What to do with wet wood ash?

I have a very large pile of wet wood ash - it was supposed to have been dry woodash but my 'helpful' hubby only half covered the pile with a tarp  By the time I got there the water had moved through the pile using capillary action.  Is there anything I can do with it now that it's wet?  If not, how do I dispose of it in a responsible way?

Thanks

Feeding it to comfrey ?

I just mix mine up with leaves and grass clippings and spread it all over everything.

There may be some horrible imbalance I'm causing but so far my plants don't seem to have a problem with it.

wood ash can be used in many ways, traditionaly was used instead of soap, and for washing dishes. if you are against soap using just cook wood ash in water for little bit and use the liquid to clean yourself.
also its wluable source of minerals, you can use it as fertilazer, but be careful with the amount. i would put half a showel around each tree. i heard pommigranates love it a lot....

hvala wrote:
just cook wood ash in water for little bit and use the liquid to clean yourself."

Please do not do this! Running water through wood ash you get lye (sodium hydroxide), a.k.a. caustic soda, which is caustic!

Lye was mixed with lard to make soap, but getting too much lye in the mix could still harm  skin, so using it alone unless very diluted is certainly NOT to be recommended!

Wood ash can also be used to clean silverware and glass, including fireplace glass (wear rubber gloves) and can also be used as a greener alternative to salt to melt ice.

yes but i never noticed theres something wrong with my skin after using it...sodium is not in so big percentage in wood ash, also people use to cook it, i dont know what happens than but guess  it reduces caustic effect....
in old times there was no much options to get substances with cleaning effects, my family also used to make this sopa from lard but for me its stupid to kill animal just to clean yourself also i dont keep domestic animals so for me wood ash is still option.....

hvala wrote:
yes but i never noticed theres something wrong with my skin after using it...sodium is not in so big percentage in wood ash, also people use to cook it, i dont know what happens than but guess  it reduces caustic effect....
in old times there was no much options to get substances with cleaning effects, my family also used to make this sopa from lard but for me its stupid to kill animal just to clean yourself also i dont keep domestic animals so for me wood ash is still option.....

I think the key is dilution, not the content in the ash itself. If you add 1 teaspoon of ash to 1 liter of water, you will get one result. Mix 1:1, something completely different and, possibly, dangerous. Sorry, but without including a recipe, I think your advice could be dangerous.

I have made lye soap a couple of times just for the sake of doing something new, not as an ongoing practice. Lots of advice on the web on how to do this but the water was allowed to seep through the ash and the concentration (supposedly, didn't try it ) would have been caustic.

If you object to using animal products (fats) to make soap, vegetable fats can, apparently be substituted (haven't tried this myself).

hvala wrote:
wood ash can be used in many ways, traditionaly was used instead of soap, and for washing dishes. if you are against soap using just cook wood ash in water for little bit and use the liquid to clean yourself.

What kind of ratio of water to ash do you use hvala? Does the water need to boil?

pebble wrote:
What kind of ratio of water to ash do you use hvala? Does the water need to boil?

i dont know! i just used ash few times when there was no other option, like in rainbows. my family lived until sixties in mountains 95% sustainble, they use to make some stuff with cooking ash, but i was born much after they stopped with this, so i cant say exactly.

I suggest that you should put it on some plant or trees. that way ash could be use as a fertilizer.

[http://treeandgardensolutions.com.au//url]

Ok, thanks hvala, I might experiment with low concentrations.

Alison, you could add it to stuff to compost, where the microbes and resulting compost will benefit from the nutrient and mineral boost.

Alliums (onions, garlic) tend to like wood ash.  My Japanese grandmother-in-law, who was born in Fukushima in 1909, always told the kids to place ash on the garlic chives (niira) that grew along the side of the road. 

As far as I know, the lye you get from hardwood ash is potassium hydroxide, not sodium. It makes softer soap, more like a hard cream. And yes, if diluted in a bottle of water (you'll have to look for a recipe) it's a great shampoo and overall cleaner: from laundry to floors.
As a source of potassium (K), it's always needed by plants; just use it in small amounts and the soil will know how to use it.

So will the wet ashes be changed chemically by now? Or does it need more water?

Peach trees love wood ash.

This thread is old, but all the suggestions are still sound. Hopefully, my posting here will revive the thinking about alternative ways to use wood ash. I had heard of the suggestions above, but I'd never considered making cement from it before. Eliot shows how to make wood ash cement in the Permaculture Technology Jamboree  

If I end up with wet wood ash, I tend to either add it to the compost pile or place it on undesirable weeds around the property.

Where I come from, some people use particular wood ashes to make an ingredient used for cooking. They soak the ask in water, let it settle and decant the liquid, discard the residue. I have never known the real content since I'm not so much of a scientist, but we add a bit of this liquid to pumpkin leaves or bean leaves or a few other vegetables when cooking and later add g nuts paste and tomatoes and let the pasted vegetable cook further.

It gives it a certain characteristic traditional taste and also, for vegetables like the leaves of some type of peas, it makes the vegetable tender.

Some people also use it to soak dry beans for a long time to make them softer and easier to cook...

Lots of cooking uses in my village and women always have the liquid of the kind in their kitchen, but prepared from selected materials. Mostly from dried and burnt banana peelings or bean pods, but also from some particular woods of edible plants.