Recycle those wood ashes

[Marianne]

What do you do with the ashes from your wood burning stoves?

We have two woodburners, a stove in the family room and a wood burning furnace, so lots of ashes! I have a metal trash can to dump the ashes into. When that's fairly full, we use a dolly and roll it out to our rock driveway, then spread the ashes around. We usually do this when there's some snow on the ground as there's always some hot coals in there somewhere!

Anyway, the ashes raise the Ph of the soil (ours is pretty high anyway) and through the years we have less and less weeds and grass growing in the drive. Some areas are even starting to look like we have concrete.

Last winter, DH suggested we pour cold ashes around a transformer looking type box on the edge of our property that was really hard to mow around. That spot was always covered with tall weeds. This past summer, there was not a single weed there!

I always use damp newspaper and ashes to clean the glass on the wood burner in the family room, too.

 

[gettinaclue]

We have a wood furnace as well and we just spread the ashes in the garden.

 

[Denim Deb]

Ditto to putting them in the garden. My soil is naturally low in pH, so raising it isn't a bad idea. I'll also use them in the winter in the pasture if we have ice. They give the horses traction w/out hurting them or the soil.

 

[k15n1]

You can use ashes as a basic high-temp insulation. That's a tip I read from this cool site:

http://aprovecho.org/lab/pubs/arcpubs

Also, some people use them to make aklali-treated breads, like bagels and pretzels.

 

[bambi]

spread it out in the yard

 

[FarmerChick]

when we lived up north Dad would pick the farthest and most unused part of the yard. dig a small ditch area and thru the winter ashes would be dumped there. they were not into gardening

Coal ash, hmm..not sure what Dad did with that from the mt. house? probably the same.

 

[dacjohns]

We just dump ours in the driveway. You can also get lye from them if you really want to increase your self reliance.

 

[snapshot]

Use as baking powder. Of course, you'd have to make a lot of biscuits!!!!!

 

[Marianne]

Use as baking powder. Of course, you'd have to make a lot of biscuits!!!!!

Now, what?

 

[snapshot]

I read that back in the Depression if they were out of baking powder, they would just add about three tsp. of (usually white) wood ash to the flour to make biscuits rise. I'm always looking for old tips like that!