If you burn firewood, you have wood ashes. Don’t throw them out! There are many surprising ways to use ashes around the garden and home. Here are five practical ideas.
Each cord of firewood that you burn will leave you with about 20 pounds of ashes or more, depending on your fuel source, heating appliance, and wood-burning skill.
Instead of putting them out with the trash, put your ashes to use in and around your garden and home!
1. Amending Lawn and Garden Soil
Wood ash is a readily available source of potassium, calcium, and magnesium which are essential for plant health. It’s a common way to inrease your soil pH.
However, it is very important to know when to use wood ash and when NOT to use wood ash.
The answer to that question comes down to: What is your soil pH? Get a free soil test. (See how to take a soil test.) Soils in the pH range of 6.0 to 7.0 is optimal for most lawns and garden plants. Note: Select plants prefer a soil with a lower pH (acidic) and certain plants grow better in soil with a higher pH (alkaline).
When to Add Wood Ash:
- Add if your soil PH is too low (falling below 6.5). Magnesium and calcium availability are reduced. Just as an example: Tomato blossom end rot is caused by lack of available calcium in the soil.
When NOT to Add Wood Ash:
- Do not add wood ash if your soil is already alkaline with a pH greater than 7.0. In a soil that is already alkaline, you will hurt your plants and even kill them. Many plants can not take up nutrients if the soil pH gets too high. As an example: trees will have yellow leaves (chlorosis); some vegetables and fruit trees will also suffer. Elemental sulfer is used to lower soil pH.
- If your soil is already in the optimal range (6.0 to 7.0), you do not want to mess with the pH.
- Don’t apply ashes around acid-loving plants such as blueberries, rhododendrons, azaleas, and holly, since wood ash will raise the pH and make the soil less desirable to those plant.
How to Use Wood Ash
Wood ash is similar to lime (which is ground limestone or calcium carbonate) which also increases soil pH. However, unlike limestone, which can take 6 months or more to change soil pH, wood ash is water-soluble and changes the soil pH rapidly. Apply roughly twice as much ash by weight as the recommendation for limestone.
Soils already in the optimal pH range of 6.0 to 7.0 can handle 20 pounds, or one 5-gallon pail of hardwood ashes per 1,000 square feet annually without raising the pH unduly. Do not apply more than 20 pounds as high rates or wood ashes may cause short-term salt injury. Be careful when adding wood ash to your garden.
Wear eye protection, gloves, and a dust mask and broadcast the ashes evenly on a dry, windless day. Mix them into the soil thoroughly before planting. Hose off any ashes that settle on actively growing plants to prevent burning the foliage.
Watch Video Demo to see how to apply wood ashes to the garden.
More Ways to Use Wood Ash
Our ancestors learned to make lye, a caustic cleaning agent, at least 5,000 years ago by running water through wood ash, eventually learning to combine it with animal fats and water to make soap.Early Americans used ashes or homemade lye water for scrubbing wood floors, laundering clothes and bed linens, and soaking fresh-killed hogs to help remove the hair. For centuries, potters and ceramacists have used wood ashes to create beautiful glazes. Take a look.
Here are a few more suggestions for modern use:
2. Repel Slugs
Sprinkled lightly around susceptible plants, wood ashes will irritate slugs’ moist bodies and repel them. The repellent effect will disappear after rain or irrigation dissolves the ashes. See other ways to deter slugs.
3. Melt Ice and Provide Winter Traction
Spread on walks and driveways, wood ashes will melt ice and provide traction. They don’t work quite as well as salt, and they can be messy if you don’t take steps to prevent the ashes from getting tracked into the house. But they’re free, and they won’t damage animal paws or paved surfaces.
4. Reduce or Remove Oil Stains on asphalt, stone, and cement.
5. Clean Glass and Metal
Hard to believe, but hardwood ashes make fast work of grease, grime, and tarnish on glass, silverware, ovenware, grills, and glass stovetops, as well as gummy residues left by stickers and labels.
Dip a damp cloth in wood ashes or make a thick paste of ashes and a little water, scrub lightly with a cotton cloth, and rinse away with plain water and another cloth. Wear gloves for these scrubbing tasks to avoid caustic burns.
Be Safe!
As with all aspects of wood heating, use vigilance and common sense in handling and managing the ashes. Store them in a covered metal container set on dirt or concrete a few feet in all directions from any combustible surface.
Even though the ashes may appear cold, buried embers may remain live for days, even weeks.
Do you know any other uses for wood ashes? Let us know in the comments!
Reader Comments
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Wood Ashes
I have found that sprinkling wood ashes on mole hills and tunnels makes them move on to greener pastures.
Wood Ash remenant.
Hello,
After extracting lye from wood Ash, what can I use the remenants for.
Acidity of wood ashes
Would using wood ashes around poison ivy kill or deter poison ivy growth? I am seeing some positive results around the edges of my lawn!
Can I use Wood ash as mulsh?
I am wanting so cover a bit of the garden in small gravel ... No planting needed as use of tubs planned. Has anyone used wood ash as a layer on ground before covering say with cardboard or black mesh to suppress weeds growing through our does it turn very dense like clay and not let water through creating an issue ? Any info welcomed thanks
Not a good mulch!
A sprinkling of wood ash over your soil before laying down the cardboard would be OK if you have some to dispose of.
But, for several reasons, a thick layer of ashes definitely doesn’t make a good weed-suppressing mulch.
