O/T Wood Ash

It contains the remains of incinerated plants, so must be good if put back on the soil. It should just be concentrated plant matter!
Will contain lots of potash, but, of course, no humous value.
Requires common sense and perhaps soil analysis to make best use of it and should not contain other things, like cement used as a binder in some wood pellets.
RAB

You can mess up the PH pretty easily with wood ash. My father dumped all our ash in the garden when I was a kid. After a few years, the potatos got scab so bad he had to move them to a different spot in the yard. I don't know what other plants react to wood ash, but potatoes do for sure.

Tim

I compost (low temp) between my raised beds. Not unlike sheet composting in your actual beds. Thinking I"d get some mineral benefit I added woodstove ash last year. This spring, as usual, I shoveled the compost into the beds. Big surprise, no worms in the compost for the first time.

Didn"t test, but my guess is a ph problem. Whatever it was, the lack of worms told me that I wan"t getting the same quality of compost as I had in previous years.

I"m back to ash-less. I"ve got great soil, steadily improved over the years. Went no-till this year, and have no intention of endangering it. I"m very close to achieving permaculture, no seeding or transplanting necessary. For mineral replacement I"ve gone to adding some subsoil to my compost.

Also this ash isn't exactly like the ash from a wood stove. It's not completly burned to make it gray and fluffy. In fact this ash will still burn. Not with a flame but burns sort of like charcoal. So when I put down 4 - 6 tons per acre it leaves a layer on top that helps hold moisture.

From what I saw with the insects I don't doubt it gets rid of earth worms too. Sounds like you've done some good work to make your soil near perfect. I'm sure lime would be better here but with the high cost of fertilizer the ash will have to do for lime for now. Bad enough to pay the fertilizer bill. But when lime gets this high and I have 120 acres it adds up fast. I did watch other that used the ash several years before I tried it. It seems to do the job and again it's free.

I've been reading about humus and "green manure", trying something different every year. Part of my motivation is the lessening of trace minerals in commercial produce. That's why I figured I'd try the ash. Whether adding subsoil will do the same I don't know, but it won't hurt anything.

I haven't paid much attention to field cropping, as I have no fields (just forest), but there apparently are field crops that would jumpstart your humus production. I just learned that my arugula and mustard growing actually improve the soil, although I don't yet know how.

Had a "master gardener" and wife come by here and she wanted to know why my tomatoes were so much more "robust" than theirs. He uses commercial fertilizers and bug control. I don't.

Using that ash instead of lime sounds like a good start for you.

When I was a kid we'd use wood ash on the plants in the garden too. Helps keep insects away. I spread ash on 40 acres back in July and noticed all the insects left the grass. Even grass hoppers. So yes ash is good for gardens and soil.

Since soy beans have made a come back here lots of ash is being used on bean land. Most of that soil was down to 5 ph. or less. It'll sure make a soy bean grow if we get rain.

I take soil samples so I know what to put down. Last year I used 220 tons. Got 400 ton this time and have about 300 tons in a pile to spread now. Most of my soil will need 2 tons of lime every 3 years. I would break the farm up in 3rds and apply some lime on a thrid each year. At $34 per ton spread it ain't cheap anymore.