No dig diary, 12th January 2026

“Peppers propagating!”, I whispered as I tapped the empty packets with my dibber, before using it to cast “Expecto Capsicum!” over the trays of newly-sown seeds…

All my pepper varieties are now sown, though thanks to other things that needed doing I had to spread it over two days. Given that the propagator is only just about getting up to temperature now despite being switched on by lunchtime last Saturday I don’t think there’s going to be an issue there.

I gave the polytunnel a water, too. The salad crops that went in last November when the tomatoes came out are getting pretty close to being edible now. I reckon they’ll be there before the end of the month unless the weather turns really dull and cold.

Because rust has been an issue with outdoor garlic in the past, that all gets planted under cover in the polytunnel (and in a greenhouse if I run out of space) now and the first shoots were just showing, perhaps 10mm high. I also found a few cloves that had been pulled up. I don’t know if it’s mice or birds that do it, but whatever it is they’re damn clever at finding the cloves as they were all completely buried when I planted them. I’ve put them back in the ground and hopefully that will be an end to it.

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Empty, vacuous lives

are presumably what the people who buy this sort of thing lead:

Why luxury carmakers are now building glitzy skyscrapers

What a bizarre, selfish, negative way to want to define oneself as a human being: because almost no-one else can have what you have and because you believe that other people will think more positively of you as a result. Well, perhaps other selfish, vacuous people will and that’s all that matters to them.

I read the last paragraph of the article and thought, “Nah. You’re way too late there…”

I genuinely don’t think I could live like that. I’d probably be suicidal within a couple of months.

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First seed-sowing of the year!

I planned to get all my sweet and chile peppers down today in the hope of giving them a good start early in the year so I collected them all together:

From the top left I have:

  1. Cayenne chiles, home-saved seed
  2. Zitava sweet pepper, to try making paprika
  3. Chocolate sweet pepper
  4. Slovakia sweet pepper, a red cone-shaped pepper
  5. Purple sweet pepper
  6. Red Corno di Toro sweet pepper
  7. Yellow Corno di Toro sweet pepper
  8. Malawi piquante chile, both bought and home-saved seed
  9. In four small ziplock bags:
    • Biquinho red chile
    • Cayenne chile — bought, this time
    • Khang Starr Lingria, a freebie chile
    • JalapeƱo chile
  10. Hungarian Black chile, bought and home-saved seed

I got about halfway through before running out of light so I’ll have to finish the rest tomorrow. It took longer than planned because one of the seed suppliers I used recommends scarifying the seeds first in cold tea. I’m honestly not sure if that’s actually going to achieve anything, but I decided it wouldn’t do any harm so this year I’d give it a go.

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More laser-cut honey boxes

First, one for six standard 1lb round jars for Wivey Kitchen, from Wivey Grows.

And then another box for my own honey, this time with my contact details on the back.

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Lord of the flies

In the Summer of 2025, the flies were just horrifying. Being so hot and dry outdoors they seemed to congregate anywhere there was some shade. Thousands upon thousands of them. It wasn’t just me, either. Everyone else I spoke to about it was experiencing exactly the same problem.

These are two strips of fly paper that I’d hung in the workshop about an hour earlier.

Every morning for several weeks I was replacing the strips because in just one day they’d become so full of flies that there was no room for more. Obviously I put the full ones on the compost heap. No sense wasting them.

(Ignore the mess of the workshop. It was in the middle of a major reorganisation.)

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Yay! Cellulitis again!

Fourth time, I think. It doesn’t look anywhere near as angry in this photo as it did in real life. In case it’s unclear, that’s the back of my left calf, foot out of shot on the right, knee out of shot on the left.

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We’ll call that full, then

Don’t think I’m going to be getting much more in this compost heap.

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Miscellaneous bait hives

All of these use quite old Abelo poly brood boxes that weren’t made to the correct dimensions — they have both a top and a bottom bee space.

The stands have sacrificial/adjustable legs. adjustable because nowhere around where I live is level. Sacrificial so that if one rots, it’s just a small piece of wood to replace.

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More laser-cut beekeeping stuff

Honestly, I probably made these because I could rather than because laser-cutting was the best way to do them. First, a very fat dummy — to take up several frames worth of space in a queen-rearing box.

And the same thing, with a built-in feeder.

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What a load of rubbish!

Or not. We have recycling collections every week — cans/plastics, glass and paper/card. We’re supposed to do food waste as well, but that all gets composted. And in fact a fair bit of the paper and card also ends up in the compost. The non-recyclable stuff is collected every three weeks. This is our bin, after three weeks. It’s not uncommon to find this little in it.

I shan’t bother putting it out. Most of the time I reckon we could comfortably go a couple of months between non-recyclable collections.

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