What do you add to your garden to keep your soil healthy, I mostly use seaweed, which I just throw on to the soil and let it rot down and it seems to work, also recommended is rock dust which adds various minerals and ofcourse garden compost and manure but what would you recommend for a health garden

Most of us know about forcing early rhubarb by covering the plant to exclude light, forcing the stalks to grow long and pale in their search for light.
Chicory is another one - old leaves cur down and plant kept in the dark to grow its pale, sweet chicons.

I've never tried this technique but there must be other plants that can be forced in this way for an early crop? 
I'm experimenting with lovage, covered with a bucket, to see if it will grow longer stalks with a milder taste than the fresh ones - more like celery.

Which reminds me  we wrap celery and cardoons to exclude light and stay pale and interesting, and earth up leeks and  salad onions for longer white stems. 
I've also read about dandelions being grown in the dark for salad leaves. .........and, of course, mung bean sprouts are grown in the dark to stay white.

Any other plants?
Have you tried it? Success or failure?

I have a Victoria Plum that usually gives a large crop. Unfortunately, it had to be uprooted and moved today. It is about 15 to 20 years old so could well not survive. It did retain quite a reasonable amount of roots.

Does anyone have any advice on the best way to prune it and when?

   

A little game!! 
Can you Name the Butterflies in the image?

Don't post your answers until you've identified them all (or most of them) as, I know what you lot are like and you'll cheat. 

Real Seeds advice 
https://realseeds.co.uk/germination.html...EVK-N33jkI

I planted Japanese onion sets in autumn (about October if I remember rightly).

I now have my spring planted sets ready to go in and looking at my autumn planted sets, some haven't even put out a growing shoot yet. They have a few roots but that's about all.
Usually when I am ready to plant out the spring sets the Japs are about 6 inches tall......but not this year.

Anyone else's Japs lagging behind?

I think I have decided on a little experiment with some first earlies.

Using 3 30ltr pots I am going to put 3 seed potatoes in each with different growing mediums

1 x 50 50 mix straw and normal soil from the plot
1 x well rotted manure
1 x compost from the compost bin

Jazzy is the potato of choice

Anyone tried anything similar?

Qurious to know if anyone practices sowing or growing by the phases of the moon, I can understand how the water level can be affected by the moon but does it make any difference to seed growth, so if you use it is there a noticeable difference?

Hero - Captain Sir Tom Moore

Basically I was looking for a crochet hook in amongst my huge stores of haberdashery, my own and inherited. 
I found these pliers once belonging to MiL.  Anyone know what they might have been used for?
They were made by Maun Industries of Mansfield and I can even find a replica for sale on Ebay, but no mention of their particular use.