well my friends it is my favorite time of the year again. Gardening season, so you will probably be seeing a lot of posts from me about gardening and planting and such.

I remember as a kid every winter my dad would take the askes he cleaned from our fireplace and dump them into our garden spot. Then in spring time when it was time for the garden he would till all that ash into the soil. I never knew why he did it but I knew it wasnt a bad thing because our garden always flourished. I decide to research it a little and here is what I found out. "When wood burns, nitrogen and sulfur are lost as gases, and calcium, potassium, magnesium and trace element compounds remain. The remaining carbonates and oxides are valuable liming agents, raising pH, thus neutralizing acid soils. Soils that are acid and low in potassium benefit from wood ash. However, acid-loving plants such as blueberries, cranberries, rhododendrons and azaleas would not do well at all with an application of wood ash." You can read more about this at The master gardener website Its chock full of info.

On another note tho. I also remember once.. My mom took out ashes from the fireplace that had sit for two days and the next thing we knew our back yard was on fire. So people If you decide to add ash to your garden please be very careful. Those embers can stay hot for days and even if it doesn't look like its hot, a slight breeze can spark warm ashes back up and cause you a lot of trouble you don't want.