Using Lye in the garden

Have any of you gardeners ever heard of using Lye in the garden as a form of fertilizer or for boosting nutrients in garden soil? Is this safe? Have any of you ever done this? I would like to know all I can before I allow my garden partner to dump lye in my organic/heirloom garden!

I know a guy who spreads ashes from his fire pit around the garden. That's basically lye once it rains. His plants do fine in a very nutrient poor location.

Lye is very alkaline (hydroxide) and for this reason I would recommend using very little in only a test area if you want to experiment. It may change the pH of your soil and has the potential to shut down root activity while it persists (high pH can interfere with the absorption of nutrients).

On the other hand, raising the pH may be desirable depending on your soil and the plant's preferences. I have one plant that only grows on limestone in habitat and I dumped a bunch of ash in and around the hole when I planted it. Over time the rain will wash that away, but at least up front there may be some benefit.

Historically, 'lye' was a caustic leachate of wood ashes producing potassium hydroxide. Lye is currently made by a chemical process that yields sodium hydroxide, and even though sodium is an essential element to normal growth and plant health, it is used only in minute amounts and very quickly reaches toxic levels. I think applying lye is even more of a decidedly bad idea than applying something to your garden with no idea about whether or not it's actually needed. Plus, there's the pH jolt mentioned by Baja. Remember that an excess of any given nutrient has the same potential to limit your plants as a deficiency, and it's highly unlikely your garden is deficient in Na - only a soil test will tell.

Al

I was assuming an organic/heirloom garden would entail the use of lye in its historical version and not the chemical sodium hydroxide (which is a bad idea). Like Al says, you really want to try and avoid sodium anything when adding stuff to the garden in quantity. It's like pouring salt water on your plants. Tends not to end up well.

I agree - if the soil is known to be deficient in K, then adding wood ashes would be a much better idea than adding lye made of wood ashes. The thing is, whenever we get the idea in our mind that adding something to our gardens that specifically provides a little extra K or even Epsom salts for a little shot of Mg, unless we know those elements are actually deficient, 9 times out of 10 our intuitive thinking is wrong - because the application has more limiting potential than potential for benefit by creating excesses (toxicities). Even adding ground up egg shells to soils already containing an ample supply of Ca has only the potential to limit, from a nutritional perspective. This effect is even more pronounced when growing in containers.

Al

Lye is extremely caustic (note all the warnings on the package, they are there for good reason). You will kill your worms and beneficial organisms, quite possibly the plant roots too.