On 7/5/2014 12:07 PM, Not@home wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
On 5/07/2014 10:18 AM, Not@home wrote:
Zone 5 with soil rich with humus.

I have a new charcoal grill and one of the features is a pan underneath
that collects the ashes. I hate to waste something that may be useful,
so I did some reading and found that the ashes are a good source of
potassium, which may be useful in the garden. We grow cherries,
blueberries, and strawberries, corn, beets, tomatoes, and beans. Where
would be the best place to spread my ashes?


Do you mean real charcoal or the sort ash that comes from the heat beads
that are used in a Weber?

I save the ashes from my winter fires in the house and use them in most
areas of the garden in the late winter, early Spring after shaking them
through a garden sieve. I save the big lumps of carbon to pound up and
use in my veggie beds.

I never use the ashes from the heat beads used in the Weber. They get
taken to the tip.

Heat beads is a new term to me. I'm in the US. We buy a bag of charcoal
made by Kingsford. They appear to be molded, as they all have the same
shape. We have a Latino grocer near us and sometimes we buy Kingsford
Mesquite charcoal there. A nearby hardware store sells bags of chunk
charcoal, but the chunks are too large for my grill.

Personally, I would never consider using the residue from charcoal
briquettes, no matter what the source. Their contents are a veritable
witch's brew of extraneous, non-wood sources including flue scrapings from
industrial processes. If you were burning _real_ charcoal made from wood
the story would be different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_%28charcoal%29