First seed-sowing of the year!

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

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
    • Jalapeño 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

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

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

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

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!

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

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

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

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

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Miscellaneous bait hives

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

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

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

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!

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

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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This is a swarm I’ll pass on…

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

In a hole that had rotted out of a tree after a branch fell off/was removed. The landowner wanted them removed before the tree was cut down a few days later. I decided that I didn’t fancy trying to do anything up so high at such short notice.

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Off the scale!

Posted on January 10, 2026 by james

Ok, not quite.

I wish I could think of a practical way to extract this heat though, say until the heap cooled to about 50°C.

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