Using Wood Ash In Your Garden - Benefits And Dangers

welcome back to the channel everyone welcome back to the homestead today we're in our garden and we are going to be talking about wood ash and using it in your garden both the benefits and the dangers so stay with us [Music] [Applause] all right let's look what we got out of our wood stove this morning this beautiful wood ash now essentially it's pot ash or potassium but it's got some chunks of charcoal in it that's also beneficial for your garden and we'll talk about that another time what they've done some scientific studies on this ash and found that it contains 12 out of 15 of the nutrients that your garden plants need that is amazing it contains very high levels of obviously potassium that's the most but also calcium magnesium and phosphorus all highly beneficial for your garden once you start using wood ash in your garden you're going to see some amazing results now what ash will help your fruits and veggies both to be healthier tastier sweeter and more pest resistant why because those beneficial nutrients are in there that are strengthening the cell wall so those are all really great reasons for using wood ash in your garden but we have to be careful of one thing but before we tell you about that one thing we want to send you down below the video to hit that subscribe button that like button and a little notification bell we want you here with our family on a permanent basis all right let's get to it so what is that one thing we're talking about that is a danger and adding wood ash to your garden it is that it is incredibly alkaline and you're going to need one of these to test your garden before putting any wood ash in there this is a pH meter and we will link to one of these in our Amazon store in the description down below but you're going to need it and you're going to need to test your soil before putting any of this in your garden because you should not add any wood ash to your garden if your pH is 6.5 or above it will harm the plants and here's how the wood ash will add so many nutrients to the soil and in that alkaline state that it will prevent your fruits and vegetables from taking up any more nutrients causing them to be weaker in the long run more disease prone and pests prone to getting eaten by pests and that's why we don't want to add too much of it if any at all so first things first check your soil how we recommend that you only add wood ash one time per year in your garden and a thin layer now if you're dealing with really acidic soils then you may be able to increase that but you're gonna need to obviously continue to monitor the soil and check the soil so that you can find out that pH and where that pH is going so there's another danger that I didn't mention and we're gonna add it around our garlic here you just want to give it a thin just a thin sprinkling that's all you really need to do we're going to add it around our garlic and garlic has no problem and loves that potassium from the wood ash it's got no issue with a it takes a nutri soil just like that just sprinkle it around you don't even have to work it at the end of the soil and here's why we are going to water this in when we're done here we're gonna water it in and that is going to cause it to be more soluble for the plants to immediately take it up take up that phosphorus and air that sorry and potassium so we're gonna water that in and that's essentially all you need to do to get this wood ashore this good nutrient are these good 12 out of 15 nutrients into your garden wait a second should we add this around the spinach the answer is yes be spinach likes a neutral or alkaline soil and it loves the potassium from the wood ash no problem however the second danger point is adding wood ash to plants that like an acidic soil so you do not want to add wood ash anywhere near say a blueberry plant I have got some blueberries over there and they need a very acidic soil to grow well so do your research on what fruits and veggies that you're adding the wood ash to and stay away from anything that likes an acidic soil so this is our sweet potato patch after that nasty freeze we talked about in one of our recent videos a sweet potato or also just regular potatoes is another place you do not want to add wood ash lastly I want to talk about storage of your wood ash now we have had maybe five fires in our wood little wood stove in our house and we got maybe a quarter of a five-gallon bucket of wood ash and that is going to be plenty for our garden for the next year our Gardens not very big in the coming years as it grows we'll need a little bit more but like I said we use it sparingly because of our soil type now if you have an outdoor fire pit you're gonna want to get that wood ash out of there once it's burned as quickly as possible and here's why if it rains on it at all it's gonna leach all those nutrients down into the soil and you're gonna lose the benefit of having them contained within the ash the potash or wood ash so get them out of your outdoor fire pit and we put them we take hours from our inside but we want you to put them in a five-gallon bucket store it in a dry place cover it up if necessary if you've got some animals that might get into it but store it in a dry place and it will retain its nutrients for use in the future so like we said before we want you here in a permanent basis so don't forget to go and hit that subscribe button we also want you to go visit us on country living experience com where are Blagh is and our tool store and always look for our recommended tools in our Amazon store link in the description below we thank you we want to see you next week on our next video which comes out every Tuesday by the way have a great day and we'll see you next week bye [Music]

Channel: Country Living Experience: A Homesteading Journey

Views: 171,536

Keywords: wood ash, compost pile, organic fertilizer, dangers of using wood ash, benefits of using wood ash, use of wood ash as fertilizer, wood ash as fertilizer, how to use wood ash in, how to use wood ash in the garden, how to use wood ash in your garden, how to use wood ash for plants, is wood ash safe for your garden, using wood ash in the garden, what happens when you use wood ash in the garden, dangers of using wood ash in the garden, benefits of using wood ash as a fertilizer

Id: j9u99ByXrc4

Length: 7min 35sec (455 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 17 2019