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Wood ash and uses.

 
jessica seeliger
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Hello everyone.

Im here starting a new projext.. slowly and hopwfully becoming a food forest in Mallorca.

So, now is winter.. and im producing wood ash.. and i dobt really know what to do with it.
Ive thrown a bit in the garden, a bit in the compost, a bit in the compost toilet... and i spread it around.

But yes, i would love to hear of more concrete uses i could give it.
How good is it to put in the garden? An in which quantity?

Much appreciated your inputs. Saludos
 
Anne Miller
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Jessica, welcome to the forum!

Here is a thread about feeding it to livestock:

https://permies.com/t/208826/Biochar-livestock-feed-supplement

Some other uses you or others might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/193954/handy-guide-charcoal-biochar-activated

https://permies.com/t/179656/biochar

Some folks have found numerous ways to make wood ash.  How do you make yours?

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greg mosser
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wood ashes tend raise the pH of your soil, it’s good to know the pH of your soil at the start so you don’t accidentally push it too alkaline/basic.
 
jessica seeliger
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Thank you bith for your response.

ANNE miller, that thred on feeding (of what i understood the agreement was) charcoal to livestock is very interesting. A great way to keep parasites away...

And yes Greg, ill do so.. i trusted my soil was good, but today talking to a farmer man he told me that uo the mountains soil tends to have lost big oart of its nutrients due to erosion and we have remained with the clay principally... so a big use of organic material is needed.
I did abig hugelkultur under, but it need long time till it decomposes..
So i might have to buy some soil in the forehand..

Thanks again, and its lovely this permies.community, i can spend hours just going from thread to thread.
 
Timothy Norton
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I tend to put wood ash into my compost, but not in large quantities.

I have heard people using it to spread on the ground for traction in winter but it does make a mess.

Wood ash can be sprinkled around plants to deter slug/snail pressure, I have used it on the walls of my raised beds with some good success.

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M Waisman
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Wood ash and biochar are quite different in how they are used, no? I can't imagine feeding wood ash to my livestock...

I don't remember where I came across this idea, but we pile it on a little thick right around the base of our fruit trees. I believe it helps deter larvae and crawlers from going up the trunk. We also use it for traction on ice in the winter or we'll just sprinkle it on the gravel driveway where we don't necessarily want much to grow.

I'm looking forward to hearing other people's uses.
 
Douglas Alpenstock
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At my previous property, I would take fresh ash from the wood stove, combined with fresh green lawn clippings, and chew it into the unimproved soil on each side of the raspberry patch with a 16 HP rototiller. Not a very dainty operation.

This was in prairie clay, already naturally basic. I wouldn't do that with any other plants. But man, the raspberries loved it. We picked and picked, and then had relatives and neighbours come over and pick and pick and pick and pick.
 
John Suavecito
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I want to echo the comments of Greg Mosser.  If you have soil that is already alkaline, don't just keep adding wood ash.  Most fruit trees prefer a slightly acidic soil.  Biochar or Hugulkultur would probably be better for your soil in the long run anyway, and not creating as much smoke.  Make sure that you don't put wood ash on blueberries, azaleas or rhododendrons, or any other plant that prefers an acidic soil.

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Megan Palmer
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If you keep chickens, wood ash is good to add to their dust bath area.
 
Anne Miller
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Ashes of any kind will melt snow.

Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner

 
Mk Neal
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Clean wood ash can be used to make lye useful to nixtamalize corn (Nixtamalization and tortillas, or to make soap.

A small amount of wood ash can be used to leaven baked goods, similar to baking soda.  The fine ashes from top.

Weeds are just plants with enough surplus will to live to withstand normal levels of gardening!--Alexandra Petri

 
Timothy Norton
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You could take wood ash and carefully mix in vinegar to create a soluble calcium/phosphate liquid for plants.

Check the PH of your final product.

Rough idea is 1 liter of white vinegar to 2kg of ash.

I plan on trying this in the near future.

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Emery Brown
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Pear and cherry slug!

I frequently wonder the same thing, down in Australia, as we create a lot of wood ash in Winter and it's a shame for it to go to waste.

We have this pest called 'pear and cherry slug' that eats the leaves of ... you guessed it, pear and cherry trees (and a bunch of others, my plums seem to cop it a lot) and so across Spring and Summer when I see them appear I'll dust the trees and the ground underneath in wood ash because it dries them right out and they die.
 
Matt McSpadden
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I just want to clarify a couple terms here for anyone reading this down the road.

Ash - technically refers to the gray powder byproduct created by burning wood. Broadly used to mean the stuff you shovel out of a wood stove which contains both ashes and charcoal.
Charcoal - technically refers to the black carbon structures left over from burning wood. Broadly it can refer to that or the chemical laden chunks used for charcoal grills.
Biochar - technically refers to charcoal that has been processed in some way by removing the hydrophobic properties and "charging" it with good microbes and nutrients. Broadly used to refer to charcoal that will be used for some sort of gardening/farming/livestock purpose whether it has been processed or not.

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Timothy Norton
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Part of my spring cleanup has been burning a pile of old punky apple wood so I have a bunch of ash being produced every weekend.

Thank you to everyone in the thread that have been giving suggestions, it has given me a better plan than waiting for the wind to casually pick up as hand spread it across my lawn.

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Zeus forero
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You can use fine ash to make potassium soap to treat most plant pest effectively. Let me know if you want a recipe. If you have a lot of ash you might even make a profit from selling the soap.
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