How do you dispose of your ashes?

[LLigetfa]

dumping it in the woods or around trees (especially oaks and evergreens) is not a bad thing to do as most non-fruit trees like acid

Ashes will deacidify the soil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_ash

 

[stoveguy2esw]

dumping it in the woods or around trees (especially oaks and evergreens) is not a bad thing to do as most non-fruit trees like acid

Ashes will deacidify the soil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_ash

whoops guess im wrong on that one , thought it was the other way around , the soil in my "under the trees" flower plots usually has a higher Ph unless im testing it wrong. no biggie , my mistake i guess.

 

[Techstuf]

Here's a few more uses:


http://www.gomestic.com/Homemaking/Uses-for-Fireplace-Ash.68522


I'll have to admit, Jessica really earned my respect with that last one. Only the truest of utilitarians would make use of such application!


TS

 

[eernest4]

There are several threads on this. One metal trashcan!! A whole one?!! I might have 10 gal. total for a year. I don't think I could accumulate a whole metal trash ca of ash in 4 years. Don't throw out the charcoal.

Anyway- a few ideas:
Spread thin on the lawn or garden- it contains potassium and other nutrients, but too much may raise pH.
Compost it
I use it in pottery glazes
Use it for traction on an icy driveway ( I do this a lot)
Dump lots of it where you have poison ivy, in waste spaces, etc where you want to kill weeds

I dont know about dumping ash on poison ivy; where ever I dump ash, the following summer stuff grows 3 times as fast & 3 times as big.

Maybe if you dump so much ash, (like a foot thick) that it stops all the sun light , then it might kill weeds, otherwise you are just fertilizing the weeds.

one caution:::> As I normally dump ash on piles of twiggs & weeds & what not.YOU MUST BE EXTRA SURE THAT THERE ARE NO LIVE EMBERS.

I had to dump 5 ---5 gallon buckets of water on some live embers that were hiding in the ash
so as not to have a brush fire on my hands. That worked out fine but I was sure tired out from 5 trips with the 5 gal buckets of water.

Way easier to dump water into the ash bucket before empting out the ash bucket . It makes the ash bucket heavy & mucky inside but is only one trip to dump & piece of mind that there will be no brush fire.


I sometimes dump 5 gal of ash on the snowbanks, but not all in a big heap because that much will tend to stay put. Spread it around & when the snow melts, most of the ash is caried away by the melt water & a good rain storm desposes of the rest.

As far as 10 gal of ash for the year, hard to believe.

my stove fills a 5 gal pail in 3 to 7 days. Even my pellet stove will fill a shoe box of ash after burning 3 bags of pellets.

 

[crazy_dan]

Because I am kinda real impatient and I always get some live coals in the ashes. I just dump the whole works in the burning barrel. Then I use the hot coals that did make it in to start my trash. When the barrel fills up it all goes in the hole in the ground I had dug to put the ashes in. When the hole fills up i will get it covered and new one dug.

 

[bmwloco]

We compost. I only burn oak and locust for the the most part, so the ash is very fine. I dump every other bucket into the composter. Worms found in the yard go in too, along with kitchen waste.

It "perks" for about 3-4 years before we open the bottom and spread the black, black mass into the garden and plantings. Wow. They do grow. And the volunteer tomatoes that grow out of the composter in spring and summer are delicious.

 

[LLigetfa]

...it all goes in the hole...

Would you refer to it as an ash-hole? %-P