10 Uses for Wood Ashes

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10 Uses for Wood Ashes | Fireplaces | Interior | This Old House

Get fired up about putting that pile of soot to work
Mark FeirerThis Old House magazine

A cord of firewood can produce 50 pounds of ashes—a formidable heap of soot but also a great source for mineral-rich dust that has practical uses. Just be careful to store them in a fireproof container with the lid shut to choke any embers. Unlike ashes, you can't use flames any place except in the fireplace.

Use wood ashes to:

1. De-skunk pets. A handful rubbed on Fido's coat neutralizes the lingering odor.

2. Hide stains on paving. This Old House technical editor Mark Powers absorbs wet paint spatters on cement by sprinkling ash directly on the spot; it blends in with a scuff of his boot,

3. Enrich compost. Before the organic compound get applied to soil, enhance its nutrients by sprinkling in a few ashes, says the host of radio's You Bet Your Garden, Mike McGrath. Adding too much, though, ruins the mix.

4. Block garden pests. Spread evenly around garden beds, ash repels slugs and snails.

5. Melt ice. TOH building editor Tom Baker finds it adds traction and de-ices without hurting soil or concrete underneath.

6. Control pond algae. One tablespoon per 1,000 gallons adds enough potassiumm to strengthen other aquatic plants that compete with algae, slowing its growth,

7. Pump up tomatoes. For the calcium-loving plants, McGrath places 1/4 cup right in the hole when planting,

8. Clean glass fireplace doors. A damp sponge dipped in the dust scrubs away sooty residue.

9. Make soap. Soaking ashes in water makes lye, which can be mixed with animal fat and then boiled to produce soap. Salt makes it harden as it cools.

10. Shine silver. A paste of ash and water makes a dandy nontoxic metal polisher.

 

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https://humblelore.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/30-uses-for-wood-ashes-you-never-thought-of/

Posted in Knowledge of the Ancestors by Tina

1. Make lye water out of ash. You can boil 2-3 spoons of ash (clean white/grey fluffy ash) with water and then filter it with a coffee filter. Lye water is a great cleaning agent and sanitizer for clothes, floors, windows, silverware, plates, and even rust in marble.

You can also make lye by adding the fluffy white ash in a cheesecloth. In a bucket with holes on its base, you add the cheesecloth and ash, and hang it somewhere high. Add the water. Underneath, place another clean bucket to collect the lye. The lye has a brownish colour, so you remove the bucket when clean water starts to sip through. Test the lye by adding a fresh egg in the liquid. If the egg floats, the lye is good to go, if not, repeat the process.-For use in soap making.

2. A paste made out of ash and water, can remove stains from furniture.

3. If we want to remove a stain from clothes the moment they happen, we add a bit of ash and after about five minutes, we rub it with the crumb of a bread (not the crust, the soft white bit).

4. Ash is a great odour repellent, just add a bit over the area that smells. eg, kitty litter.

5. You can remove odours from a fridge, by adding a plate of charcoal ash inside. Change the charcoal over, until the smell is gone.

6. You can use it to brush your teeth. (recipe here)

7. You can wash your hair with lye soap and rinse with vinegar. This is especially good for oily hair.

8. Lye is used in many foods and sweets. Like grape must pudding (moustalevria), honey cookies (melomakarona), and in bread. It makes bread fluffy and prevents it from crumbling. Lye is also good for the cleansing of the intestines.

9. Ash was used for many years in farming. It recycles the natural nutrients back into the earth. It can be used as compost but does not include Nitrogen. It aids in the increase of the earths PH level which in return, aids in the growth of the plants. (But because of the ongoing increase of the PH level, not all veg and fruit thrive from it. eg potatoes).

10. It strengthens plants that love calcium, such as tomatoes, vineyards, beans, spinach, peas, avocados, garlic etc. Even rose bushes. You can add 1/4 cup ash before planting.

11. One spoon ash per 1000l of water, strengthens underwater plants.

12.It prevents plants from frost in winter, if you add a layer of ash over them.

13. Animals hate ash. You can rid your garden of insects and various parasites, such as slugs and snails.

14. You can rid yourself of ants. If you throw some ash in their colony, they will be forced to relocate, as they can’t move the ash.

15. Spread some ash in the corners of the house, or dark spots of your cellar etc. For as long as there is ash, no mice/rats, cockroaches or insects approach.

