Interestingly, I came home from giving a talk on "The Cycle of Life and Death in a Permaculture System" to the Local Bioregional Permaculture Group and found this post.
The wood ash in the compost was one thing that came up and I had to go on the side of only small amounts. I wish I had the post four hours earlier. Are you able to direct me to the actual text of this? Gil bdnow wrote: > Hey Allan, > > No, I have been pretty busy and only loosely following > things. I only opened your e-mail because of the > subject line (I didn't realize it was to me and not > the list). > > Yes, there is something to ashes. In a rodale study > (that was never published and I found buried in some > archives), they made a buch of compost piles with > different amendments, including rock phosphates, > Pfeiffer starter, wood ash and a few other things. > They noted that no pile finished any earlier than the > others, but didn't make much mention of the final NPK > analyses, which were rather remarkable. Most of the > piles hovered around 1-1-1 to 2-2-2, BUT the Pfeiffer > pile was like 1-2-10 (nothing strange about 10, eh?) > and the wood ash pile was like 1-6-2. So lets back up > here...the piles with added Rock phosphate were barely > up from the rest while the pile with the added K (wood > ash) had soaring P and the pile with added critters > and preps (you might think N) had a soaring K [note: A > Biodynamic Book of Moons - my favorite for the > alchemic notation - places K as the Sal or BD500 > nutrient element (makes roots and heavy stalks and > such)and P as the sulph or fire element]. > > So it seems that the ash somehow stimulates the fire > element. This is also seen if you put some freshly > burned wood ash on hot peppers or tomatoes - the ripen > quickly and thoroughly and the peppers are searing > like coals. > > On a more mundane level, all of those nutrients, > mostly mineral elements, are rapidly realeased to the > soils as soluble salts rather than their slow > mineralization through biotic/humic channels. > > Cheers, > Chris > > Chris goes on: > > I imagine that the issue is like any other - > unshakeable doctrine is foolish and there may be > reasons to do things like slash and burn sometimes. A > fire brings new life to a forest at the same time that > is destroys old life. > The issue of whether burned things (ash) are good for > the soil is pretty straight forward - yes, generally, > unless you have a salinity or alkalinity problem). > Whether or not to slash and burn versus just applying > wood ash is another. My immediate intuition is that > it is probably a good thing once in awhile, if not > more often. Of course you would want to do something > to perk the microbes back up after the cooking, but it > shouldn't be hard. > > As far as the Rodale study, they seemed to do > everything pretty much by the book - the main > ingredients were all from the same big piles, the only > difference being the extra amendments added. They > seemed to be pretty sciency folks from the way it > read. I sure wish I could find the thing, but I have > looked and do not have it. > > Chris Shade
