I’ve got a bunch of brush I was going to burn to get rid of, and I thought maybe what I would do is just pile it into my empty garden, burn it, and then till the ashes into the soil. Would it be ok to do that? And would it be ok if a lot of the brush is dead pine branches?
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RSA
I’ll be the first to ask: Did you hire an ex-President to clear your land?
JGabriel
Isn’t it better to let brush decompose than burn it? I ask in true ignorance, not as a critique.
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gbear
Make sure it’s legal. I can’t do that where I live.
MikeJ
Are you afraid of horses too?
Mr Furious
John might be required to have a squirrel on a spit to burn brush… It is Appalachia after all…
KyCole
I hardly ever get rid of good biomass and I have a very small yard. I usually just put it under bushes or in the garden as mulch. Most brush will break down pretty quickly. Stuff that’s too big makes a great chew toy for the dogs.
parsimon
I believe pine is very acidic; not good for the garden. Google for the answer?
I can certainly say that at my mom’s house, at which the yard is populated by overtowering pines, grass has a great deal of trouble growing due to fallen pine needles, and it has been so for two generations. Family says it’s because pine is acidic.
SteveinSC
I don’t think it would hurt. Farmers routinely burn stubble and plow the ash back into the field. The ash contains all the minerals the plant had, and the ash can be used as a natural source of potash (hence the name). It will make the soil sweeter, i.e. less acid, so you might need to add something to pH balance the soil again. Most plants like nutrients but they also like to be on the acid side of neutral (pH 7). Please forward the fee for this advice to NPR to help cover their recent fall from grace.
gbear
Via The Google:
General Stuck
Wow, What a disaster waiting to happen.
Gravenstone
Ash is strongly basic (if you soak wood ash in water, then let the water evaporate, you wind up with lye), so you’ll raise the soil pH (or “sweeten” it, in farm parlance). That might cause problems depending upon what you want to plant. I’d ask whether outdoor burning is allowed first, then ask your county extension agent what effect the ash would have on the soil
debit
I was going to make a joke about naked brush burning, but it just didn’t feel fair.
Danton
I do it every spring. If you don’t rid the area of pine needles, I think the soil will be a bit acidic, which may be good for some plants.
Ana Gama
I use ashes all the time. Wood ash contains potassium and calcium, and makes a good soil amendment.
Additionally, you can look at these articles:
http://www.humeseeds.com/ashes.htm
http://www.emmitsburg.net/gardens/articles/frederick/2004/ashes.htm
Just Some Fuckhead
Don’t do that.
gnomedad
Bury it. Carbon sequestration. When the cockroaches strike oil in a hundred million years they’ll thank you.
Litlebritdifrnt
You are good to go so long as the “brush” is not Oleander, in which case if you burn it and somehow inhale the fumes you will die. But you know I always thought that composting something was much preferable to burning, simply because composting something has never killed anyone that I am aware of.
debit
I have some seeds for Golden Sun tomatoes that I probably should have started a week or two ago, but I have to buy a shelf first, one high enough the cats can’t get on it. So it’s gonna have to be high.
The last little bit of snow finally melted off my lawn. I can’t wait to get the crap work out of the way (raking, brush clearing) so I can lay down some landscape fabric and plot out my garden.
russell
If you want to till it in, don’t soak it in kerosene before lighting it up.
If you have some acid-loving plants don’t burn the pine, strip the needles and use them for mulch.
Otherwise, burn away.
As an alternative, if you have a big enough lot that you don’t mind a big pile of scrubby crap laying around, and you like birds, just pile it up in a remote corner of your lot. There’s nothing that the general population of perching birds (including the kind that sing) love more than a pile of brush.
Have fun!
Comrade Mary
John, if you have a compost pile, those branches are GOLD if you mulch them and let them dry. Your kitchen waste is mostly “green” (with the big exception of your tea leaves, which are “brown”), so dried branches and leaves are a great way to balance out the green.
If you don’t have a compost pile, sure, go ahead and burn the branches. Just invite us all and pass out marshmallows first.
