Why I Oughta...

Part of my DIY Spring clean-up is doing some small, controlled burns in place with the left-behind leaf litter in the beds.  I rake up some small piles that have defined edges (so the burn can't run everywhere) and use my little weed-burning torch to set the piles on fire.  They burn up the leaves, leave behind some ash and eventually exhaust themselves when they run out of material.   Here's one of the small piles I am burning under the Hornbeam trees in back:

I've had a weed-burning torch for a couple of seasons and I've used it in various ways - mostly to burn-out weeds on the patio and in the lawn when I didn't want to use a herbicide.  But, starting last Spring I introduced trying to do a tiny bit of a 'controlled burn' in some of our beds.  Here's a post from just a couple days over a year ago showing the 'controlled burn' of some of the leaf litter left behind from Fall and carried over through Winter .   I also burned up some of my compost bin last year, too .  I don't think I'll be doing that again. But, I am going to keep going on some of the bed burns.  I started this weekend by burning out some of the area at the corner of the patio.  This spot is home to three Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses.  After cutting those down to their crowns, I used the torch to burn up some of the leaf material and the dried blades of the grasses.    You can see in the photo that I didn't let this fire...