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Thank you @On the Levels, those small irises really do have one of the best blues in the garden, shame they don’t last long .

Choose a couple of stems and scrape a little bark off. If it's dry and brown then it's dead. If there is any green it may still be alive. If so when the buds are beginning to break spray with a dilute seaweed TONIC (not feed). This may help stimulate new growth. I agree Lornicera, or...

Women bearing 5,6,7 or more children are not unusual even now. Not all will survive to become adults particularly in countries where contraception aid, maternal and general health care is poor or non existent as well as a poor economy. Men can obviously father many times that number and it...

I think I poked them vertically into the compost. If I remember rightly they're quite big and easy to handle individually. If you have lots of seed you could try different ways and see what works for you.

That one’s a good vibrant blue @Clare G, now on my list .

One thing I would do if I was planning my garden anew is to put a paved path all around the outside, wide enough to stand a stepladder on or push a wheelbarrow. It provides safe access to the back of the borders for weeding and to hedges and fences for trimming. You think it is going to take up...

Landrace Gardening by Joseph Lofthouse is an interesting book about this kind of thing.

It needs a good prune, I'd remove perhaps half the branches coming from the base, any crossing branches and any obviously dead growth. I wonder if it could be a red currant rather than a black currant.

Something I’ve done for years but a few years back, the Levington compost I got was so damn woody that the germination was really poor. Usually, I’d just scatter some seeds on the top of a pot full of compo then rake them in with my hand. Got a different method now.

Good lights for little cost! @CanadianLori My problem at present is lack of places to put all my propagators! Even if they have lights (so don't need windowsills) they've got to be near sockets.

Thank you for the replies, really appreciate the insights and advice

I use pencil, then at the end of season I collect all the labels. The ones that didn't break from the light get washed (using sponge and soap), then I use eraser to clean whatever written.