ASHES AND THEIR USE.
Some soils contain already the chemical ingredients which wood ashes supply. If lime be applied to a calcareous soil, it will do no good; there was no want of lime there before; if potash be added to a soil already abounding in it, no effect will be seen in the crops. Ashes contain lime and potash (phosphate of lime and silicate of potash). If a soil is naturally rich in these, the addition of ashes would be useless. Such cases show the true benefits of a really scientific knowledge of soils and manures. Every plant that grows takes out of the soil certain qualities. Wheat, among other things, extracts largely of its potash; Indian corn abstracts but little; potatoes extract phosphate of magnesia, etc. A chemist would say, at once, apply that kind of manure which is rich in the peculiar property extracted by your wheat, corn, or potatoes! What manure is that? Here again science must help. It analyzes manures—gives the farmer the choice among them. The soil being known,
the properties required by different crops being known—the farmer applies that manure which contains what the soil lacks. Experiments have seemed to show, that, for purposes of tillage, leached ashes are just as good as the unleached. So that housewives may have all the use of their ashes for soap, and then employ them in the garden. Leached ashes become better by being exposed for some time in the air absorbing from the atmosphere fertilizing qualities (carbonic acid?)
So valuable are ashes regarded in Europe, that they are frequently hauled by farmers from twenty miles’ distance—and on Long Island they bring eight cents a bushel.
The ashes of different kinds of wood are of very unequal value—that of the oak the least, and that of beech the most valuable. The latter wood constitutes two-thirds of the fire-wood of this region, and the ashes are therefore the very best.
A coat of ashes may be laid, in the spring, over the whole garden and spaded in with the barnyard manure.
They may be dug in about gooseberry and currant bushes.
They are excellent about the trunks of fruit-trees, spreading the old each year, and renewing the deposit.
They may be thinly spread over the grass-plat in the dooryard, as they will give vigor and deeper color and strength to the grass.
We have usually added about one shovelful of ashes to every twenty in making a compost for flowers, roses, shrubs, etc.