Riding through Wray castle yesterday I saw several piles of fallen leaves, slowly burning themselves to ashes. I've got hundreds and thousands of leaves here and I thought that burning them would be a good idea. Only problem is how to do it. Any one know? They only smoulder, probably because they are dampish, but how do you start the fire off, and then keep it going?

reasonable amount of wood, dry leaves, don't let the leaves get compacted in the fire.

And be prepared for more smoke than you thought possible.

Environmentally it is far better to let them rot and it also requires no effort on your part. Dont worry nature has it covered.

Petrol?

Environmentally it is far better to let them rot

Perfectly true, but leaves take a minimum of 12 months to rot down, quite often longer, and in the meantime they have got to be stored somewhere. Can't leave them on the garden because that way environmentally unfriendly pests and diseases can be harboured. The ash contains lots of phosphates which helps to promote growth if mixed in with the compost heap.

here's how.

I shred them (oak leaves) and use them as mulch, they seem to rot down better once they have been shredded, if you compost them, that is.

I have one mother of an Oak tree across from me and some days I am ankle deep in the stuff 😉

We put ours in any old bin or fertiliser bags we have lying around. Pop a couple of holes in the side of the bags and tuck them away in a corner of the garden to be used as mulch or compost next year. The tomatoes came up a treat in it this summer.

Why burn them, they'll rot down soon enough.

>Can't leave them on the garden because that way environmentally unfriendly pests and diseases can be harboured. <

Bollocks – leave them or bag them up and take them to the recycling centre like everyone else does

I read that as: "How do you bum leaves?" 🙂

You can't beat a good autumn fire

I read that as: "How do you bum leaves?"

Theres nothing like STW to bring out the subconscious in a random and un-necessary post… 😆

We put ours in any old bin or fertiliser bags we have lying around. Pop a couple of holes in the side of the bags and tuck them away in a corner of the garden to be used as mulch or compost next year. The tomatoes came up a treat in it this summer.

This

I'm letting some rot in the back yard with some hedges.

Taking ages.

I knew I should have just taken it all to the recycle centre.

Doh!

you need a proper fire first, no leaves.
when its burnt down and there are some good embers, pile on the leaves, really pile them on the heavier and damper the better.
the embers will then smoulder for days from the inside producing minimal smoke.

Thanks SOO…I'm trying to clear leaves from 10 full grown horse chestnuts, two sycamores and three oak trees. So you can see that piling them up is not reasonable. I'm going to need a large trailer to take them to the tip, or 325,761 black bags to store them in. Burning seems the most practical solution.

If you have that many tress that size I'd just get them all in a corner somewhere and leave them to rot down – you clearly have more than enough space to do this and it woudl be entirely reasonable, imo.

"environmentally unfriendly pests and diseases can be harboured." LOL 🙄

If you have that many tress that size I'd just get them all in a corner somewhere and leave them to rot down – you clearly have more than enough space to do this and it woudl be entirely reasonable, imo.

Unfortunately the powers that be don't see it that way.

As for mountaincarrot. Oh dear. Sounds like a flat dwelling townie.

next year, set the trees on fire before the leaves fall – it'll save a lot of time 😉

don't burn them if you live near anyone else

some twunt near me seems to be constantly burning something all summer/ autumn long – not sure what because all the houses round here have modest gardens with not much in the way of trees.

nice day – windows open/ go outside – oh everything stinks and its hard to breath!

Jenga: "the powers that be don't see it that way.

Sorry, who are the leaf police? – What do they look like?

Throw a handful of nitrate fertiliser on the pile and they'll rot down faster.
And what are these environmentally unfriendly pests and diseases?

You often wonder how nature managed before humans came along!

I just hope for a windy day to blow them all into next doors or you could always just leave them and go out for a ride.

I'm in the 'compost' camp here.
however if you DO need to burn them…
1) buy chimnea
2) buy leaf blower
3) buy petrol
4) angle chimnea towards c**t neighbour's shed
5) load it up with leaves and petrol
6) light
7) use leaf blower as 'bellows'
8 ) watch 90' jet of flame shoot out and incinerate neighbour's shed and dog
9) open beer and relax.

Mother! I thought I had it bad with one Oak tree!

Jenga, can you mow it, well, top it with a drive on mower with a catch?

I do this once a week for a 3 acre site I help out on, once the leaves have been through the mower, they then get dumped along a boundary and rot down well and quickly.

I think it would take up more time to try and burn that lot?

Ski, Unfortunately the set up works against that. Most of the area under the trees is planted with evergreen shrubs/low growing conifers. Instructions are to keep them clear of fallen leaves. Not much room to stow leaves underneath. Some I do mow, and lawn cuttings mixed with chopped leaves do rot down quite quickly, and make a good mulch. Even if I mow the leaves there is still the storage issue, and as leaves on their own take more than a year to become serviceable compost, I need a lot of spare space which isn't available.

So, burning seems a good option. I know the townies and beardies don't understand, but that's life.

tbh, Jenga – townies probably have more problems with storing garden waste until it composts than you country dwellers.

Are you doing this commercially (in which case do the leaves count as commercial waste and cannot, therefore, be burnt)?

So, burning seems a good option. I know the townies and beardies don't understand, but that's life.

sounds like 'laziness' rather than 'life', but hey…

Can't leave them on the garden because that way environmentally unfriendly pests and diseases can be harboured.

Grrrrrrrrr

🙂

Some really rather rude hedgehogs here…..

I just hope for a windy day to blow them all into next doors

Sounds like you need a leaf Blower-inator [from the truly fantastic Phineas & Ferb – my girls make me watch it….. honest!]

If your horse chestnuts are suffering from leaf miner (brown yellow tinge towards the end of the leaves from the middle of summer) the best thing for the trees health is to burn the leaves as it will reduce the infestation next year.

Otherwise I would advocate composting, you could save yourself a fortune on bark mulch.

My big horse chesnut has leaf miner – seems to cause it no problems whatsoever, masses of conkers this year! Each autumn I take about 10 bags of leaves to the tip, If I leave the on the lawn they kill the grass. My next door neighbour leaves the lot where they fall hence leaf miner back again by July…