I’d recommend just going with a layer or two of cardboard (or other light-suppressing cover) for suppressing those weeds. Cover the cardboard with straw, grass clippings, decaying leaves, or wood chips to improve the aesthetics and hold the cardboard in place.
ashes
I asked my grandma, who was an Irish railroad laborer in the 19th century, what they did without bug spray. The answer quickly was, Oh, we just spread fire ashes on the garden. never saw a bad bug.
clean greasy pots, pans,dishes,rags
I repurpose dry wood ash for cleaning all around my home. Grease & mould.wonderful to have.
Wood ash in the garden
Would you know if wood ash benefits roses? Thank you
Wood ash and roses
The main benefit of wood ash in the soil is to raise the soil pH, or make it less acidic and more alkaline. So you’d want to know your soil’s pH.
Roses enjoy a pH of 6.0 through 6.9 (slightly acidic). For pH outside this range, the availability of nutrients to the plant is greatly affected. So…if you already have neutral or alkaline soil, you don’t want to make your soil more alkaline.
If your soil needs to be even less acidic, wood ash is perfect for roses. Spread one-half to one pound of ashes evenly around a mature shrub or rose bush.
gas fires for sale
Thanks for sharing the best information and suggestions, I love your content, and they are very nice and very useful to us.
Benefits of wood ash.
Wood ash is great for killing mites on chickens and ducks. You can dust them with it, sprinkle it in their hatching boxes and where the dust bath.
You can also use it to kill green mold on your driveway, house or where ever you have green mold. Simply spread it, add water, make a paste and let it dry. This suffocates the mold. You can then wash it off or let the rain do the job.
Woodstove ash
I use a wet paper towel an cold wood ash from my stove to clean the glass on my woodstove.
Then take a dry one to wipe it off. Love to see the fire burning in my stove.
Wood ash
Can you use wood ash as a cleaner for a wood deck? To get rid of mold and mildew on metal patio furniture?
wood ash uses
I'm thinking about creating my own natural floor stain--do you know wood ash has ever been used as an element for white-washing an untreated, hardwood floor?
We have been cautioned by
We have been cautioned by gardener advisor Ed Lawrence to keep wood ash off vegetable gardens because they may contain heavy metals, like lead and cadmium that will accumulate in the soil.
heavy metals in wood ash
applying five tons of ash adds less than two pounds of these elements. hope you have a lot of 5 gallon buckets
Website Dead
"Some hardy folks still do." was a link to click on, in the first paragraph, under "How To Use Your Wood Ashes" title. That link took me to a page that is gone, dead, ka-put...lol. Please fix?
Dead Link
Thanks for catching that! Unfortunately, it seems that the linked website has been taken offline.
Wood ashes
I add them to my chickens’ dust bath and coop area. They are great for combatting mites!
Margaret, Could you cite a
Margaret,
Could you cite a source that I could look into more fully for the following comment:
"Soils already in the pH 6.0 to 6.5 (optimum for most lawns and garden plants) can handle 20 pounds, or one 5-gallon pail of hardwood ashes per 1000 square feet annually without raising the pH unduly."
Thank you!
I've seen numerous references
I've seen numerous references to this rule of thumb by horticultural experts over the years, Tim.
Here's one from the University of New Hampshire extension.
In Asia wood ash is used for
In Asia wood ash is used for cleaning.It shines copper, brass and tin pots, pans and dishes. Dab some ash in a handful of straw or piece of rag and scrub the dirty containers.
We use the fine ash powder in the finger tips so it would make the threads roll smoothly and not be sticky when hand spinning threads from cotton balls.
Ongoing argument about
Ongoing argument about fireplaces in our historical past. When I talk to re-creators at historical sites they all say the same thing. Fireplaces wre NOT used primarily as a heat source. Most fireplaces were used for cooking and the heat they gave off was a bonus but wood was way more important to cooking than heating. Was this true of the average home as well. Tks in advance JErry
The traditional fireplace is
The traditional fireplace is a notorious heat sink, Jerry, sending more heat up the chimney that it radiates out into the room.
It can also spew smoke and spit sparks into the living space.
But folks who love fireplaces have found modern materials and technologies that avoid these problems. Here's a "tehnical rant" from a fireplace afficianado.
Living in a state that's 85 percent forested, I'm a huge fan of wood heat. I live in a house heated exclusively by wood. In the winter, we cook with wood (kitchen cookstove) and dry our clothes on racks set up by the woodstoves. In spring, we spread the ashes in the gardens to raise the pH of our soil.
For the sake of efficiency, safety, and versatility, I much prefer an EPA-certified stove that's sized, located, and installed by a professional. Mos of them are sleek and attractive, and many have glass doors that allow fire-viewing.
Can charcoal ash from my BBQ
Can charcoal ash from my BBQ be used in the same way?
Experts recommend using only
Experts recommend using only hardwood ashes from wood-fired heating or cooking appliances in horticiultural setting.
I wouldn't risk using your charcoal ashes in and around lawns or gardens, Alisa. Don't use them to make soap, either. You don't really know what chemical additives or other materials might have gone into the production of your BBQ briquettes.
ash solution is a good
ash solution is a good conductor of electricity it can also store electric charges and be used in batteries
Interesting! New information
Interesting! New information for me.
I found this short YouTube link describing the process of making a small battery with wood ashes and charcoal: bit.ly/16bD7A8http://
Here's a longer video, which describes making homemade batteries using lye (from ashes) as the alkaline electrolyte: bit.ly/16bD7A8
article
Good to know, Margaret! I am using my fireplace more now to save on heating oil cost. I will definitely try some of these!
The description of your life sounds really interesting!
Thank you!
Margaret,
Wonderful article. My grandmother recently shared stories with me about her family using their wood ashes for many of the same things you describe. I have been adding mine to our garden this year (after I did a soil test) and plan to have a little fun trying to make some soap while it's still too cold to go outside & play. Thanks again!