Ashes to ashes
The almanac warned us that last week would be chilly, but we knew that firsthand by walking outside to get the mail or another armload of firewood. It’s firewood season for some of us. Anyone with a woodstove gets the obligation of disposing of the ashes, but, for gardeners, that’s a good thing because wood ashes applied to garden beds appropriately and respectfully is like a multi-vitamin for your garden soil.
The first step is for Charlie to bring over a load of aged wood cut and split into 16-inch chunks. In the past, I grazed the woods nearby (I have a deed) and harvested fallen branches or I thinned out trees clumped together. It was a joy just to wander through the community of trees, and I still do. Early on, I discovered a large oak tree down which supplied two winters worth of firewood, but hauling tree parts through the woods in a wheelbarrow back to my pickup is less of a joy now than in years past, so I text Charlie. Times have changed.
Most folks who depend on a woodstove burn hardwoods such as oaks, ashes, maples and hickories. I don’t burn pines or cedars because they are more resinous, and burning them creates creosote which sticks to the stove pipe on its way up. Creosote is flammable, and a spark wending its way toward the night sky might start a fire and burn your house down. Bummer.
But we’re gathered here around the woodstove to talk about ashes. A well-contained fire in your woodstove will keep your tootsies toasty and leave behind ashes for the garden. Scoop out ashes and store them in a metal can for a day or two so that all the embers die dead. Once the ashes have cooled enough for use in your garden beds, spread a moderate dose evenly over beds along with your favorite leaves and mulch and gently work it all in with a cultivator. It won’t hurt if you also sing a song for the soil and do a garden jig up and down the pathways.
The ashes from hardwood tree parts add primarily calcium and potassium to soil in addition to magnesium, phosphorus, sulfur and other periodic table members. The short-term result will be to neutralize naturally acidic soil like that common in soil around Eureka Springs. That means plants like strawberries, blueberries and raspberries that prefer acidic soil would benefit more from regular applications of pine straw and less from a direct dose of wood ashes. However, mixing in a sprinkle of wood ashes to compost along with leaves and grass clippings helps the jumble decompose nicely, and then your strawberries etc., respectfully endowed with this compost will thank you most kindly.
A person who intends to add ashes to garden beds should avoid burning treated lumber, cardboard, shiny paper from magazines, painted wood or fake fireplace logs. These would add toxic elements such as chromium, cadmium and other bad buggers to the ashes. That’s not good.
A cautionary tale: I once skipped the step of putting ashes into a metal bucket and went directly from wood stove to a bed at the bottom end of my garden. The bed was under a white oak tree, so leaves were two inches deep in the bed, plus nearby areas through a fence into the woods. I spread ashes with best intentions and went about my business. Soon enough, I noticed a puff of smoke. Uh-oh. Upon my arrival, I saw a small flame which I shuffled about with a hoe, and then I saw another small flame, and another, etc. Fire in leaves knows what to do. Small conflagrations kept erupting on both sides of the fence which meant running out of the garden and down a path into the woods and back again with a hoe (that’s all I had) over and over to keep the world from burning down until I prevailed.
Don’t do that. Fire belongs in the woodstove. Let your ashes rest in a bucket.