stubbed toes and mud pies

[digitS']

When I had wood heat, I learned to not put the ash in my garden soil because of its high pH.

I could store the ash in a metal bucket and put it on the concrete floor of the garage I had at that time. It was safe there.

Using it in the compost seemed to work fine but I had to wait a surprising amount of time to see that the ash didn't contain burning charcoal. I think that I used 48 hours as an absolute minimum.

Steve

 

[Trish Stretton]

I have metal buckets too, but with my new-ish firebox, I dont usually get all that much ash from it unless I turn the damper down over night.
Its carbon neutral and seems to 'disappear' the ash for most of the time.
When I do need to empty it out, I use these smallish metal buckets and they are also left on a concrete floor. I leave them for 6 months unless they are going towards filling in hollows in the lawns.

Before, when I had a different sort of garden, I would look forward to heaps of ash, cos I used this on the paths around the gardens, so the more the merrier.
I thought it did help supress the weeds.

 

[flowerbug]

I have metal buckets too, but with my new-ish firebox, I dont usually get all that much ash from it unless I turn the damper down over night.
Its carbon neutral and seems to 'disappear' the ash for most of the time.
When I do need to empty it out, I use these smallish metal buckets and they are also left on a concrete floor. I leave them for 6 months unless they are going towards filling in hollows in the lawns.

Before, when I had a different sort of garden, I would look forward to heaps of ash, cos I used this on the paths around the gardens, so the more the merrier.
I thought it did help supress the weeds.

i've thought that it would be harsh enough to kill anything it was dumped upon, but i found out that chives at least have no problem at all even if you dump several inches of ashes directly upon them. (i was trying to kill off a large extra patch of chives we had - i had then to resort to digging them up to get rid of them). i'm sure there are other plants that would survive this too... (dandelions, plantains, horsetail and probably the perennial sow thistle and other thistles are some i would guess).

 

[Trish Stretton]

...you're killing chives...or trying to? Whats wrong with you!!! lol

If my DIL heard you were thinking of pouring ash over things like Plantain and Dandelions..man...you are in deep Kim chi.
She uses these in her herbal remedies along with just about every other 'weed' except for 'That' one.

 

[flowerbug]

we don't hardly even eat them...

we had a border/low spot at the bottom of the north garden where Mom wanted to plant sunflowers. she did but the chipmunks kept eating the plants/seeds so she came up with the idea that she could put down the tops of chives (including flower heads with seeds in them) to deter the chipmunks. it didn't work, but we managed to get sunflowers to grow there a year or two...

in the meantime those seeds sprouted and grew and we left the plants to grow because i like the flowers and the bees do too.

a few years later as the horsetail invaded it was impossible to get it removed entirely from that garden with the chives protecting the horsetail roots and me hating to dig up the chives because the smell of the roots makes me gag.

finally i just had to do it... dig up that entire edge along the north garden and hunt down all those roots from the horsetail.

here are some pictures from the red patch (what it was called before it became the north garden), me hunting down horsetail roots and other bits i could find:

pretty flowers!

notice how big that patch of chives is at the right of that garden? that's not our only patch of chives either, we had several others...

redoing the edge, hunting horsetail... that pile there is stacked up chunks of chives which i left out all winter so they could get some rot going and frozen and weathered in place there in that stack... i have another picture someplace (it may not be on the website) where there is some snow and ice there and that pile looks like a face peeking out of it...

but they sure were pretty when they bloomed (the two purple flower edges in the background)!

 

[flowerbug]

i finished up what i needed to do in the big tomato garden today. it only took me a few hours but the last trench i made a bit shallower than the other two. it is unlikely to matter much at all anyways. i left a little weeding and raking for Mom to do in there so that i can move on to the next two gardens while the weather is good. it may take me two or three more days to get those done depending upon what i choose to do with those... then there are other things to work on too.

but back to the fun in the large tomato garden. under one big lump of pulled up tomato plants there was a pile of corn seeds and soybean seeds that a chipmunk must have left there as a winter supply. the funny thing is that the nearest soybean field is about 250 feet away across a road and two ditches. that's some dedication right there...

 

[flowerbug]

remember when i said i wasn't going to take on any more projects? laugh with me... hahaha...

the other day Mom raked the deadheading stuff out of some daylilies that are growing next to the SE corner garden where we had tomatoes and cucumbers this past summer. she's stacked all her rakings and other stuff in that garden for me to bury. this is all ok.

as i was walking through there yesterday i noticed there was a lot of grass coming up in those daylilies... so today to start the process of renovating that area and also finishing up what i need to do in that SE corner i dug a pretty good sized trench to bury stuff and also to check out how much the lilies were trying to invade the garden. they'd done so for years so we've been digging a trench next to them to give them more of a challenge. i did find some that were moving in so those roots were removed.

after burying what i could fit in the big trench (three layers of goodies) i marked the far edge of it so that when i get the SE corner garden done and my other task in the neighboring small sandy garden (moving dirt back and forth between the two to get some clay in the sandy garden and more sand in the heavier clay SE corner garden) done then i'm going to go through those lillies and remove them and the grass. i'm sure i won't get them all and such, but i'll try to keep it bare next year to make sure any grass doesn't come back. will be a good garden for peas or beans... heh.

we'll have to figure out what we want to do with some of the lillies, we already have some of these in other places so we may just decide to compost them or i can toss them along the front ditch and whatever grows and flowers is fine with me. or...

with this nice weather it is actually nice to be able to get a project like this done because that grass will spread to all the neighboring gardens back there if given a chance so if i can get to it now/soon then that makes life next year easier... whatever i don't finish i can plan on it as a small spring project (along with the neighboring thyme garden which also has grass in it)... heh. ok... well, not that i really was looking for more to do, but hey, ... it's good clean fun and good exercise and i can always use that...

 

[ninnymary]

Flowerbug, is that crimson clover behind the chives? It is beautiful and a whole field of it!

Mary

 

[flowerbug]

Flowerbug, is that crimson clover behind the chives? It is beautiful and a whole field of it!

Mary

no, it is a small carnation:

Red Patch | Anthive

My first major garden here for a while...

www.anthive.com

 

[ninnymary]

no, it is a small carnation:

Red Patch | Anthive

My first major garden here for a while...

www.anthive.com

Are you sure? Haha. Thought for sure it was clover. But then what do I know. They are beautiful non the less.

Mary