Compost
When cleaning out your fireplace tip the ash onto your garden or into your compost. It's carbon-rich and your plants and vegetables will love it.

If you have a wood-burning Aga this contributes to multiple smugness: Aga + recycling + grow your own veg.
(Smale is stuffed, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 11:35, 11 replies, latest was 14 years ago)

Aga + recycling + grow your own veg = Daily Mail readership

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 11:57, Reply)

Certifies ownership of several of Hugh Fearlessly Eatsitall's books

(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 13:09, Reply)

I think you'll find that's the Guardian

(Smale is stuffed, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 13:10, Reply)

The difference being ... ?

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 15:20, Reply)

Well
fewer gratuitous boob shots and less hatred in the Grauniad, for a start
(Smale is stuffed, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 16:05, Reply)

I'll give you the gratutitous boob shots
But the Grauniad is just as smug and self-satisfied and hating as the Daily Wail, it just wraps it in nicer and less direct polysyllables.

There is only one true book to read, and that's The Bible.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 16:51, Reply)

It's Daily Mail for primary school teachers.

(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 8:34, Reply)

Hahahaha so true.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 9:42, Reply)

I'm still waiting for the gratuitous boob shots

(Smale is stuffed, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 9:04, Reply)

Just be wary
that all that charcoal doesn't raise the pH of your soil too much.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Wed 23 Feb 2011, 5:51, Reply)

Exceptions:
If you have burned wood with paint on it, particularly old lead paint.
Pretty much any recycled timber, even new stuff, as it has probably been treated with all sorts of heavy metals that you don't want in your tomatoes.

Ash isn't particularly carbon rich, your fireplace tends to burn carbon, but there are clearly traces. Much of the ash is mineral salts in the timber that were not evaporated, and amorphous silica granules. Those salts can be what the soil is lacking in some cases, but clearly one could over-do it.
(Arsenic, Fri 13 Jul, 2:73 and, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 23:40, Reply)