sunnychooks
Deeply Rooted
Can ashes from a wood stove be used as compost? Do they have any advantage at all for gardening? I was throwing out a container today onto the "ash heap" and wondered if they could be used for something. 
Wood Stove Ashes
- Thread starter sunnychooks
- Start date
peeps7
Chillin' In The Garden
Ashes are good but I wouldn't put to much because of what 1acrefarm said, it will be like clay.
digitS'
Garden Master
Ashes are potassium rich, Sunnychooks, and as 1Acre suggests, they are a high pH material.
My garden probably has plenty of potassium (K) and the soil is naturally a high pH (alkaline) here in my part of the arid West. Even the water is high pH!!
I once cleaned out the wood stove used then for heat and deposited the ashes in the garden on one-half of one bed. The next year I planted that entire bed in onions. The problem I created for the onions just throwing on the ashes was immediately obvious - they grew little and stunted!!
In your part of the world, a too acidic soil is probably common. Still (if you could do it safely without starting a fire), putting your wood ashes on the compost pile may be a better use than applying them directly to the garden soil. I don't think it would at all make sense - to just throw the ashes away.
Just my 2 cents.
Steve
My garden probably has plenty of potassium (K) and the soil is naturally a high pH (alkaline) here in my part of the arid West. Even the water is high pH!!
I once cleaned out the wood stove used then for heat and deposited the ashes in the garden on one-half of one bed. The next year I planted that entire bed in onions. The problem I created for the onions just throwing on the ashes was immediately obvious - they grew little and stunted!!
In your part of the world, a too acidic soil is probably common. Still (if you could do it safely without starting a fire), putting your wood ashes on the compost pile may be a better use than applying them directly to the garden soil. I don't think it would at all make sense - to just throw the ashes away.
Just my 2 cents.
Steve
