Is a bonfire a good way to dispose of garden waste?

That's really annoying pete on a nice day like today. This is why we have allotment rules, with 60 plots there would be all year round bonfires. My neighbour used to have them when the wind was blowing away from his house into ours, he never got a proper fire going just a load of smoke. He doesn't now after I had a few well chosen words.

 

That's why I let ours get dry so that there's almost no smoke and either no wind around or it's blowing across the field. I don't light my bonfire for two months before harvest when the crop is dry.
In the old days the farmer used to burn the field after harvesting and all the neighbours threw all their bonfire stuff over the fence and into the field. In those days they used to pump their cesspits into the field especially when the farmer was doing muck spreading from the pig farm down the road!

 

Shredding is a good idea if you don't have an impractical amount of debris to shred.

With over 70 trees and a couple of hundred shrubs it is not possible. Too much work, a lot of it too large for a shredder and nowhere left to put the shreddings. With all our compost heaps already full and filling at least three green waste wheelie bins per week we still need to have regular bonfires.

The farmers around us also have regular bonfires (but not burning their fields) and there are quite a number of copses on their fields which they maintain regularly. They are all very good and never burn when the wind is towards houses (not many houses to bother about ). Their copse and woodland maintenance is usually done in the winter when they have a bit more time and last month one farmer was burning for a week. It helps them to keep the vermin down, maintain the woodland and the deer seem a lot happier by not having to struggle with the heavy undergrowth. It also encourages them to stay in their nicely maintained woods and not try climbing into our gardens.

 

You should complain to the allotment warden @Upsydaisy. If you don't know them then go to the council as most allotment sites are owned publically and leased to allotment societies. They should have rules same as here in Guildford to respect their neighbourhood.

 

Burns ?

 

Oh I just worked it out, uses the tumble drier? I'm slow off the mark this morning, thought it was an auto-correction

 

I was have thoughts of your neighbour tumbling down the slope, then flashbacks to my Dad who kept Tumbler pigeons

 

I never light a bonfire until dusk and always only do so when the wind is blowing across the field (no dwelling for nearly a mile) . Admittedly, the wind does tend to move slightly but there's no dwelling nearer than 300ft