Following on from last week’s plastic dustbins and Monday’s broken ironing boards, Philip also suggested

Brooms and rakes.

I don’t know why, but people often throw out orphaned handles and heads of various garden tools. I simply play match maker. You can’t have too many garden tools on a farm. Reconditioned tools also make great presents.

Philip’s idea is a great one – my father-not-in-law collects and matchmakes them too. I think nearly all our garden tools now are refurbished old ones.

We went through a phase a couple of years ago of having a lot of brushes (and mops) break at the bottom of the handle – so had some brush heads lying around. I thought I’d covered it on the site and someone had suggested using them to make a boot brush/scraper – but I can’t find that now so many I dreamt it — a good idea though!

I imagine an old rake could be used to make a en masse berry picker like this one by kooky chap Atomic Shrimp.

Any other reuses for old/broken brooms, brushes and rakes?

Philip Mitchell Graham has left quite a few comments on the Suggest an item page recently so I guess I should start making my way through his ideas!

First up:

Old split plastic rubbish bins. I used one as a liner in an old metal rubbish bin. Metal bins often loose their bottoms, whereas the plastic ones often split on the sides. Between the two, I made a perfectly serviceable bin. I expect to get a few extra years of service out of two bins that had no future at all.

Great reuse Philip.

Without a metal outer, they’re useful for storing stuff that needs to be pretty dry but doesn’t need to be bone dry. We’ve got a split plastic bin in our woodstore for kindling – it keeps it neat and in one place, and not enough water makes it through the cracks to be a problem. If we had another, I’d probably use it for my garden stuff – spare pots and other bits and bobs – that don’t need to be in the greenhouse but need to be contained so they don’t get blown around.

Do you use old bins around your garden too? Do you have any other reuses for them?

It’s possibly getting a bit late in the year for this one but I kept forgetting to post it earlier in the autumn ;)

Our house backs onto woodland that includes a lot of oak trees. There are millions of acorns out there. Whenever we’re out on dog walks, we hear and see them them falling – oh, and feel them too when they hit us on the head! There are far too many to all germinate into oak trees – and I suspect even too many to be used by the local squirrel population.

I know some people use them for chicken food – a local, sustainable addition to their diet, but apparently one that can also tint the yolk slightly green (it tastes ok, just looks a bit funky).

We can also eat them too – for example, they’re commonly made into a coffee substitute but I like these falafel and ginger cake ideas. You have to pick the right type to avoid them being too bitter though – and they need peeling too, so it’s a bit fiddly but hey, free food!

What else can acorns be used for?

Tonight is Guy Fawkes Night in the UK – also known as Bonfire Night. Up and down the country, people will be setting fire to stacks of wood and sending millions of £££s up in smoke in firework form, just getting a short “ooh” and “aah” (and occasionally “arrgh!!”) in return.

It’s not all waste-waste-waste though – tomorrow morning, you’ll probably have a substantial pile of ashes left over from your bonfire – and they’re great for the garden:

Ash can be a slug deterrent

The dry, rough surface of ash particles can act as a deterrent for slugs and snails. Chances are, you’re not growing much at the moment but you can scoop up the ash into a bucket, cover it/keep it somewhere dry so it doesn’t get wet over winter, then bring it out again for use next spring for use around your delicate seedlings.

It also has the advantage of being…

A soil neutraliser & fertiliser

Wood ash is alkaline so can help level out acid soils – some people dig it straight into their beds at this time of year so it will start to break down over winter while others cycle it through their compost bins first.

It’s also great for balancing “green”-heavy compost heaps (for example, those which contain a lot of fresh green garden matter, scraps or manure – things that are said to be “nitrogen rich”). Balanced compost heaps rot down quicker and produce better compost in the long run.

As well as a neutraliser, wood ash from bonfires is often also rich in calcium and potassium, so help fertilise the soil as well as neutralise it.

• More reuses for wood ash

A couple of weeks ago on on The Really Good Life, I post my top 5 clothes line drying tips.

One of my tips is to use a clothes peg airer thing if possible – one of these things – it stops the little items taking up space on your main line and is easy to take inside if it starts raining.

Petra liked the idea and decided to make her own out of “some electricity pipe, an old iron coat hanger, some rope and pegs” – and that’s so great that I’m now adamant about reusing and recycling to make my own, once my current flimsy plastic ones break. And it got me thinking about making other line drying/clothes airing stuff too…

Have you made any clothes lines/airers/drying racks yourself, reusing and recycling old materials? What did you use?

Or have you fixed/extended a shop-bought airer to make it more suitable for your needs?

Any tips or advice for anyone else?

(Funnily enough, I was thinking about this a year ago too – I asked how to make a cover for my rotary airer so I could leave clothes out during occasional showers. It must be something about this increasingly moist time of year!)