Wood ash can be used on your lawn, but with a few cautions. Turfgrass does best in soil that is slightly acidic (pH 6.3-6.8). Wood ash is alkaline, so if your soil is basic (pH above 7) then you don't want to raise the soil pH by using wood ash. Another issue is spreading wood ash. Due to it's fine consistency is can be very difficult to spread it evenly on the lawn. If you find a good way to spread wood ash evenly and your soil is acidic then wood ash would help with the pH and it contains potassium and other micronutrients. It's pH effect is not as dramatic as lime, roughly half as effective by weight, so overapplication is probably not an issue, but avoid having piles of it on the ground as that can lead to areas of high pH.

You might use it in a compost pile along with leaves and other natural ingredients.

Great...thanks for the info! I'll let him know.

Wood ashes can be used if your soil PH is acidic. Otherwise best used and great in compost piles as it has a high amount of potassium nitrate. Back in the ole days wood ashes was used to make gun powder by extracting the potassium nitrate from it aka salt peter. Military also used salt peter in coffee to calm down young men libido; hence the name.

Interesting, Tx Weed....we are already adding it to the compost, but we can only use so much there.

Our soil is acidic and we pay big bucks to have it limed, so this wood ash thing would actually be a help.

Great info! Thx.

Our soil is acidic and we pay big bucks to have it limed, so this wood ash thing would actually be a help.

You tell me. Take wood ashes, water, and animal fat in a big pot and bring it to a boil and you just made Lye Soap.

Lye is alkaline so the answer is yes. Just be careful because it can burn the grass just like vinegar. You are talking wood ashes right and not manufactured charcoal right?

This is a good article about wood ash. It tested for several trees, but the composition is similar.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf1993/misra93a.pdf

Based on this article if you place 100 grams of ash on your yard you are adding about 40 grams of Calcium, the main component in lime. The amount of Potassium and other metals varies by tree.

Sorry I forgot we could now edit our post

This post was edited by knuttle on Fri, Dec 21, 12 at 20:54