What do you do with wood ashes? Are they useful, can they be used for something productive? Will they cause harm to the compost pile? Can it be used to ammend the soil? or should it be put in the garbage to be taken to the landfill? Thank you for your help regarding this question.

-- Jonathan Sanchez (jonathan_sz@yahoo.com), November 26, 2001

Answers

Jonathan:

At the bottom of the new threads part, go to Older Messages (by category) and select Heat - Wood. Once there do a Control and F key at the same time, which will bring up a search box. Key in ash and do a search on thread titles. You will find some information on the many uses of wood ashes there.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), November 26, 2001.

I've read while researching soapmaking that you can make your own lye if you burn only hardwoods. Has anyone tried this?

-- Dawn (olsoncln@ecenet.com), November 26, 2001.

ashes can be put in a box in your chicken coop for your chickens to take a dust bath in to get rid of mites and other itchies...MAKE SURE ASHES HAVE NO COALS FIRST!

Also ashes can be mixed in with a compost pile OCCASSIONALLY and also dumped on garden plots if they are going to be plowed under...but not too much of the good stuff....

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), November 26, 2001.

I've made soap with wood ash lye. We burn mostly oak. The soap from wood ash lye never really hardens up, even with cooking. I've read that the reason is that wood ash lye is Potassium Hydroxide, while commercial lye is Sodium Hydroxide. I also read that old timers used to add a handful of salt to the soap right before pouring it to make it harden. It is supposed to provide the sodium ions that produce the harder soap. I haven't tried this yet, but will as soon as we butcher another hog. The soft soap I made, however, is great for scrubbing really dirty blue jeans before throwing them in to wash.

-- Lynne (boodad@us.inter.net), November 26, 2001.

Put your ashes in your chicken run. They love to dust themselves with them and it keeps them lice free.

-- Patricia Ramsey (WOOLSPIN@AOL.COM), November 26, 2001.

We have a lot of poison oak around our place in Oregon. I dump the ashes on and around the plants...It seems to change the ph of the soil....the poison oak dies...

-- Craig Adams (dcadams@attbi.com), December 20, 2001.

Ohmigod! Craig, I'm gonna try that! We have enough p.o. to supply the known world!

-- joj (jump@off.c), December 20, 2001.

What I try to is not to remove them every day. I try to let them burn a couple more days inside the stove. Reason? In ashes there is a part of combustible material remaining (hard wood coal) that will burn off given more time. Just push it on the side of your stove and you will notice its volume on the next day!!! I do a complete clean off only once every third day! Try it and send me an email

Georges Bouchard Mailto:georges@moncanoe.com

-- Georges Bouchard (georges@moncanoe.com), December 29, 2001.

Always leave a bucketful by your stove. What is a greater fire extinguisher?

Feed several handfuls to each of your yard and orchard trees.

Scatter them in your fields, on the driveway.

Worse thing to do is just pile them somewhere.

Use on ice for traction.

-- carol (kanogisdi@yahoo.com), December 30, 2001.