16. It repels lice, ticks and fleas off animals. You make a thick paste of ash and vinegar and spread over the fur. It’s messy, but it works.

17. It repels clothes moths. You can add some ash on your stored clothes, and simply shake it off when you need to use them. You can leave them for years this way, and nothing will happen to them.

18. Lye is used to make soap (potassium hydroxide). It’s a bit of a lengthy process, but its worth it.

19. Ash is used for “immortal eggs”. In a recipe used in the Middle East, they preserve eggs in a mix of clay, ash, salt, lime and rice rind for many months.

20. Sodium Carbonate, can be made out of ash. It is known to be an excellent product, used as household cleaner. Boil water and ash, until it evaporates. The remaining substance is your Sodium Carbonate (Soda).

21. Ash contains salt, and can therefore melt ice.

22. The charcoal collected within the ash, can be used as a filter.

23. You can use charcoal to filter blurry wine.

24. You can use charcoal to filter water before drinking.

25. Charcoal in metal containers can be used to remove humidity in cellars, cupboards and under sinks.

26. You can put a fire out quickly by throwing ash over it.

27. In the older days, they used to preserve seeds in large clay containers, by adding a thick layer of ash over them. This prevented insects from destroying their produce.

28. It can be used in wounds, to kill bacteria and aid in faster healing. Melting hand made soap in lye water and rinsing a wound with it without rinsing over it with clean water.

29. No fridge? No worries! You can preserve your fruits and vegetables for many days, even years, by digging a hole in the ground and filling it with ash. Add your veg and fruit, ensuring enough space between them, so that they do not touch each other, or the muddy ground. Seal the hole with a piece of wood, and you let it be.

30. In the olden days, to preserve the fresh rennet, they added it in a bone animal horn, filled it with ash, sealed it with mud and hanged it from a tree. This ensured the rennet lasted for many many years

 

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Uses for Wood Ash | Peak Prosperity


Uses for Wood Ash
15 ways to use wood ashes around the homestead
by Cathe' Fish
Thursday, November 14, 2013, 1:58 PM



With the colder winter months in front of us, fireplaces and woodstoves will start to get more use. With woodburning, ash is always an end product that needs to be disposed of. With a little pre-planning and the tips from this article, you can turn a waste product into a valuable resource around the homestead and in the garden.

Before we begin our discussion of the uses of ash, a special note of caution needs to be mentioned. Take wood ash away from the woodstove or fire*place in a metal bucket. Never store it in plastic, at least not until the ash is absolutely cool. This way, you avoid burning down buildings (a potentially devastating risk) or damaging surfaces in your house.

Use only high-quality wood ash. No ashes from BBQ grills, card*board, ply*wood, painted, or pressure-treated wood. Hard*wood ash (oak) is superior to softwood (pine) ash.
Using Ash in the Garden - Three Caveats

1. DO NOT USE ASH IF YOUR SOIL HAS AN ALKALINE pH of 7.5 or higher. It will make the soil too alkaline or salty. Alkaline soils are found in low rain*fall areas in the Western U.S. Use wood ash only in locations where soils are acidic, like forest soils and mountain soils, or places where there is adequate rain*fall in the warm sea*son…not in alkaline soils like the desert. If in doubt, con*tact your local Master Gardeners Master Gardeners | American Horticultural Society

If you have been farming or gardening with chemicals, check your soil pH. Most chemicals increase the pH and will eventually salt the soil

On the pH scale, 7 is neutral (like pure water), below 7 is acidic with 1 being the most acidic (like battery acid); and above 7 is alkaline with 14 being the most alkaline (like liquid drain cleaner). Nor*mal gar*den soil is typically 5.5 to 7.5 pH. Wood ash is typically 10.4 pH

2. Don’t use wood ash near these and other acid lovers: azaleas, rhododendrons, blueberries, mums, marigolds, mountain laurel, oak, pecan, and sweet potato plants.

3. Sprinkle wood ash on soil before plants emerge, in winter or very early spring. Don’t plant seeds or seedlings until at least two weeks after ash has been applied, or wait until new plants are a few weeks old to spread it. The smaller they are, the more dramatically plants may react to the sudden increase in pH.

