woodash

I was thinking of using woodash as an fertilizer in my veggarden what do you think?

Roger

I use it. Good source of potassium and a small amount of phosphorous. Best to mix it in good, and be careful to not let it get too close to germinating seeds and young plant roots. (If you use it to side-dress with keep it a few inches away from the plants.) And of course, don't use it around acid-loving plants.

I was thinking to dig it down so the plants can get it when I have plant them out

Roger

Good...you should do just fine then. Altho I tend to just eye-ball it, the quantity recommended is usually around 10 pounds per 100 sq ft. (That is for hardwood ash.)

Here's a tip from pained experience...

Beans love potash. Right?

So they should love potash-rich wood ash. Right?

Wrong.

Two years ago, I set out two long trellises - one over a trench filled with kitchen waste (standard textbook advice). The other over a trench liberally mixed with wood ash.

The kitchen waste trellis gave me three times (count 'em) the number of beans as the wood ash trellis.

The next year, I read another text book - which said that beans hate wood ash. Why are text book authors always too late to be helpful?

So be cautious with it (at least, in volume)!

My gooseberries ate it up, however. And I gained a bonus. I mulched them thickly with wood ash. Then when I got gooseberry sawfly in Summer (which normally just climb back up the plant, if you shake them off), I just shook them into the wood ash.

And they never did emerge....

Incidentally, the best source of wood ash is a company that's facing a tax investigation. It will give you so many incriminating documents to burn in your incinerator (and even pay you withal!), you'll never again be short of that fine powdery potash...

Of course, I have no experience of this.

Heheheh. It musta been those tax documents that inhibited the bean growth. (I know they do that to me!)

I like the kitchen scrap trench system, John, except I can't always do that, we have so many 4-legged critters around here!

Wonder if you put TOO much wood ash in your bean trench tho. Also am thinking that the kitchen scrap trench gave you a much more complete food that what wood ash would offer. (WHY are you always making me think of doing more experiments around here!? You're working me to death!)
H.

That's his plan, Shoe. First he gets us to work ourselves to death. And then he tells us (smugly, and with polysylabic words) how lazy gardeners do it so much easier.

Ya just can't trust these Limeys.

HAH!...So you're on to him too, eh!?

Blimey! (is that a Limey cuss word?) :>)

Naaah... we prefer the word 'Cobblers'.

Yes, I might have been too liberal with the wood ash. Beans don't need much nitrogen, anyway, which is just as well - rotting kitchen waste consumes a lot of it.

Would have been better in retrospect to have put lots of compost (or well rotted manure) into that trench, and sprinkled just a smidgen of wood ash from my wife's sugar sprinkler.

She won't mind.

I've already borrowed her creme brulee kitchen torch - 1200oC of concentrated mass destruction - to flame weeds with. She hasn't even noticed its absence. I mean, how often in the year do you make creme brulee?

"cobblers" are fruit desserts, John. A little bit of heaven on a plate.

Iffn yer gonna be cussing cobblers me 'n Shoe's gonna jes have ta come down thar and stand ya on yer haid.

Hey, you're both very welcome. Any time. I have a seat reserved for you at my olde local hostelry The Village Swan.

Gerddi missed me by just seconds last year, on a visit to England. She drove by my gate, but was too shy to call in.

Instead, she had to put up with an awful meal at a place - just down my road - where they serve GM foods. I could have counselled her, elsewhere...

This offer is open to ALL who frequent Davesgarden. Drop in (BUT strictly by appointment, please: I don't look my best in pyjamas) - and I'll buy you lunch!

Well, we limeys have to do something, to apologise for the Boston Tea Party...

This might be interesting:

http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~blpprt/bestwoodash.html

Adam.

This link rounds out the picture first drawn by the one above:

http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/garden/composting/woodash.html

Adam.

Adam

Totally brilliant.

Thank you!

http://soilslab.cfr.washington.edu/ESC311-507/2001/FinalProjects/DAKOTA-KEENE/

Adam.

This message was edited Wednesday, Jan 22nd 3:04 PM

I too have wondered over the last year if it was a good idea to use wood ash in my garden but wasn't sure how to find out. This forum surely cleared it up for me...haha. Mine is not hardwood though, does anyone know what difference that would make? Also, which garden plants like acid soil anyway, that though did occur to me when I was sprinkling it in there....I will till mine under pretty deep though. Will see what happens.

Time to re-read this info...