Is wood ash good for your soil?

I burn so much wood during the winter I was wondering if it would be able to come to some use after. thanks

weasel, woodash contains minerals and trace elements that are essential for plant growth, but it also contains lime, which is alkaline. Putting it on soil that is already alkaline can run the Ph way up there. If your soil is acidic and needs to be neutralized, wood ash is your friend, but avoid adding it if you are alky.

Here's a good discussion on wood ash:

http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/garden/soil/woodashuse.html

Pen

One note of caution... DON'T put wood ash around grape vines.... they hate it, as I found to my cost a few years ago when I thought I was giving my few vines a treat, and it nearly killed them!!! Also it was on limestone soil, so that fits in with Pennzer's point..., but I subsequently read that vines don't like high potash content.

I often add a little (1"-2") wood ash to the compost pile, for the minerals & trace elements. Good stuff!

I'm not an expert by any means on the PH level in compost, however, I would think that compost is probably mostly acidic by nature. Adding wood ash to compost is probably a good thing to do.

I'm trying to help my dad with his garden. Last year I won him over to lining the soil between the plants with landscapers fabric to keep down the weeds. He had always just tilled in the weeds and it looked pretty unsightly in between tillings. This year he has the entire garden covered in this stuff and I think maybe I made a mistake in convincing him to do this. At least when he was tilling down the weeds, the soil was getting SOMETHING instead of nothing. This year the tomatoes aren't even two feet high and last year they were over my head.

He never adds anything to the soil other than wood ash from their wood stove, and I've noticed that the plants are really small this year. I'm currently in the process of trying to convince him to try Lasagna gardening. http://www.motherearthnews.com/menarch/archive/issues/173/173-050-01.htm At least that would be a quick and easy way to get his soil back into shape.

You might type in "wood ashes" into the DG search box. We've had tons of discussions on it in the past.