"Rodger Whitlock" wrote in
message ...

[snip]

Franz, you're confusing (istm) the technical sense of the word
"organic" as in "organic chemists make big stinks" with the
broader sense meaning, roughly, integrated, treated as a whole,
and so on.

What is the difference *in principle* between the chemical processes which
occur in the burning of wood and an exothermic reaction in a laboratory? In
both cases, elements rearrange themselves in accordance with precisely the
same underlying laws of quantum mechanics.

Organic gardening means afaict gardening without using synthetic
fertilizers or pesti-/fungi-/insecticides. ~Wood~ ash is
recognized among organic gardeners as a good source of potassium;
indeed, our forefathers made soap from fat and wood ash.

I know more or less what is, and is not "recognised" by the fraternity as
being "good". What escapes me entirely is what on earth the foundation of
these rules are. To me, many of them appear to be entirely arbitrary, with
no foundation in science.

I do not know of a set of unambiguous rules to apply in order to deduce
whether some new substance or procedure is to be classified as acceptable or
not. For any rule which you might give me, I will guarantee to find you an
outright exception, or at least a dubious case. As a scientist, (or rather,
a has been scientist), I find the whole topic ununderstandable and
unsupportable.

Finally, please note that I momentarily donned the cloak of an organic
gardener when I warned the OP that she would be using an artificially
produced chemical mixture, if she put garden ash on her compost heap.

Next tme you will tell me that a fire is a natural process. I offer you my
answer in anticipation: Wold you put rubber ash on your compost heap? Bear
in mind that rubber is produced organically. It is vulcanised by applying
heat and ultimately burning it is not supposed to be an artificial process.

Franz