When is the right time to burn our ever increasing bonfire pile? The last thing I want to do is singe a hibernating hedgehog. I'm in Cornwall so it's warmish.
At any time of the year hedgehogs (and little woodmice and other creatures) may be sleeping or even raising little ones in a pile of bonfire material - as Scroggin says the best thing to do is to stack your bonfire material and then, when the time has come to burn it, you build a good fire with the accumulated material.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I cremated a rabbit many years and although I didn't want it in my garden I wouldn't have willingly done that to it. I think it went into shock and just screamed, never heard a rabbit scream before or since. Then it ran out of the flames but it was too late by then
Not nice at all
Haven't had a bonfire for years now though, it all goes through the shredder
If ok with bye laws and the neighbours etc I don't have a problem with an occasional bonfire to burn some woody material and the dried roots of perennial weeds - it provides useful potash for the garden.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks everyone. Think once it's dry again I -well my husband-will move the stuff before I burn it. No problems with having a bonfire - we have a lot of land and only one neighbour near enough to be affected so we make sure the wind is blowing away from them or just decide to both do it at the same time! A few years ago we had an electric fence round our veg patch as there are rabbits everywhere and a hedgehog got caught in it and got burnt- needless to say we removed the fence instantly and replaced it with chicken wire.
There is real skill to building and maintaining a good bonfire - the old chaps on the allotment would have one smouldering for days and days, banked on the outside with turves, just a little whisp of smoke at the top - everything completely burned to a fine powdery ash and some charcoal. Their dads taught them, as their dads had done before them. Another skill lost.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
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At any time of the year hedgehogs (and little woodmice and other creatures) may be sleeping or even raising little ones in a pile of bonfire material - as Scroggin says the best thing to do is to stack your bonfire material and then, when the time has come to burn it, you build a good fire with the accumulated material.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I cremated a rabbit many years and although I didn't want it in my garden I wouldn't have willingly done that to it. I think it went into shock and just screamed, never heard a rabbit scream before or since. Then it ran out of the flames but it was too late by then
Not nice at all
Haven't had a bonfire for years now though, it all goes through the shredder
In the sticks near Peterborough
Am i right in thinking that your council will supply bags to dispose of this every fornight. I absolutely hate bonfires.
If ok with bye laws and the neighbours etc I don't have a problem with an occasional bonfire to burn some woody material and the dried roots of perennial weeds - it provides useful potash for the garden.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks everyone. Think once it's dry again I -well my husband-will move the stuff before I burn it. No problems with having a bonfire - we have a lot of land and only one neighbour near enough to be affected so we make sure the wind is blowing away from them or just decide to both do it at the same time! A few years ago we had an electric fence round our veg patch as there are rabbits everywhere and a hedgehog got caught in it and got burnt- needless to say we removed the fence instantly and replaced it with chicken wire.
There is real skill to building and maintaining a good bonfire - the old chaps on the allotment would have one smouldering for days and days, banked on the outside with turves, just a little whisp of smoke at the top - everything completely burned to a fine powdery ash and some charcoal. Their dads taught them, as their dads had done before them. Another skill lost.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.