I have a neighbor with a huge sycamore and a really great garden. He composts most of his leaves and lawn waste. But, since the sycamore seems to loose it's leaves late in the season when it's cold he, just rakes them onto his bare garden and burns them.

We have no local burning law here (just 7AM to 7PM).

I walk by his house/garden often on my daily walk and the pile of burned sycamore leaves just sits on top of the soil until spring. Then he just tills the ash pile in and plants.

I've seen him do this year after year...His garden is really productive and seems no worse for the ash.

I'm not sure burning would be good for the soil microbes or soil organic content/humus - note that most areas now ban crop residue burning, only partly because of the CO2 addition, also because of soil affects - "Residue incorporation should be preferred over residue burning, which results in the loss of valuable plant nutrients and is both an environmental and a health hazard"

composting would better deal with the carbon, so if you'd rather not do it yourself, send it off to be done

Bill

Search Terra Preta on this site and the web.

If you burn you may want to put the fire out after it has gotten very hot and spread the charcoal.

The heat of the fire would kill off any of the Soil Food Web that heat would reach, but more than anything since the combustion of that material would not be complete you would put more pollutants into the air than a coal fire power plant does in a month. Compost that material, do not burn it.

Whoa....."more pollutants into the air than a coal fire power plant does in a month"???? My guess is that statement is "a bit" overboard.... Coal fired power plants are notorious for emitting a number of pollutants in fairly significant concentrations, to name a few - particulates, nitrates, sulfates, CO2, mercury, other heavy metals... I don't think burning a single pile of Sycamore scraps will reak any environmental havoc! Obviously, the most effeicient way to recycle the nutrients would be composting, but you'd have to chip up all your large debris and you could end up with a village of seedlings! I might try to limit the burn area, and just mix in some soils from unaffected areas afterwards to help restore soil biota.

Sycamore trees are the limb dropping-est trees that you can ever have. We had a nice specimen at our last home. A guy a few blocks away from where we live now has two nice ones. And yes his yard is littered with tons of sticks right now from the last couple snow storms.

You could rent a chipper for a day. Chipping up those sticks for mulch or composting would be a good idea.

If burning is the easiest thing that works for you, burning the sticks won't harm your garden soil (or the soil food web) but the benefits to the soil are minimal. The sticks would be more beneficial as compost or mulch, but if its too difficult for you to use them as such, then do what works best for you.

You could put on your tough boots and trample the sticks into little pieces. The trampling is easier when the ground is frozen. I do it all the time and it works well for me (I deal with a lot of woody debris). This is also sufficiently "destructive" that kids might actually enjoy it.

"Whoa....."more pollutants into the air than a coal fire power plant does in a month"????"
Nope. There are numerous studies from many areas that support that. We did a study here in the 1970's and found (this was before power plants started adding all the scrubbers and filters) that in the fall when people burned leaves and brush the level of pollutants exceeded that of when only the local power plant was in operation. I realize that is acient history to some people but that still remains true today.

"in the fall when people burned leaves and brush the level of pollutants exceeded that of when only the local power plant was in operation"

So if you saying that the the total pollution is greater when you add "people" burning leaves to baseline power plant pollution as compared to just looking at baseline power plant pollution without people burning leaves, that is easy to believe.

But that's a far cry from saying that 1 person burning 1 pile of wood debris "would put more pollutants into the air than a coal fire power plant does in a month".

Fifty miles south of me. The two, which are around 10 miles apart, combined are the worst source of air pollution in the country. They plan on building a third. :

"According to the Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, D.C., the Four Corners plant is among the 50 dirtiest power plants in the nation based on its emission of nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and mercury.

In fact, Four Corners was the nation's No. 1 emitter in 2004 of total nitrogen oxide - releasing 40,742 tons of the gas. Based on production, the plant was No. 25 with 5.44 pounds of nitrogen oxide emitted per megawatt hour of power.

Four Corners was No. 24 nationally in the emission of carbon dioxide with 15.1 million tons. It was No. 37 in the release of mercury with 590 pounds. Four Corners was not among the 50 dirtiest power plants in 2004 in the release of sulfur dioxide.

The San Juan Generating Station a few miles away was the nation's No. 21 emitter of total nitrogen oxide in 2004 with 26,880 tons. It was not on the top-50 list in pounds of nitrogen oxide per megawatt hour of power produced or for sulfur dioxide. It was No. 34 in the release of carbon dioxide with 13.1 million tons and it tied with Four Corners in the emission of mercury with 590 tons." (that last 'tons' is a typo in the original article, it should be lbs).

so lessee, combined thats 67,622 tons of Nitrogen oxide, 28,200,000 tons of CO2, and 1.180 lbs of mercury.

Here is a link that might be useful: heckuva brush pile

If you look at the total annual fall out from a power plant you get one set of numbers that are bad enough. What most people do not realize is their small pile of trash, for the short period of time it burns, produces what would be much more that a coal fired power plant does burning a lot more fuel in a controlled atmosphere that is meant to get as much heat out of that coal as possible. The combustion in your pile of debris is incomplete and produces far more pollutants because of incomplete combustion and if you project your small pile of debris to what the power plant does you get many more pounds of pollutants. Does your pile of debris come close to equaling the size of the power plants boilers? Of course not, but you also cannot simply compare apples and grapefruits and say they are the same. You do need to equalize the math and compare apples and apples.

.....geting just a little further off topic.....does anybody have suggestions for safe/beneficial disposal in the garden of ashes from wood burning stove....?

Taylor--since that's off topic, maybe you'd get better responses by starting a new thread with a subject line descriptive of your question.

does anybody have suggestions for safe/beneficial disposal in the garden of ashes from wood burning stove....?

Taylor--I think you misunderstood.

To start a new thread, go to the forum page and clik the link that says "post a message" and start a new thread.

One advantage of starting your own thread is that you can check a box to get replies emailed to you.

For those skeptics that have never seen a 5 year old asthmatic be in great distress because his neighbors, "demanded their god given right" to burn debris, leaves, trash, etc. stick around and you will one day. This is one thing that seldom happens from the power plant, although we know that the garbage they spew is unhealthy and that makes for chronic health problems, but the person burning trash creates acute problems, and sometimes is so ignorant of the harm they do that no one can convince them.
Burning yard waste is environmentally insane, a waste of valuable resources, as is having that material hauled to a landfill.

Well, I've decided NOT to burn the debris. I don't want to burn up any of my good guys in my soil. So I'll do it the old fashioned way and put it into the bags for the garbage. There's a large composting company not far from me, and I assume they may purchase a lot of this yard waste. I was thinking of going and visiting that place this spring just to check it out.

Our leave burning rules are very strict, and I confess I LOVE the smell of burning leaves. Takes me back to my childhood. But never having known anyone with asthma I simply did not know until your post Kimmsr, that it caused problems like that.

I've got neighbors that would be like the ones you described, only in my case, it's just the fire hazard that upsets me. They pile their leaves in their yard, but in an area that is right next to my driveway. And they continually add charcoal starter to keep it roaring. I always keep an eye on it, and am ready to dial 911. They burn at times when it's not allowed, but they are the type that don't believe in city rules. They get cited for stuff all the time, and just complain and moan about neighbors who snitch on them.

Fortunately, I get along with them, but their belief that rules don't apply to them does drive me crazy.

Now I just have to wait for the rain to stop so this debris can dry out and I can rake it up. During winter months, they only collect it one day a month, so my timing has to be right. I once raked two bags of sticks, put them out by the curb and it wasn't the right day. It rained, and made a huge mess when the bags fell apart.