8 tips for using ash in your garden

Your fireplace is a built-in source of garden fertilizer, and wood ashes can be used to repel pests, too.

Like lime, ashes from a fireplace or wood-burning stove can raise the soil's pH, but they dissolve so quickly that they also can burn plant roots and injure earthworms and beneficial fungi.

• Spread no more than about two kilograms (five pounds) per nine square metres (100 square feet) of ashes at a time over your garden. In addition to raising the soil's pH, ashes provide potassium, one of the three major plant nutrients.

To stay on the safe side, fertilize with ashes at least a week before you plant.

• When using ashes around actively growing plants, use a light hand.
• Water the plants well or wait until rain is expected to add them. Rain leaches nutrients from ash and supplies it to the root systems of the plants.

Store wood ashes in metal garbage cans with tight-fitting lids.

• Many of the nutrients in wood ashes—including potassium, phosphorus and calcium—degrade rapidly when the ashes are moist.

Ward off slugs and snails by encircling your plants with a ring of ashes about 15 centimetres (six inches) from the stem. The soft-bodied creatures will turn away.

Don't add briquet ashes to compost or your garden. Chemicals make ashes from your barbecue off-limits.

Shovel still-warm ashes into a covered metal container and place it in the centre of a cold frame or in your greenhouse. The ashes will radiate heat for about 24 hours.

Spread ashes on icy walkways to provide traction. Some of the ashes will stick to shoes, so be sure to use multiple doormats to keep them from being tracked into the house.

Birds flutter in ashes to get rid of parasites, and country gardeners who keep poultry can provide them with an ash bath.

• Put the ashes in a crate and place it where it will stay dry.
• Make sure to change the ashes regularly.