Selfsufficientish.com

What can you do with wood ash?

We have 2 woodburners so get lots of ash.

Its good for cleaning the glass on the woodburner, we do mix a bit with compost.

But have now got a huge heap, any ideas ?

i mix it in the compo heap

but it is useful to throw down when it's icy - it melts the ice and provides grip just as salt does.

and apparantly you can make lye with it, and then go on to make soap.. but I have not got that far yet

As it contains potassium, phosphorus and magnesium it helps neutralise acid soils so we add it straight to the garden.

It's good for deciduous trees and shrubs, including fruit trees, vegetables (root crops), bulbs, annuals, perennials and deciduous vines.

Avoid using any wood ash around acid loving plants such as rhododendrons, camellias, azaleas, junipers and conifers.

Bizarrely (as they are from the same family) tomatoes love it but you should avoid putting it where you plan to grow potatoes.

We've recently started adding the bones from meat we've cooked up for the dogs to the woodburner too add some bonemeal to the mix. The smell coming out the chimney is awful so I'd not recommend you do this in an open fire.

Put in the chickens' dust bath, spread around the fruit trees for a high potash summer feed (but this needs to be done when (ha ha!) there is a rainy spell), ditto summer feed for the roses and all flowering perennial plants.

Have heard that it helps prevent carrot root fly but didn't work for me.

We sprinkle ours around raspberries canes, leeks/onions and the roses.

Quite good as a slug barrier if the weather is dry (ha ha!).

Just to clarify, Brittany has its dry areas (which I'm in) and its wet areas (which Mrs M is obviously in).

Out of interest, why would you put it around onions and garlic, because you don't want them to flower. Potash encourages flowering and fruiting.

Thanks very much for the replys.

Have sarted spreading it in the orchard where we keep the chickens.

May do a test on the onions and garlic.

No it's not to wet here

SusieGee wrote:.....dunno really MMM just remember reading somewhere last winter that it benefitted onions and fell upon it as a good way to use the wood ash, and they didn't flower so it must be ok

I'll have a google and see what is said on the subject. This autumn strangely enough I had a couple of leeks sending up flower buds, that's a first for me but I think it was the mild autumn as normally it would have been more frostly from Oct onwards. Well I don't think they'll be thinking about trying to flower at the moment!

I will be putting wood ash down where Im growing peas, broad bean, runner beans, onions, garlic, leeks, carrots, tomatoes, raspberrys, blackcurrants and brassicas.

The only thing to be carefull of is that wood ash raises the soil pH so I wont use it anywhere that has a ph of over 7. Im not using it where im growing spuds as they like it acid.

In fact I've bought one of thoose incinerator dustbin things for the main purpose of producing wood ash to put on the veg patch. Also usefull for burning weeds and may even rig up some sort of grill so I can cook me lunch!

ive tried it, roasting spuds while im burning branches to big to compost. works a treat.

I split mine between the compo heap and making a new path

Can't soap be made from ash and fat?

I've never made it but with my partner and I camping all the time on his parents farm (750 acres, really, you can get lost in there!) and the fact that, well, about 20 cows there are slaughtered a year, we have plenty of fat - it was something I was considering.

Other than that, I just simply never thought to put it on my veggies, so I might save some in a bucket next time for just that, thank you.

I must admit I never knew to put it round raspberries

If you wan to burn wood mainly for the purpose of producing potash to spread on the garden is it better to use young alive bits of wood and green leaves (the sort of stuff thats hard to burn and smokes a lot) or big tree logs and deadwood? Ive been told the former has more potassium in.

Thanks