(Your house insurance is paid up, right?)
jeffreyw
Don’t burn it. Look into renting a mulcher/chopper thingy. Various sizes depending on the job. A hot fire will sterilize the soil and kill worms and such. That is a bad thing. Adding organics to the soil is a very good thing, and the chips will break down quickly.
Gina
@debit: My experience has been that no matter the height, kitties still manage to wreak havoc on starter plants. The solution I found was to get one of those wire shelf units that have a vinyl zippered cover – sort of a portable greenhouse thing. It was cheap, about $30.
Of course, once I planted the stuff outside, the rabbits and neighbor’s cats did them in. So, maybe I’ll try hydroponics in the greenhouse this year.
BD of MN
here in the hippy state of MN, lots of counties have leaf and brush recycling sites. Anything like that available?
Gina
@jeffreyw: I second the chipping idea. Plus, if you get around to building a fenced area for the dogs, you can put that down for them. We just started transitioning our dogs’ run from dead grass and mud to wood chips, they seem to like it so far. Here’s my older dog Mo with our foster Gemma, trying it out.
mrami
If it might contain weed seeds, I throw it away or burn it and till in the ashes wherever needs P or K. Otherwise, I put it in a pile somewhere out of the way and let it turn into dirt.
Southern Beale
I’d think if there isn’t any chemical on the brush it would be fine. you don’t use any pesticides or anything do you?
In can take a really long time for some brush to decompose, so burning it might not be a bad idea.
Omnes Omnibus
@jeffreyw: Cole and a mulcher? You have seen Fargo, right? The only question is whether Cole gets himself caught in it or if Tunch finally makes his move.
jon
I have a portable backyard fireplace thing with a copper bowl and a screened clamshell top. I use it to get rid of a lot of brush, then put the ashes in the alley where I don’t want anything to grow since I then have to wander out there and get rid of it.
Lawn maintenance in Arizona: water it like crazy or seek to kill it in new and exciting ways. I do a bit of each.
Tim F.
With pine you have to think of any downwind neighbors. It will be godawful hell for anyone living with the smoke, especially if they leave their windows open on a hot day. We had a cheap grill ‘disappear’ from behind our apartment after the wife burned some pine branches in it.
Otherwise, what other people said.
debit
@Gina: I know, the little bastards! That’s why I usually just go to the nursery and find started plants there. But I love these tomatoes; killer flavor profile (starts out sweet with a little tart then deepens to rich and full, then a softly sweet again finish) and the skins are split resistant. I generally don’t care for cherry tomatoes, but a friend gave me some of these last year and I couldn’t get enough. They will be mine, oh yes, they will.
tt crews
Wood ash is alkaline. Test your garden ph before using wood ash in your garden.
In fact, before you add anything to your soil, you should test it to know what it is and what it needs.
Test kits are pretty cheap–under $35 for a pretty comprehensive one. Or send a soil sample to the county extension and let them test it for you. It costs about $10.
Yutsano
@jon:
Xeroscaping. In Phoenix you get a nice tax break for it. My friend did that to his lawn and swears the only maintenance he has to do is occasional weeding. Plus it lowered his property tax bill.
CJ in MPLS
Burning it will be fine, however the spot where you burn it may be a bit sterile afterwards. The ash should help the rest of it.
CJ
JGabriel
@Gina:
I third the chipping/mulching idea. Plus, if you kill anyone, you have a way to dispose of the body.
.
debit
@JGabriel: Got to freeze it first. Does he have a big enough freezer?
steviez314
1. I’d save it for food and shelter if the GOP passes Ryan’s budget.
2. Where’s Rosie?
Joel
Wood ash is fine in the garden and most woods are liable to work, so long as its not treated. It’s a marginal fertilizer and should treated more like adding lime to the soil. So good for raising soil pH but don’t pile it all in one place or else nothing will grow there.
jeffreyw
@Omnes Omnibus: Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rosie?
Bruce S
My answer to your question is “Tax cuts!”
Oh…sorry. Wrong thread.
tkogrumpy
@JGabriel: .NO.
