Re: Wood ashes

Barbara, be careful with wood ashes.  They do contain a lot of wonderful
stuff--micronutrients plus Potash, which iris need.

BUT--raw wood ashes that have not been wet and leached (which takes out some
of the good stuff, sorry to say) is very strongly alkaline.  The burning
process converts some chemicals to their alkaline cousins.  That's how lye is
made--by burning.

The safest thing to do with ashes is put them in your compost pile.  Then the
powerfully alkaline radicals react with other things in the pile and are
neutralized.  Also, any leaching goes into the compost that's deeper.  They
are safe this way, and very beneficial.

If you do want to use them directly on the soil, don't put them in a
pile--scatter very thinly, and make sure you try this on ground where nothing
is growing you care much about.  Also, don't do this with coal ashes.  They
seem to be disasterously damaging in many soils.  I have no idea why--coal is
just cooked, compressed compost that is *very* old.  In the central coalfields
in West Virginia we often found fern imprints on horizontal fracture
lines--the separation layer between years.  Coal does often contain some clay
plus fine silt or other mineral (silica)  component that makes coal ash often
a vitreous (glassy) ash.  Compost wouldn't give that kind of result.

Neil Mogensen  z 7 western NC mountains

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