Introducing the Waste Not Wood Ash workshop series where the Living Web Farms biochar crew takes a deep dive into understanding applications for one of our most common everyday waste products. As we deal with ashes from the last wood stove season and prepare for the next, discover practical everyday uses for wood ashes you can use year-round. We’ll also explore the science of how and why wood ashes work in the garden, as an ingredient for natural soap making, or even as an ingredient in natural building materials. In part 3, Dan talks about how to read and obtain your NCDA predictive home & garden soil report to see what amendments you may add in what quantities, such as wood ash, etc.
If you have more clever ideas about how you use wood ashes around the farm and homestead, please share them in the comments below.
Dan also wrote a detailed post about wood ash in the Living Web Farms blog you can read here.
https://livingwebfarms.org/waste-not-wood-ashes/
You can also find the handout for the workshop on our website here.
http://livingwebfarms.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Wood-Ashes-handout.pdf
Today I put the wood ashes into my compost room in my barn where my chickens and turkeys go to dust. I put those ashes directly on a rat hole I had noticed that had turned up recently. I made sure the ash went right down into the hole and put the rest on top knowing that the turkeys and chickens would spend the day dusting in it and disturbing the rats all day. Later I looked in at the hole and it was still blocked up and the rats had made no attempt to re open the hole as they had when I had blocked it with normal soil. So I think there is a possibility that either the chicken and turkey disturbance has worked or the fine dust in their hole has killed them…I kind of hope so, because they are not good to have around when you have baby chicks around.