Charcoal ash

[DREDIOCK]

What do you do with your charcoal ashes?
You know. the ashes left over from BBqing

There has GOT to be some use for this stuff LOL

[Xargos]

Hmmm, I'm not going there...Goodbye.

[Ghosth]

Yes you can save a barrel of it, trickle water through it, save the water, boil it off to make lye, and eventually make soap out of it.

Its a long hard process thats time consuming, smelly, hot, and dangerous at times.  To end up with a soap that will probably peel your skin off, remove paint, and disintigrate clothing in a couple of washes.

OR you could just throw it in a garbage bag and send it to the dump.

[Toad]

Some folks use it in their garden; I just toss it.

[Xargos]

I must have been up for too long because when I read soap, my brain was telling me soup.

[Nilsen]

I suppose you could save it for winter and use it to cover the yellow snow.

[storch]

I toss it around my rose bushes.  they seem to like it.

[Odee]

Originally posted by DREDIOCK
What do you do with your charcoal ashes?
You know. the ashes left over from BBqing

There has GOT to be some use for this stuff LOL

I use it in winter to de-ice the driveway and steps.  Spring time it makes a great mixer with the horse apple fertilizer for the wife's garden.  So if you count the BBQ pit, and three fireplaces at my house, I have plenty of ash to go around.  

Add our two horses, and some mucked hay, and you have a steady supply of fertilizer...  hmmm, I should bag that stuff and sell it to the farmers.  Be the next Vanderbilt of this decade.  

[68ROX]

Being plants that thrive in hot, volcanic areas....

Hot peppers (I grow A LOT of Jalepenos, Habeneros, and Tobascos) seem to like some (about 20%) ash in the fertilized mulch/dirt I plant them in (5 gallon buckets).

BTW:  Planting them in 5 gallon buckets with holes drilled around the bottom has  been a big craze around there, as the plants can be brought indoors when the cold snap comes in the fall.  The plants go dormant indoors for the winter (water ocasionally) and when Spring arrives, put back outside.

You get 2 crops a year out of them and they continue to grow like small trees.

My 4 year old habenero is laden with early peppers and is now over 3 feet tall.  It has grown almost a foot since I transplanted it into the 5 gallon bucket.

I have seen Jalepeno plants locally grown in 5 gallon buckets get to over 7 feet high.

68ROX

[Odee]

Yup...  you should see the size of our tomatoes.  Awesome stuff once you get the right mix down

[DREDIOCK]

Whle wood ash is supposed to be good for plants
Supposedly from what I've read.Charcoal ash is not because of the chemicals used in the bonding proccess.

Typically I've just tosse dthe stuff under bushes.
Hasnt seemed to hurt them and hey. Im not plannin on eating my shrubbery any time soon.
And if it ever came to that. I'd have alot more to worry about then the chemicals used. LOL

Wood ash I just mix in with my compost pile

[LePaul]

I thought charcoal was pushed together via high pressure in the manufacturing process?

[majic]

I believe it has some sort of binding agent.

[68Hawk]

get a bunch of those cheap leather pouches, with the strings around them and the beads.

fill the pouches

Bingo, you got a bunch of marketable portions of Jerry Garcia's ashes.

Find a concert and sell, just follow your nose.

Wouldn't put them on my driveway in the winter though, they'd track in something fierce.

[Odee]

Originally posted by LePaul
I thought charcoal was pushed together via high pressure in the manufacturing process?

It is.  However Matchlight has some added ingredients that are toxic, which mostly burns off by the time it goes to ash stage, unlike the charcoal fluid you pour on regular briquettes... Some of that stuff stays toxic in the ash.