I know I've seen this information here before, but probably didn't file it in the right place. How much wood ashes can I put on, say, one square yard of garden?
Thanks
wood ashes
I always add it with compost and just a smidgen. Your soil is too alkaline to have it raised with the wood ash salts.
Okay, I'll bite. How much is a smidgen? What if my soil isn't too alkaline?
This wood ashes bit puzzles me. People caution against using much of it. My neighbors piled it on the end of the garden for years....really a lot. Well, you should have seen the huge sweetpotatoes 2 or 3 years ago....the green beans and cucumbers on that end last year.....the soil there is dark and loose...what gives??
I put it on my lawn to get some trace minerals in the soil and it killed my yard where it was spread heavily and it took about 3 months to grow back in. When I put it on viburnums without any compost it killed them. I put a lot on my garden also and It hardly grew. The next year was awesome but the ash has various salts that are not good. Our soil here is 6.8 to 7.2 and it is not good for using much. I don't know what a smidgen is in your soil. In mine it is a 5 gal pail of wood ash per 100 cubic feet of started compost.
I will change your soil ph, so you have to use it sparingly. When used wood stoves for heat , we dumped in the compost with everything else.
I think some of it also depends on what kind of wood was burnt - I mean logs vs. treated wood, charcoal briquets from the BBQ (which I hear is a definite no-no) etc. ....
Being in the Southwest, I too would assume that your soil is a little on the alkaline side, but maybe not?
I burn only good healthy Ponderosa Pine, and Douglas Fir. Nothing else but paper to get it started. If I put too much in the compost it cooked slower.
Sorry, I don't mean to say that ashes from "good" wood is necessarily a good amendment, only that there are some things that I've been advised not to use even in situations where the acidity is high.
i finally got around to burning a very large brush pile i had with prunings from when i moved in to recent shrub prunings. all i can say is by last fall i had tree seedlings sprout up from 2-4'. I rototilled around and planted spring bulbs,so i'll have too wait and see. definitely good for tree seedlings.
We have a bioelectric plant here that uses mill waste and chips to generate electricity. The ash it produces is two different qualities. One is carbon ash that is taken to a plant that sells it as a water treatment purification system and the rougher ash is hauld out to the local dairy farms and spread over the fields to sweeten the soil. You can see a lush green difference between the fields that are treated with wood ash annually and the weedy less productive fields where it is not used. But it is always spread during the late fall and winter so the rains can wash it down into the soil before the early spring grass starts poking up.
Our soil is naturally acidic so using wood ash also helps in our veggie gardens to lower the ph. But again, it is best turned into the soil and allowed to be rained in a bit before planting.
I had posted this on another thread; I just copied it to here. Gives you some idea anyhow:
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"I would think it’s the alkalinity of wood ashes gardeners have to watch. Some of my findings/calculations:
They are a really good source of potassium (the “K” in NPK fertilizer) carbonate. One of a few organic sources of potassium. (Others include cottonseed, peanut, or soybean meal; greensand; and hay.) They contain about 6 percent potassium and about 1.75 percent phosphorus. Wood ashes are highly alkaline (drip water through ashes and you have lye). Since ashes are highly water soluble they change the pH of the soil quickly and can cause a build up of salts.
1-˝ cups of ashes should raise the pH of 20 sq ft (a 20’ row) of average soil about 1 point - for example, from 5.5 to 6.5. (This is equivalent of using about 4.4 lbs of lime.) I would test my pH before adding this amount of ashes.
I would do a mere dusting of ashes once a year (and on the compost) and be grateful for a “free” source of potassium. I hear it deters slugs too. But I don’t have a fireplace : ( "
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So, lets' see, in a square yard (9 square feet), 0.675 cups (about a rounded 1/2 cup I guess) of ashes would raise the pH 1 point. Hope this helps.
wow, CompostR, glad yo u posted, I need to be a little more careful
Excellent information, CompostR.
OK, so very little wood ash if you're putting it directly on soil, but when I clean the ash out of my fireplace can I put that in my compost pile? I don't want to do anything that's going to mess with the Ph too much.
You can't put much on your compost pile. Or it won't be good compost. Especially in Alkaline or neutral soil areas.
I'm trying an experiment- wood ash slurry as a spot weedkiller, just along the edge of some bricks. Hope I can report soon.
Thanks so much ... that won't work at all here then. I'm glad I asked!
Genius sallyg! that should work on any weed that exists in any acidic or neutral soil. Probably any soil. The only problem will be a sterile area for the whole year.
I am curious why the soil would be sterile for a whole year? After a forest fire new life springs up through the ashes after a few rains unless the fire was so hot it scorched the very earth and killed the roots and seeds in the soil.
It isn't gonna be sterile for a year i can tell you that. Maybe a month. I finally got around to burning my brush pile from all the trees and pruning when i first moved here and a heavy pruning i did last spring on a hedge. The pile was about 7-8 ft high. last summer tree seedlings grew 2 and 3 ft high. I never saw tree seedlings grow that fast. The weeds and grass grew back also, however i tilled around the tree seedlings and planted some bulbs
there last fall, so we'll see how they do. I put all my extra tulips daffodils, hyacinths lilies,crocus, i don't remember what all.
You guys are where the salts drain away. Not here a forest stump burn stays clear for over a year or two.
can'ttell yet if my wood ash weedkiller is working. Maybe the plants have still been dormant, or I need a lot more ash-to water ratio. or it takes time for the 'lye' to develop. I spilled a pile of ash on the lawn during the process, LOL, so that should show me something soon.