I don't know if you know this, but wood ash is supposed to be a great fertilizer for plants. I got to thinking about this and couldn't figure out what the ingredients to wood ash would be. I figured that wood is mostly cellulose (which is really a complicated sugar) containing Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen and that when combined with Oxygen in the burning process would most likely form Carbon Dioxide and Water (both given off as gas)...I mean what else could the combustion reaction create, right?
Well I did a little online research and turns out that all those other elements important to healthy cellular life, Potassium, Phosphorous, Sodium and Chloride (though search me what the hell Chloride does in plants) form carbonates in the burning process. This is what wood ash is made and if you look at a bag of fertilizer, you'll see that it's comprised of three things, a Nitrogen, a Phosphorous and a Potassium portion. Though we don't get any Nitrogen left over in the burning process (it's gotta be combined with Oxygen in the burning process and given off as NO2) wood ash is all that Potassium and Phosphorous in the plant combined with Carbon and Oxygen. So, when we dump our wood ashes on our plants, we're really giving them a big boost of two out of three essential 'vitamins' important to plant health (Potassium and Phosphorous).
A word of warning. The chemical formula for Potash (the carbonate formed from the reaction of Potassium and Carbon Dioxide in the burning process) is
K2CO3. When this shit dissolves in water, you get Potassium Hydroxide KOH, a strong base. That's why you want to make sure you don't add wood ashes to acid loving plants (like blueberries) unless you add a sulfur component with it (the sulfur combines with oxygen and water to form sulfuric acid).
Jesus, it woulda been much better if I talked about sucking dick or something like that, right?
1 comment:
Like this one about basic-acid fertilizers as much as I like sucking cock.. LOL!!
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