SPRING officially arrives this week (9.59pm tonight, to be precise) and when we have had some sunny days between the recent gales it has felt like spring too.

It’s not just the yellow daffodils that appear to dominate at the moment but the yellow flowers of the gorse too, that prickly plant often seen growing along the coast. Even the yellow flower heads of the dandelion are making a colourful show on many verges.

However, it is the Forsythia that seems to have burst into colour almost overnight! As you can see from my photograph, my own Forsythia is putting on a show, though this variety has something a little bit special in that when the leaves appear after flowering they are bright yellow or golden in colour.

Gardeners’ World is also back on the telly, so it must be spring! Interestingly, Monty Don was talking of sowing seeds, both flowers and vegetables, something I’ve been talking about over the last few weeks.

Whether pricking off seedlings or potting up plug plants, we need to think of the compost they will end up growing in. Most gardeners, I suspect, will pop down to the local garden centre or even the supermarket and buy a bag or two of multi-purpose compost. However, there are many blends and materials used in making compost, such as peat, coir, wood shavings, recycled green waste etc, so it can all be a little confusing.

Also, compost can contain quick- or slow-release fertilisers or fertilisers with enhanced or added trace elements, and some composts contain wetting agents and other additives. The more additives the compost contains, the more it usually costs.

Irrespective of your views on peat as a compost medium, you will find that peat-based composts still dominate, mainly because peat is such a good and reliable medium to make compost and most plants grown in peat-based composts do well. Alternatives to peat are rather limited – coir-based composts, using the fibre extracted from the husk of coconuts, themselves have a high carbon footprint in transporting the material across the globe. Coir compost is a good alternative but needs careful water management as it holds water whist the compost surface looks dry, leading to overwatering.

Green recycled waste compost is another alternative but has such a variable consistency as green waste varies throughout the year.

Personally, a good peat alternative compost is that made from well-rotted leaf mould, though supplies of leaves are limited to the autumn, and then can take up to two years to become suitable.

When I was a young trainee, a lot of composts were home-made and principally from loam, peat-like sand was just an additive to the compost mix. In fact, there were standard compost mixtures which you may know as the ‘John Innes Compost,’ with blends simply referred to as one to three (the compost mixture is the same, but blend two contains twice as many nutrients as blend one, and three times the nutrients in blend three).

However, John Innes Compost is something you don’t see too much of these days, given it is a more loam-based compost. It is also a much heavier medium than peat, which adds to delivery costs. Despite this, it is the best compost when planting up permanent containers or raised beds as peat-based compost decays at a much faster rate and you end up with compost shrinkage. Also, loam-based composts add weight to containers meaning they are less likely to blow over.

Peat-based compost does have the advantage of being much lighter and some suppliers make peat-based composts even lighter by replacing the sand, which is added to aerate the compost and improve the draining with wooded fibres.

Personally, I like a bit of weight in my compost, and adding a bit of horticultural sand to the mix is a simple task.

To be honest, with most composts I buy I tend to add a few ‘additives’ of my own!