Hey, it's Jason at Fraser Valley Rose farm. On this rural property we heat mainly by wood stove and
From that arises one question really important to me and I'll try to answer it in this video
Which is: is it safe to use the wood ash that comes out of this stove in my garden?
I'll try to answer that today. So the answer is that wood
ash, when used properly. is not only safe to use in your landscape, but it's highly beneficial. It's really high in calcium and potassium
It's a good source of phosphorus and then all sorts of other trace elements that are good for your garden
In addition to those benefits it tends to deacidify your soil
So some plants really appreciate a raise in the pH and tends to have a long-lasting conditioning effect on the soil
So overall it's a good thing but I should clarify that the wood ash that I'm using is coming from a mixture of softwood and hardwood
Split like this
If you're talking about charcoal briquettes or coals that you would use in your barbecue
That's not the same thing and you should not use those in your garden
Let's have a look at the wood ash that I will use:
Looking into my ash can here and you'll see that there are big chunks like this
that are like
Charcoal, and those will break up in your soil over a length of time
They're actually relatively inert so they don't add a whole ton of nutrition to your plants
but what they will do is they'll break down over a long period of time and
During that time, they will tend to improve the structure of your soil. Then there's this powdery type stuff here
That's the stuff that'll release very quickly all of the nutrients that are in there
Now what I will say is that not everything in my garden is an active growth right now
Maybe the hellebores are but most everything else is relatively
Dormant, so if I wanted to save this for later and have the quick release to the plants, I would store it dry. And then
Bring it out and put it on the plants in the spring. Otherwise if I'm using it for something that's active growth right now
I'll put it out in the garden today
One particularly good candidate for using wood ash are
hellebores and
Two reasons for that right now. It's winter and they're an active growth
You can see they're starting to put up new leaves new flowers. So in active growth like that
They're going to be able to take advantage of all that release of nutrients right now
The second thing is that hellebores appreciate a slightly less acidic soil
They want something a little more neutral or even slightly alkaline
So the addition of wood ash will help to improve the soil pH for them
And as you can see if you look real close is I've already added a generous side dressing of wood ash
to both of these hellebores
One more interesting plant to use the wood ash on because of its effects on pH is hydrangea
Hydrangea is a plant that reacts to its pH by
Changing the color of its flowers. So with more acidic soil, it's going to turn blue and with more alkaline soil
It's going to tend towards red
So just as a fun thing to do with my hydrangea here, I'm going to go with this side here for another video
I'm making and turn it all
Alkaline, or raise the pH and on the other side. I'm going to
decrease the pH by putting down some aluminum sulfate, so
Ideally if things work out this side will be more red and that side will be more blue. And once again just a
Generous side dressing of wood. Ash
Work into the soil here and
That should do the trick
Alright just a couple of cautions before I leave the topic alone here as much as there are some plants that appreciate the addition of
Alkalinity or to raise the pH there are other plants that don't like that so much and in this I'm talking about blueberries rhododendrons azaleas
Possibly potatoes as well
So have a look online and see
which one's
Like a low pH and which ones like a high pH and try to focus your wood ash on plants that appreciate the higher pH
one other thing I will say is although it is kind of hard to overdo it on what I
If you dump them all in the same spot, that's probably a little bit unwise because you can raise the
Salt levels in your soil to quite an extent if you're dumping it all in the same spot
So spread it around a little bit. If you have any questions or comments, please leave those below the video