We’ve had an email from Siobhan:

I’ve got a repair question for you. A pane of glass in my greenhouse cracked over winter and I want to make it safe. Is there anything I can do short of replacing it? Thanks!

You can fix it temporarily with tape – duct tape works apparently or you can get special transparent UV stablised repair tape – but from what I’ve read, they’re really supposed to be temporary measures until you replace it ASAP, lest a giant shard of the weakened glass break off and spear you through the eye. (That said, I’m pretty sure my dad had broken glass panes in his greenhouses for the bulk of my childhood without any problems. No eyes gouged out here.)

Random pieces of glass come up quite regularly on my local Freecycle/Freegle group and from local sellers on eBay so if your area is anything like mine, you should be able to pick up a replacement quite cheaply.

Any other suggestions?

Aside from the rain we had pretty much all day yesterday, it’s been a lovely start to spring – I’ve had the washing out on the line on a good number of occasions now, we’ve had a few breakfasts on the sunny balcony with the animals and the cats have been enjoying the novelty of sitting both in sunshine and in the house – something that’s never happened to them before – and they’ve been getting toasty warm … which made me think “what else can I make toasty warm in the sunshine?” (Plus, we got our gas bill through yesterday for the cold winter – even relying on just the woodburning stove in the evenings and wearing lots of layers, it’s still kerching!kerching!

Trying out a solar oven has been on my to-do list for a while – but they’re expensive and hard to get in the UK so it makes sense to make my own instead.

There are how-tos for making them out of cardboard boxes and aluminium foil and better how-tos to make them more efficient – but I wondered if anyone had any suggestions of things to reuse or recycle for the materials involved in such a venture.

And does anyone have any ideas of ways to make things a little more permanent/weatherproof? With our propensity for April showers on otherwise glorious summer days, cardboard outside in the UK sounds like a recipe for disaster, not a nice slow-cooked meal.

Anyone make their own? Anything that’s a must-do? Anything to avoid?

(Photo by margilevin)

Polly has emailed us with a Compost This question:

Can I emptied my hoover bag into my compost bin? I know you can compost dryer lint so wondered if it was the same.

Like with tumble dryer lint, it depends what the lint/dust is most made up of – but most of the time the answer would will be yes. The contents of your vacuum’s bag/canister tends to made up of dirt brought in on shoes (compostable), human/pet hair (compostable), human/pet skin skin cells (compostable) and, depending on how tidy you are when you eat, food crumbs (compostable). Probably the biggest thing to be wary of is if your carpet sheds a lot of fibres – if it’s a synthetic carpet, you don’t want to add that to your compost really but if it’s natural fibre (such as wool), then it’s fine.

You should to take to mix it well into your existing compost – that’ll both add moisture to the dry dust (and help start the composting process) and stop it being a suffocating layer on the top. Because everything is in pretty small particles anyway, some people say you can skip the compost stage and just dump it straight onto your garden – again though, dig it in or the dust will just blow around when you get the slightest breeze.

Any other advice? Or other suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Petra:

From a party project, we have left two big foam “things” with holes in it. See the picture included. They measure 108 by 47 by 18 (in centimeters). The holes are large enough to hold a winebottle. But the foam is quite soft, so it’s not safe enough to make it into a hanging wine rack.

I thought about it being playing items for the kids in the garden, but any better ideas are more than welcome.

The bright colour, softness and chunkiness make them feel very much like something for kids – one of those things that if we’d had it as a kids, we’d have come up with a thousand different play uses for it. If you have a few, another kid-related thing might be to string them up as hanging dividers in a bedroom – such as between the sleeping area and the playing area, or to give kids a little privacy/sense of their own space in a shared room.

Aside from that, if you could find boxes big enough to hold them (under bed storage boxes maybe?), they might be useful for keeping glasses or bottles safe during a house move (if you’re not moving, someone on Freecycle probably will be!).

They also could be useful in the garden if you’re growing a lot of seedlings – holding plant pots upright when they start to get a bit top heavy or if it’s windy.

Any other suggestions?

In honour of International Women’s Day on Monday, we’re having a week of women’s & sexual health themed posts (and giveaways!!). Check out our older related posts too – such as unused disposable sanitary products or end-of-life menstrual cups.

I thought long and hard about whether to feature this because it’s the type of green action that makes Daily Mail readers exclaim “bloody hippies!!” and pledge to not reduce, reuse or recycle just to annoy us filthy, poor Good-Life-wannabes. But in the end, Cipollina’s comment yesterday convinced me – it’s not for everyone but blood is a cracking fertiliser.

The fluid emptied out from your Mooncup or pink water from rinsing out from your washable sanitary towels is a great source of natural nitrogen – it replenishes overworked soil and feeds the plants. People buy blood meal — the dried & powdered blood from livestock — as a non-synthetic fertiliser but why not cut out the middle man/middle cow? It’s as organic as you are.

There are some potential problems with just pouring it straight on the garden – some blood-borne pathogens can be transferred around and apparently it can attract ants – but one way to minimise the risk of that sort of thing is to put it through a hot compost heap. If you know you have a blood-borne pathogen, you might want to look into the situation with your condition further – although apparently even hepatitis, one of the longest surviving blood-borne pathogens outside the body, only manages about 30 hours before breaking down (shorter if heated/exposed to sunlight).

I found two very interesting discussions on the topic – this one and this one – explaining about different people’s experiences and methods but I wonder if anyone has used it for anything a bit more out of the ordinary…

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?