Dave Trowbridge
As others have noted, ash is quite alkaline. It will cause problems for acid-loving plants like blueberries, azaleas, camellias, rhododendrons, hydrangea, etc.
Don’t try to compost pine needles. They take forever to break down.
tcolberg
@Litlebritdifrnt: You seem to have forgotten the Great Compost War of ’56. Lost a lot of good people back there…
apikoros
@Gravenstone: What Gravenstone said!
Further, there in West-by-god Virginia, you are probably on a limestone-derived and strongly basic soil already, so the last thing you want to do is add more basic amendments. Test your soil ph! If it’s acidic, then what you propose is fine (open burning ordinances aside), but if it’s basic (and I suspect it is) then don’t do this! You have a mulch pile, add he branches to it.
BTW, I HATE chippers! The whole Fargo thing and my mother has a crippled hand from one. They’ll suck you in SO fast! And it is SO permanent! Assume the blade is still spinning for at least five minutes after it’s unplugged…. BECAUSE IT IS!
Martin
@gbear: Everything is legal in WV.
Another vote for the chipper, the smaller the better if you have a choice. Don’t use evergreen waste around your veggies, though. The phenols in pine and cedar can affect your liver in large amounts. It can kill animals like rabbits when used as bedding, but you don’t want that in your veggies and eating it – plus it can affect the flavor. Use it around your trees, shrubs, etc. Works great for permanent plants.
tBoy
Burn it – spread the ashes over a wide area. The ashes will be high in potash – aka potassium – the K in NPK.Even well burned pine is fine.
Don’t think too much. It’ll make you break out.
JGabriel
@tcolberg:
But the harvest was amazing. Very fleshy fruits and vegetables.
.
Platonicspoof
It would depend on factors such as how large the pile is, the material (pine could be very hot), soil moisture, controlling the fire’s heat by spraying water on the flames, proximity to standing trees (heat can kill branch buds), smoke and pitchfork-wielding neighbors, etc.
Too much heat can burn the organic matter in the soil and kill microbes, reducing fertility.
Chippers are available for rent in my area, or ‘borrowable’ from neighbors.
I wouldn’t burn in my garden, or till if possible (reduces soil structure).
Good soil is too valuable to me.
Stan of the Sawgrass
It depends on if your soil is acidic, basic, or sort-of neutral.
Burning it to ashes means, pretty much, losing most of it except for sodium and so forth (the old-time way to make lye is to put wood ashes into a barrel and let water drip thru it.) If you have soil that’s mostly organic decomposition(alluvial,swamp kind of soil) + clay or sand, and probably more basic, this might not be a good choice. Grinding it up into chips and using it as a mulch is a better solution. It releases the acid from the pine wood and bark as it decomposes.
A friend who’s an ornamental horticulturist, with a degree* tells me that most houses built in the last forty-or-so years have a very, very, basic zone around the immediate area of the house, due to the builders cleaning out their plaster tools and waste right outside the house. It’s not poison, this isn’t an industrial pollution issue, and if you’ve done any plastering yourself with joint compound, you’ve contributed to it– unless you flushed it all downstream. Not a big deal, and pine bark nuggets can counteract a lot of that if you’re patient.
Too long– in short, call your local county agent before his job is cut, and ask him if you should burn or grind. Really, I’ll bet it doesn’t matter all that much either way.
*Yes, he has a degree in Ornamental Horticulture, his advice on plants (especially orchids– he’s typically obsessive about them) has always been accurate, and his insights about soils, particularly about the soils in Florida, have been minute, exacting, and expansive. The insight about excess calcium in joint compound waste was particularly illuminating, and worth passing on.
He was also big on iron as a fertilizer, btw. He was also, less congenially, really devoted to Ron Paul, Hal Thomas(? right-wing conspiracy nut), and Route Wacko, the superhighway of the North American Union.