Wood ash has the same composition as lime*stone. Use it where you would use lime. If you put a pile of wood ash out*side, and it rains, it will turn to limestone.

The secret to using wood ash is to SPRINKLE IT or DUST IT.
Use Wood Ashes To:

1. Spread finely on the soil on your property. Use a large coffee can or a box with nail holes punched into the bot*tom. Spread so that it looks like fine baby powder on the soil.

2. Enrich com*post. Enhance com*post nutrients by sprinkling in a few ashes so that it looks like a fine powder. Adding too much, though, ruins compost.

3. Composting citrus rinds. In a bucket of wood ash, place rinds of citrus or any*thing that is hard to break *down. Make sure to cover the bucket.

4. Calcium loving plants. For calcium-loving plants like tomatoes, sprinkle and spread out 1/4 to 1/8 cup (NOT MORE) right in the hole when planting. More is not better. It should look like a powdered baby’s butt.

5. Block gar*den pests. Spread evenly around gar*den beds, ash repels slugs and snails.

6. Control pond algae. One table*spoon per 1,000 gallons adds enough potassium to strengthen other aquatic plants that compete with algae, slowing its growth.

7. De-skunk pets. A handful rubbed on your dog’s coat neutralizes that familiar lingering odor.

8. Hide stains on paving. This Old House technical editor Mark Powers absorbs wet paint spatters on cement by sprinkling ash directly on the spot; it blends in with a scuff of his boot,

9. Clean glass fire*place doors. A damp sponge dipped in the dust scrubs away sooty residue.

10. Make soap. Soaking ashes in water makes lye, which can be mixed with animal fat and then boiled to pro*duce soap. Salt makes it harden as it cools.

11. Shine silver. A paste of ash and water makes a non*-toxic metal polisher.

12. Kill moss in the lawn. Sprinkle lightly over lawns that have moss problems.

13. Tooth*paste. In the old days before toothpaste, ash was used to clean teeth. The potential bio-hazards in the modern world are the chemicals used in fire starters, newsprint, and magazine inks. Using baking soda instead tastes much better and is a common practice.

14. Cleaning white boards. Ashes are good for cleaning whiteboards that have been marked by grease pencil or marker. It even works on permanent marker that has been misapplied to a whiteboard.

15. Melt ice. My personal all time favorite. Keep container of ashes in car (or on the porch for side*walks) in the icy sea*son to add traction and de-ice with*out hurting soil or concrete under*neath. In Alaska, we carried a shoe box of fine screened ash to get vehicles out of ice. Sprinkle handfuls of ashes out about a foot in front of the tires that have power (4-wheel drive – all tires; front-wheel drive – front tires; rear-wheel drive – rear tires). Drive right out of trouble as if you were on dry pavement. Eliminates the use of salt for icy sidewalks.

We hope this gives you some ideas for what to do with all that wood ash from your fireplace or woodstove. Please share any other uses and tips in the comments section below. Also check out the composition of elements in wood ash, below, from the University of Georgia.
~ Cathe'

Composition of Elements in Wood Ash

Mean and (range) taken from analysis of 37 ash samples

Macro elements in aver*age % (range of 37 samples) highest %

Calcium 15 (2.5–33) 31

Potassium 2.6 (0.1–13) 0.13

Aluminum 1.6 (0.5–3.2) 0.25

Magnesium 1.0 (0.1–2.5) 5.1

Iron 0.84 (0.2–2.1) 0.29

Phosphorus 0.53 (0.1–1.4) 0.06

Manganese 0.41 (0–1.3) 0.05

Sodium 0.19 (0–0.54) 0.07

Nitro*gen 0.15 (0.02–0.77) 0.01

Micro elements or trace minerals in mg (range of 37 samples)

Arsenic 6 (3–10)

Boron 123 (14–290)

Cadmium 3 (0.2–26) 0.7

Chromium 57 (7–368) 6.0

Cop*per 70 (37–207) 10

Lead 65 (16–137) 55

Mercury 1.9 (0–5)

Molybdenum 19 (0–123)

Nickel 20 (0–63) 20

Selenium 0.9 (0–11)

Zinc 233 (35–1250) 113

Other Chemical Properties

CaCO3 Equivalent 43% (22–92%) 100% pH 10.4 (9–13.5) 9.9

% Total solids 75 (31–100) 100