[digital_biscuit]

Hi All

Hope you are all enjoying the lovely sun!!!

Quick question. I burnt loads of wood at the weekend and I am wondering what to do with the ash. I know that shredded wood is bad for the soil, but can i dig the ash in to the soil at all? Would it have any good effects?

Thanks very much!

Digi

[arugula]

Yes, you can just dig the ash straight in as long as the wood didn't have any nasty treatment on it.

[digital_biscuit]

Cool, thanks!

It used to be overgrown trees and bushes so no bad treatment, other than being neglected by their previous owner and then burnt by me!

[arugula]

That's no problem then. Something like tanalised or dipped wood wouldn't be good though.

[DD.]

Hi again DB - enjoy your two year's holiday from the forum? 

You ought to re-introduce yourself! 

[Agatha]

I've read that nutrient is washed out of woodash quickly (presumably that was written in the days when we had rain every so often...!), so you should either dig into the soil quickly, store somewhere dry or add to your compost heap.

[digital_biscuit]

Hi again DB - enjoy your two year's holiday from the forum? 

You ought to re-introduce yourself! 

Hi DD

Yeah I took a break. Finishing my studies at uni, then moving to a new location in the UK all meant no time for digging! I now have a garden and a veg plot, albeit a little smaller than the lotty, and am looking forward to getting back in to it! Hopefully there will be a smaller gap between this and my next post!

Thanks for all the help folks! I remember why I loved this forum sooo much!

[JayG]

It's a good source of potassium and a little calcium, but it's also a bit alkaline, so not such a good idea for spuds or ericaceous plants.

The salts are quite soluble, as Agatha has just stated, so it's best stored dry before using and not buried too deeply when you do, (and I also agree about rain - a really wet spell these days gets me nearly as excited as a huge snowfall used to!) 

[Taistealaiche]

I know that shredded wood is bad for the soil,

Can I ask where this idea came from? If it's treated shredded wood, then yes. Otherwise no.

[JayG]

I know that shredded wood is bad for the soil,

Can I ask where this idea came from? If it's treated shredded wood, then yes. Otherwise no.

High carbon materials like shredded wood contain little nitrogen which micro-organisms need to help them rot down, so they have to "borrow" it from the surrounding soil which therefore gets a little depleted as a result, although most of it is returned towards the end of the process.

Different situation with the same sort of material added as a mulch though (it can't "suck" nitrogen out of the soil if it's only lying on top of it, but will therefore take much longer to rot down, which isn't such a bad thing for a mulch.)

[Taistealaiche]

Different situation with the same sort of material added as a mulch though (it can't "suck" nitrogen out of the soil if it's only lying on top of it, but will therefore take much longer to rot down, which isn't such a bad thing for a mulch.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, JayG, but what you're saying here is if the shredded wood is dug into the soil, it robs the nitrogen? But if it is simply used as a mulch (covering), it doesn't rob the nitrogen but instead eventually breaks down into the soil thus enriching it?

 The reason I ask is that I remember an old guy down in Central Otago (South Island, NZ) who had a property that was basically barren and very dry. Any rain simply ran off. Wouldn't grow a flaming thing. What he did was cover the ground with about a 6 inch layer of shredded wood and bark and leave it for a year. Result: he was able to plant in the spring. Each year from then on, he simply added more layers of shredded wood and bark and continued to plant. Within 4 years, the ground was so rich it was almost unbelievable. Grew anything!

[JayG]

Well, I did say "borrow" rather than "rob" - the old guy you mention presumably had a very compacted and unimproved soil lacking in organic matter, but all that mulch and nature eventually did all the hard work for him.