But anything he says about plants is pretty normal, stable, and accurate. He’s claimed that he’s seen UFO’s , but never that they’ve given him any advice about plants.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: I have visions of a burned out house, with Tunch and Lily hiding under the remains of a tree, and John Cole sitting on the scorched ground, blackened for hundreds of yards in all directions, with his head in his hands, Smokey the Bear standing over him saying “Only you…bastard.” and Rosie running and dancing around them all, not a care in the world.
Hire a mulching service.
jon
@Yutsano: Xeriscaping is great and I’ve done it for the front yard, having taken out the cypresses and put in some Chilean Mesquites (one of which turned out to be the ordinary, heavily-thorned, kind.) But my backyard has an enormous pine tree, and I’m not getting enough tax breaks in the world to make cutting that shade down worth the increased cooling bills. The rest is Texas Rangers and other plants that fend for themselves, but the tree stays and grass grows when it rains. I’m not putting in flagstone, I’m just trying to get rid of the weeds before they reach four-feet-tall status. And burning is best once that happens, since those damn seeds get everywhere. I call it “slob gardening”.
auntie beak
dude, you’re getting some really uninformed advice here.
i am a 20-year in good standing master gardener. i am currently going through the entire 16-week course again. here’s the dope.
wood ash is highly alkaline. wood ash also is high in heavy metals. that said, it might be ok to use in your garden, provided you GET A SOIL TEST done.
tt crews had it right, except that all home soil test kits suck. go to your local county extension website and get the info you need for a soil test. if your soil is already sweet, just pile the brush up in a corner of your yard and start a compost pile with it. yes, it will take a year or more to break down. so what. when you get the soil test, mention the brush burning plan. they will steer you right.
contact me if you have any questions about this. srsly.
Monkeyfister
Terra Preta.
Nothing bettah!
Villago Delenda Est
“Shared sacrifice” is for the little people.
Oops, wrong thread.
“Shared ash” is for the little plants.
tkogrumpy
Oh sure, fire up a gas guzzling machine perfectly designed to chop your hands off just to get rid of brush. This is John Cole we are talking about.
Stan
Commenter who said “ask your county extension agent” had the right answer.
Stan
Commenter who said “ask your county extension agent” had the right answer.
tkogrumpy
@auntie beak: Despite the fact that this whippersnapper admits to being only 20 Y/O and we all know no twenty Y/O knows their ass from a hole in the ground, this is in fact and in all particulars good advice.
Omnes Omnibus
@tkogrumpy: At 20 y/o, I knew my ass from a hole in the ground, but i couldn’t find either with both hands and a compass.
srv
Is there not a single, upstanding high school kid in your township of 300 that you could hire to do all this dangerous stuff?
What do you think they’re there for?
tkogrumpy
@Omnes Omnibus: :)
chopper
yeah, wood ash (preferably hardwood, not pine) is a good soil amendment in small amounts. too much will fuck up your soil. nice if you’re trying to raise the ph of a spot tho.
rather than burn it, you could pile up a hugelbeet if you were thinking of making a new grow bed.
or just chop it up as much as you can and use it in the mulch pile.
chopper
@Monkeyfister:
i’d like to see cole trying to build a biochar setup. he breaks bones just taking the dog for a walk.
Martin
@apikoros: Yes, good point. Cole shouldn’t be running the chipper naked, for example, which I suspect he’s tempted to do.
tkogrumpy
John, the title of this post should have been,”A burning question.”
Yutsano
@Martin: You ever get the feeling we know more about our esteemed bloghost than is probably good for us?
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: And seeing that, somebody thought “he should be an Army Officer.”
Stan of the Sawgrass
John, as I said somewhere in my comment, probably this isn’t a big deal either way. I’d say mulch, but–Hey, maybe that’s just Me. Really, talk to your County Extension Agent before he’s teapartied– he knows more about it than anyone who’s posting (probably–my opinion, no reflection on my fellow commenters.)
I was an upstanding High School Kid, but frankly, when I got hired for stuff like this I learned to smoke pot from the older guy who was with me.
jeffreyw
@tkogrumpy: The answer is, of course, penicillin.
Ash Can
@tkogrumpy: I think she said she’d been a master gardener for 20 years — all the more reason to listen to her advice.
