Remember, remember – it’s the fifth of November! And as we all know, that’s a great excuse to get outside into the garden, stack up a good hearty bonfire and enjoy the best fireworks display you can muster, perhaps accompanied by piping hot potatoes baked in the ashes.
A bonfire is a fantastic way to get rid of the autumn’s garden waste, so save up all your woody prunings from the autumn. Anything you can’t include on the compost heap works well: thick, thorny rose prunings, brambles or hedge trimmings; holly and hellebore leaves; dead, damaged or diseased branches pruned from trees and shrubs. Also onto the pile can go perennial weed roots including bindweed, couch grass and ground elder; and plant material that’s become diseased, as many fungal diseases can survive the composting process so are best burned.
Stack the lot in a corner ready for the big night, but when November 5th comes around don’t be tempted to just light up the bonfire where you’ve stored the waste. Hedgehogs and other wildlife love a pile of wood and often creep in underneath to hibernate. So to avoid harming them, always move your woody waste to a new site just before lighting your bonfire.
Once the fun is over, the benefits to your garden continue: gather up the wood ash and add it to your compost heap or scatter it straight onto the soil around fruit bushes as It’s a fantastic source of potassium, which encourages flowering and lots of fruit next year.