HARRY BARKER
ArboristSite Guru
dump them in my horseradish patch.
akaline??? thought acidic--as thats what happens when you add water to it, the first step in making lye--which is acid--
SingleJack's wife is right. Because lye is so corrosive, you would think that it is an acid, but it is actually a VERY alkaline, hightly corrosive substance (13.0 PH). Being the southern appalachian mountaineer that I am, we use it for several things:
1) Lye soap...save your hardwood ashes. Take a plastic bucket with little holes in the bottom, fill it with ashes and pour water in the bucket. (We used to make these out of old sawmill boards; called an ash hopper) What comes out in the bottom is marginally diluted lye....mix with vegetable oils, (deep fryer grease), animal fats and make your own homemade soap.
2) We process our own beef and pork. We use some of lye from the above process (highly diluted, of course) to take the residual hair off the carcass.
3) And of course, ashes in the garden adds potash to the soil, but like Single-Jacks wife said, don't concentrate it one spot.
We use to use just dump on them on the compost pile, until the day we caught it on fire, what freakin riot that was. Now we let them sit for a day or two.
Ok, bringing this thread back up because i just saw something rediculous! Wood Ash on sale on Amazon for....wait for it....$30 for 10 lbs! WOW!
http://www.amazon.com/Oak-Ash-Environmentally-Eco-friendly-Natural/dp/B0032GGC4W
Oh...Ok, nevermind. Its Oak ash. Understandable for $30 then...people buy this?
I don't know if someone mentioned it, but ashes make a great border around your garden if you have a slug/snail problem. They will not cross it. I guess they get cut up or something. All the Basques here in the mountains do it and we have MAJOR slug issues.
Pete
You have GOT to be kidding! I looked at the posting.....it is true. I would really like to know how much they actually sell.
What do you do with your ashes?
:newbie:
This may be a dumb question, but what do you do when you clean out your boiler/fireplace from time to time during the winter? What I'm getting at is... what do you shovel it into directly out of the boiler/fireplace to haul to where you want to dump it? Do you guys let it burn out for a few days or just dump it knowing that there is nothing that will start on fire, and let the snow take care of it?
I was thinking about getting a few 5 gallon metal buckets...but I just thought I'd ask.
Thanks
:newbie:
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