this year. Then I realised that is forty plants, which is actually more than last year, when I looked at my greenhouse full of pots and thought I had far too many. So much for limiting myself. Tomatoes are my favourite crop and there is just something about them that makes you want to sow a lot.
I do not honestly know where forty tomato plants are going to go, but challenge accepted. I always share seedlings with friends and my brother-in-law, and I get gifted plants in return, so it tends to balance itself out. In my first growing year I tried a bit of everything and ended up with pots absolutely everywhere. Then I spent a couple of years growing only what we love to eat. Now that I have the allotment, that discipline has rather gone out of the window.
While I still had the pots out, I potted up my beetroot too. They were sitting in an egg box in the greenhouse, so I simply scooped the little clumps out with a spoon and gave them more room for their roots. I like to multi-sow beetroot in bulk because it works best for me. Last year I planted some of those clumps straight into the ground and they gave me plenty of smaller beets that grew perfectly well. So much of my timing depends on what is happening with my daughter and how much time and energy I have on any given day.
I also decided to sow a few more seeds while I was in the swing of it. I sowed the Sunburst, which is a patisson type, a bit of a hybrid of cucumber, courgette and squash that I grew a couple of seasons ago and found interesting. I sowed more Small Sugar pumpkin too, which turned out to be a year past its date, so I put all six seeds in. I do not mind, I can always share the seedlings with the allotment families, and there are a few with children who might like them. Small Sugar is a variety I really recommend, a nice one meal size that you do not have to hustle with the way you do the bigger pumpkins.
I had been putting off the dahlia pots for weeks, quietly convinced the tubers had rotted. I finally ran out of excuses, so I started opening them up, and I could hardly believe it. The first one, a Sarah Raven variety, had a proper eye on it. It was alive. Sweet Natalie came next, the one I would be most upset to lose because I bought it for the name, as my daughter is called Natalia, and there was a pinkish eye on it too. I was so relieved.
One after another they surprised me. Chat Noir, the dark red one my husband brought home from Marks and Spencer, showed a new shoot the moment I touched it. Burle Marx already had several shoots coming, so I left it well alone. Cafe au Lait, the Royale version with the pinkish blush at the rim, had separated into two pieces with an eye on each, so hopefully I will get two plants from it. Wizard of Oz, a pompon variety, was firm and healthy with no rot and no shoots yet. Where I found rot I was cautious about cutting it out, and there was one tuber with growth on top that I genuinely could not identify. But overall, at least the majority came through, and after all my worrying that felt like a lovely result.
Rather than pot every tuber up, I decided to plant most of them straight into the flower border. This winter I dug out five or six verbena plants that had been sitting too close to the garage wall and getting battered sideways by our strong winds, which left a good amount of space. The dahlias I left in that border over winter, like Norwegian Glory, Dusky, Josie, Brown Sugar and La Belle Epoque, are already shooting up, so I like the idea of just leaving them in the ground and skipping all the kerfuffle of lifting and storing tubers each year.
I tried to think about colour as I placed them. Behind the salmon orange Port Sunlight rose I put Wizard of Oz, with the tall dark red Chat Noir behind that for contrast. In front of the Queen of Sweden, which is a powder pink, I tucked the dark burgundy Sarah Raven. A bit of Sweet Natalie went in near the Dusky as well. The leftover pieces, the two Sarah Raven types and Cafe au Lait, I potted up to release their shoots, and I may take some doubles to the allotment. I always like a few dahlias in pots on the decking where we sit in the summer, so between these and the eight new varieties I potted on the other day, I will have plenty.
It turned into a really productive day, and I am so happy with how it went, especially seeing that most of my dahlias made it through the winter after all that worrying. The wind can do its worst while I am tucked up in the shed getting on with jobs like this. Let me know if you grow dahlias and which ones are your favourites, and whether you are treating yourself to any new tubers this season. I will see you in the next video.
Tags: #SpringGardening #GrowingDahlias #PumpkinSeason #AllotmentLife #WestSussex #MyWindyGarden