The pH is 10.4 and ash is murder for all those plants. Use it for your
other perennials, in the lawn and in the vegetable garden. Specially
in the veg garden, if you have those plants it means your soil is
acid. Adding wood ash will help things like chard, onions or beets a
lot, and will improve the flavor of tomatoes and lettuce too.


I plan to use ash just in the veggie garden. Biggest crops are tomato
and cukes, with a few zuchini, pole beans, lettuce, and raised beds
for scallions, garlic, basil, and dill.
I also use tons of rotted hardwood leaf mulch (provided by our local
recyle facility) as a means to mulch down weeds. If all these organics
are rototilled into the soil and I bend in wood ash in the fall,
should I be concerned about ph for the following spring planting of
any of the above? We are upstate NY and snow covers the beds for
several months and a wet spring.

BTW, I have had fantastic tomato flavor and my cherry tomatos are
typically twice the size as sold in the store. I think you've posted
before on this subject and recommended oak wood chips to add back some
acid?

Stew Corman from sunny Endicott