Wood ash is an organic gardening fertilizer but use it carefully and be sure you know your soil pH before using it. If you’re already dealing with alkaline soil, spread the wood ashes outside where they won’t change the soil pH around plants you like or your vegetables. They can raise soil pH rapidly. Wood ashes add potassium, calcium and phosphorous back into the soil – great for tomatoes.
Footer
The Folk Art Weather House
I’ve loved this little folk art weather house all my life. It still makes me smile. What gardener doesn’t need to know the weather? I grew up with many German relatives. Thank-you notes were written to “Oncle Ludwig” and “Tante Marie.” During visits to their homes, I was fascinated by the little folk art German…
Growing vs. Wild Foraging Medicinal Herbs: My Perspective
Growing vs. wild foraging medicinal herbs is a real concern among newbie herbalists. The other day, I shared pictures of my herb seedlings (mallow, parsley, and savory) on Facebook. A nervous nellie immediately wrote, “I would be so AFRAID to do that! How can you know they are safe?” Well, first of all, parsley and…
Sunfinity Sunflowers: A Long-Lasting Burst of Summer Color
I love sunflowers, so when the National Gardening Bureau reached out with the news of Sunfinity® Sunflowers, I had to check them out. This new sunflower variety keeps blooming long after traditional sunflowers call it quits. While many common varieties offer only a few weeks of color and stop producing flowers once cut, this series…
Buy vs. Build Your Own Garden Fountain
Are you trying to decide whether to buy or build your own garden fountain? I’ve done both, and each approach has pros and cons. I’ll unpack them for you, below, plus include links to some of my favorite products. Home Garden Joy participates in the Amazon affiliate program. We earn a small commission on product…
Wood ash can be a great help. I’ve had people ask me why they burn rainforests when they’re clearing the land for farming. The answer is that rainforest soil is pretty baren of nutrients – it’s all up in the canopies of trees. There is so much forestation that the plants have sucked up much of the available nutrients. Burning the forest creates the ash, and that is easily plowed back into the soil, creating fertile soil for growing crops. Plant and Garden Blog
Interesting Ann and thanks for leaving a comment. I thought the rainforests were burned because it was easier than clearing away timber, except for special hardwoods like mahogany that can be sold. But adding the ash back into the soil makes sense.
Wood Ash really is great for tomatoes and in this part of Virginia the soil wants to go back to acid really quickly so adding wood ash can be great. In the many years we have raised tomatoes one year stands out as having the absolute best tasting tomatoes and that was 1998. (Sounds like wine doesn’t it!) We had put wood ashes out on our garden spot and our pH was up pretty high (closer to 7) in that area. I am convinced that the higher pH helped create those great tasting tomatoes. Was not a year with excess rain so some watering was necessary and that may have helped too. We did soil samples that year and VA Tech’s soils lab said pH too high for vegetables. I just laughed. I have in the years since then seen many sources that say tomatoes like the soil a little closer to neutral than some other things. Never have trouble with blossom end rot either.
Enjoy your blog.
Liz
Hi Liz, yes in our part of Virginia too, we need to do anything and everything to raise the soil pH. When I had ours tested before we moved in the pH was around 4. The lab actually called me to ask where the heck the soil was from (the lab was in NY where we lived). They had never seen soil like it thanks to all the pines grown here which just turned the soil to acid. Wood ash is great to raise pH quickly.