With autumn slowly moving into winter, here’s some seasonal links from around the web:

• Here’s a great easy, trick for optimising compost from the fallen leaves – mow the leaves on the lawn along with the grass – the shredded leaves and grass clippings are a great greens/browns mix
• Speaking of carbon & nitrogen mixing, Throwback at Trapper Creek has written an ace article about making the most of homegrown fertilisers, specifically animal poop.
• A lot of us are thinking of planting garlic at the moment but Tomato Lady over at Little House in the Suburbs has been making paper out of the waste from last year’s braid.
• This, admittedly, uses more new resources than old – the only recycled bit is the bag – but this is a great how-to for giving a handbag solar power capability – perfect for mobile phone charging.
• And, if you’ve got a sec, vote for good friend of Recycle This’ Alison Bailey Smith’s Electra sculpture in the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce Green Art competition – Alison makes all sorts of awesome stuff out of reclaimed wire, often from old television sets. UPDATE: ooh! I completely didn’t see that another RT buddy Ann Ellis is also in the competition! Vote for her too!

We’ve had an email from Jon Arkin:

I bought a big net of garlic from the market at the weekend because it was going cheap. I now know why, half of them have started sprouting.

I’m going to try to use as many as I can but will have to compost the rest – or are there any other non-culinary uses?

You could try planting the sprouting cloves in your garden – give them six months or so and they become new bulbs – but when I did this a few years ago, the resulting bulbs were tiny and not really worth the effort (although this might be because we have a north-facing garden and had a rather lax attitude to watering). And I suspect there may be issues with planting out commercially grown garlic like there is with planting old shop-bought potatoes.

I believe it can also be used to keep insects (and vampires) at bay but don’t know any more about that other than what I’ve learnt from bad 1980s horror films.

So any ideas or more info about the things I’ve mentioned?

(Photo by chidsey)