Well what a blustery and wet weekend with storm Ciara - and just when the garden was drying out. I hope you did not suffer too much damage to your property or garden (one of my plastic grow houses blew over, but fortunately it was an empty frame).

Despite the weather I was kept busy pricking off seedlings. The time to prick off seedlings is when you see the true leaves appearing in place of the seed leaves and seedlings should be pricked out sooner rather than later where they can become tray- or pot-bound.

Last week I talked about composts, this week I'll look at fertilisers. Much like composts, there are many different types of fertiliser so it can be confusing choosing the one you need. So back to basics: most fertilisers are a mixture on ‘NPK’ where ‘N', stands for nitrogen which promotes green growth; ‘P’ for phosphorous which promotes root growth; and ‘K’ for potassium, which promotes flower and fruit growth.

Most plants require a bit of each of these elements. When you look at fertiliser, following the NPK you will see a number like 7:7:7 which is the NPK values (in this case 7:7:7 is the NPK value for a popular fertiliser called Growmore and as such it is called a balanced fertiliser).

However, the higher the number, the more concentrated the nutrient is in the fertiliser. For example, a formula of 20:5:5 has four times more nitrogen than phosphorus and potassium. Sometimes you swill see a ‘0’ in the formula, this means it simply missing this nutrient.

Though, before you begin to apply fertilisers it’s a good idea to check the soil and test for the current balance of NPK which will then help you to determine what balance of fertiliser numbers will be appropriate for the garden soil needs. However, just to make things more complicated, not all plants require the same units of nutrients, so a bit of research in finding out plant fertiliser requirements will help to get the best out of your plants.

To help things along, a lot of fertiliser manufacturers have developed specific mixes for certain types of plants, such as rose fertilisers.

Although a little more expensive to buy, some also include a range of ‘Trace elements’ which will provide wider range of nutrients to the plants. In my view it's worth buying these as trace elements are required by plants. In low quantities they can still be missing from the garden soil.

When buying fertilisers, they will be either in a powder form (which you apply broadcast to the garden or around the base of a large plant), or in a liquid form (which you dilute in a watering can and apply over the plants). Granulated fertilisers need to be applied when the soil is damp and rain is forecast. Once applied it takes time to break down into a form that plants can use the nutrients so tends to last longer, though part is lost through rain leaching.

Liquid fertilisers when applied act more quickly as they are mainly applied to the plant foliage and absorbed quickly. This means it's only around for a short time, so liquid feeding of plants can become a weekly occurrence. However, unlike granulated fertilisers, liquid fertiliser can still be applied to plants during dry spells. Actually, using a combination of granulated and liquid fertiliser is a common way of keeping your plants well fed over the growing period.

Despite the recent storm and what has been a generally wet and cold winter, I was impressed to see how my rhubarb has developed so early in the season, and as you can see from my photograph this week I have been able to take a couple of harvest without the need to force the rhubarb.

Interestingly these particularly rhubarbs are recently new varieties (Poulton’s Pride and Livingstone) where the natural autumn rhubarb dormancy has been bred out of them. Not only do I have much later rhubarb crops going into early winter, they also sprout much earlier in the year providing what I would say is an out-of-season crop which was sweet and tasty!