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.
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Jonathan Apples: What Are They and How to Grow Them
We didn’t set out to grow Jonathan apples, but this is the variety that thrives in our zone 7B garden. We purchased seedlings from the Arbor Day Society and planted our home orchard in December 2007. Today, we have many fruit trees, including our beloved Jonathans that are my new favorite apple. Here’s how to…
Stuffed Peppers Without Rice Recipe
A no-salt, nutritarian, vegan dinner that’s easy to make on a busy night I made this stuffed peppers without rice recipe last night for dinner. It uses my confetti salad recipe with some added spices for the filling. At this time of year, when fresh tomatoes and peppers are abundant in the garden, it’s the…
Fig Salad Recipe: Figs and Cantaloupe with Basil Dressing
I promised to share this French fig salad recipe with you. This recipe originally came from a cookbook by Georgeanne Brennan called Savoring France: Recipes and Reflections on French Cooking. I updated the recipe to remove the dairy and fat. The result is a flavorful, lower calorie dessert that sparkles with the essence of the…
What to Do with Fresh Figs?
What to do with fresh figs? Well, you can eat them, of course. If you are growing figs in Virginia or anywhere else, one thing is clear: the harvest begins in late summer and continues into the fall. The abundance from one or two small fig trees is astonishing. Here’s what to do with fresh…
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.