On Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:34:57 +0100, Judith in England wrote:

I wonder do people use the seedling specific composts for starting off
seeds or just use the general purpose stuff?

Up until last year I always used a multi-purpose compost for everything.
At one time GroBags were much cheaper than bagged compost so I always used
those.]

With the very variable weather last year I had several germination
failures for small seeds such as tomatoes, and after much searching
managed to find some seed compost.
[They don't seem to stock it much in the sheds, for some reason.]

I had good germination with this, but then again the weather had improved.

I find the peat free multi-purpose composts far too coarse for germinating
small seeds.
I suppose that the peat gives a fineness to the compost that hasn't been
matched by other means yet.

Anyway, I would suggest seed compost for small seeds and almost anything
for larger ones.

Cheers

Dave R