JD_PhD
@russell is right: pine needles are highly acidic (hence the missing grass under pine trees), but the ash is basic. As long as it’s legal in your area, burn them in your fire pit and enjoy the fire. Then burn a few calories by carting the ash to your basic-soil loving plants yourself and turn over the soil by hand.
Hurry though. It’s getting to be growing season!
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: One received one’s commission at age 23 after doing very well, thank you very much, in land navigation. Three years can make a huge difference; also, as it turned out I never had much call for finding either my ass or a hole in the ground (slit trench latrines excepted).
Jay C
OK, even a City guy like me has to second the suggestions from the rest of the mob:
1. Wood ash CAN be useful as fertilizer; as well as a handy way to dspose of cut brush BUT:
2. Check the soil pH stuff carefully; pine wood/needles do have all sorts of gnarly stuff in them.
3. Be sure A) your insurance is paid up; B) your local FD isn’t too far away C) Tunch has no access to matches.
Maude
I don’t think fire in a yard of a house is such a good idea.
The wind direction etc. could become a problem.
Better safe than sorry.
Julia Grey
But SNAKES like brush piles, too.
Mulch it.
jon
Go to your local hardware place and get a thing like this. The screen will save your home and neighbors, but I still keep a bucket of water ready and my hose nearby when I’m burning a lot of stuff.
Pontiac
Something that is lovely is that in a lot of places you can’t even send in soil to the county extension anymore because it does not exist. Like, nowhere in Maryland to my knowledge is there a free (or paid for) soil test service that regular homeowners can access.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
Just don’t pile it in a corner of the yard and ignore it. We did that once in our Baltimore rowhouse yard and discovered that piles of brush are perfect rat habitat.
Chuck Butcher
Two things, tested soil and don’t get the ground real hot. I’ve worked enough forest fires to tell you that heating the ground is bad for it.
edit
any good you get from the ash isn’t equal to the damage if you cook the hell out of the soil.
Chuck Butcher
Brush piles are a bad idea because all kinds of things like to live in them that you don’t want. Yellow Jackets will build nests under pine/fir brush piles.
apikoros
@Martin: Whee! I can almost see that… and am repulsed!
Mr Furious
My first reaction is “yeah, what could possibly go wrong?” This is John we’re talking about here. What’s the over/under on number of digits lost via hatchet? Limbs with the chipper? Or the odds on a scenario where the local fire department shows up to watch the Cole house burn to the ground because John cheaped out on the extra fee for protection?
Allen
@Stan: I agree completely with the county extension agent idea, go with the pros from Dover. Here in Oregon we have an sub-set of the county agent called the Master Gardener, giving either a shot would be more than worth the time. Composting is the way to go, a good compost pile will kill any seeds, give a the worms a home to love, and your lawn will love the worms. Win, win, win situation.
Just talked with my neighbor who is a landscape architect in training with Portland City parks and she says compost, compost, compost. If you decide to burn (boo, her words) you need to have the soil tested, tell them what the projected use is (lawn, garden, etc) and they will tell how to amend the soil to accept taking lawn debris burn ash.
But no matter what get the word from Pro from Dover (sorry again Mr. Sutherland) before getting to involved.
Now pardon me while I separate a non-serious cat fight.
Mr Furious
Seriously John? Aren’t you the new guy on the block? I spent my afternoon seething at my next door neighbor for burning fucking stumps all day on the first nice day of the year when I badly wanted to open all the windows. And I’m sure the other neighbors having an outdoor birthday party for their kid were even more excited about the smoke…
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, that would be why you were an Artilleryman. I’m certain that it’s a regulation that demonstrated inability to land navigate is a requirement for the Infantry branch. Perhaps they teach them wrong at Fort Benning, intentionally as a character builder for them and us. Out of all the pairs of boots that I wore out in my career, at least one pair is owing to traipsing around swamps, mountains, deserts, and prairies following (or looking for) lost Lieutenants.
jaxtra
please compost. do not slash and burn like a republican would. think globally.
db
as many folks have said, try composting.
With your stuff, you may want to create a slow composting pile if you already have a fast composting pile going.
Anne Laurie
Forget the teenagers, Cole — someone in your neighborhood already owns a chipper and will be overjoyed to come over to your place & amortize it a little. Depending on their circumstances, you either pay them or buy them some of their favorite tipple (but don’t give it to them until after the chipper’s turned off). Then you can use the chips as mulch, particularly in Lily & Rosie’s favorite potty corner, or that dank corner that’s shaded all day where nothing grows successfully.
I’d suggest just leaving it as a ‘brush pile’ but a man who topiaries his tomato plants is not gonna live with anything that random. Also, putting a bunny-magnet near your vegetable garden is only going to run up your blood pressure.
Villago Delenda Est
@soonergrunt:
I deeply resemble that remark.
daveNYC
Good for blueberries?
+5-7 (Dr Who season 4!)
Richard W. Crews
Every branch is sequestered carbon. Burning puts a years worth of plant work, pulling carbon from the atmosphere, back into the air in minutes. Compost slows it to 5-8 years. Throw it away to a landfill will keep it sequestered for a 100 years or more. Kinda’ silly to think about our landfills , but locking up the carbon is important.
HeartlandLiberal
We save all the ashes from any fires in the fireplace during the winter, and I spread the contents of the ash bucket over the garden, to be tilled in when Spring comes.
As several have pointed out, if you use matter from the yard for mulch, beware of pine needles. You can use them for mulch for tomatoes, which like the higher acidity. I rake mine up and use them for this each year in the tomato bed. I rake the remnants up from the former year and transfer them, and sprinkle ash in that area to help the balance.
Of course you could start a compost heap. We keep one going, and anything that does not end up as mulch on garden from mowing, including fall leaves, goes into the compost heap if it can be chopped up with the mower. Now that I am retired, we more time to focus on these things, we are discussing adding a small pedal trash can on the kitchen counter, into which vegetable scraps can be scrapped, then transferred every couple of days to the compost heap.
Also, and this is veering off topic, we are looking at adding a couple of rain barrels to trap and hold water to use during dry spells for the garden. I already have trenched irrigation channels across the backyard from the primary drainage corner pulling water off the front and one side of the house, so the water is carried out to surround two plots fartherest away from the house, to insure plenty of water to soak into the ground in that area. It is flat, and was, to tell the truth, a golf tee when we bought the house. We later got the city lawyers to give up the easement. I have spent the past several years working peat and compost into the plots to change them back to tillable and fertile soil for growing vegetables.
A golf tee? Yes. We live right on the border with a golf course, with nine holes on the south, and nine holes on the east, and a small pleasant park directly over the small hill between them. What realtors call location location location. We cannot see a single house or other building looking out our back yard, yet for the past 15 years work was a 10 minute commute of three miles. Not living in a big city has its up sides.
brendancalling
NO!!!!! JOHN, NO,IT’S NOT OK, YOU WILL KILL YOUR GARDEN!!!!!
Sorry for the all caps, but wood ash is HIGHLY ALAKALINE. A little goes a LOOOONG way, so please read the link.
Gary
John, if you do wind up burning it, and you live in a truly rural area, let your local volunteer fire dept know what you;re planning. They get very testy when you don’t do that and they show up to put out the fire. I speak from experience.
Daryl Pauley
Yes, it is an excellent idea. Or just haul your ash to me.
tdmcmains
we just had to burn a 20 foot high pile of brush (took 4 days). Had to get a permit from the local fire department and call them the morning of to make sure there were no restrictions (as in, too windy). Keep a hose out, near the fire and turned ON. Keep it small and keep feeding it. Let it burn out completely and don’t leave it hot and unattended. If you need to leave, douse with water until it stops smoking.
We were left with a thick pile of charcoal and ash which we mixed into our (very acidic New England) soil. so it should help even out the pH some.
A local landscaper wanted $3000 to chip or cart away that much brush. Burning was awesome and free. Just be safe.