would dumping these in the garden be beneficial. just looking for positive methods of ash disposal. once the barrel fills up.

just burning household trash and the occasional dead carcasses of dead/butchered animals.

sorry if that part hurts anyones delicate sensibilities,,,but im sure someone would ask what im burning......

thanks.

The base rule that I've always heard is that only ashes from real wood coal &/or real wood should go in the garden or compost pile.

The burned carcasses probably wouldn't hurt, but the household trash is a no-no.

Yes, the old time
south americans
did their own vergion
of their ashes,

Good Luck

Don't count on the idea that you have taken all the dangerous, toxic chemicals such as dioxins from your trash and put them into the air we breathe by burning it. There is still a good amount that remains behind in the ash.

Burning trash has no place on an organic homestead.


From the EPA website:

quote:

Backyard burning also produces ash residue, which can contain toxic metals such as mercury, lead, chromium, and arsenic. These metals can be toxic when ingested. When a person ingests hazardous amounts of lead, for example, he or she may experience high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems, kidney damage, and brain damage. Unaware of the potential danger, some people scatter the ash in their gardens or bury it on their property. Garden vegetables can absorb and accumulate these metals, which can make them dangerous to eat. Children playing in the yard or garden can incidentally ingest soil containing these metals. Also, rain can wash the ash into groundwater and surface water, contaminating drinking water and food.

By the way, do you know what is the largest quantified source of dioxin emissions? Burn barrels.

(Source: U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). 2006. An inventory of sources and environmental releases of dioxin-like compounds in the United States for the years 1987, 1995, and 2000. National Center for Environmental Assessment, Washington, DC; EPA/600/P-03/002F.)

Wayne

kinda like that curly-Q light bulb deal.....i got other things to worry about.

yet i must wonder,,,what exactly are these folks burning in their burn barrels that has all these heavy metals in it??

reminds me of the new lead paint removal laws that have been instituted, and makes things extremely hard on us contractors and makes ya'll remodel expenses 30-50% higher. all because of the same type BS youve quoted.

Don't go asking questions if you only expect answers that you want to hear.

You seem to have all the answers. So of course, please dump whatever you want on your garden.

So if you'll excuse me, the rest of us are going to go off and discuss organic methods of gardening.

Wayne

if you and others say its not best to dump it on the garden than so be it. i except that. but its the actual burning of it, and what it does...supposedly.

like most things, its probably whats burned, and the amount. the govt/science likes to go to the extreme worst case scenario. probably results were taken from burning actual landfills. but from a lowly burn barrel, burning paper material.......get outa here.

burn now or lay in a landfill. whats worse?

I would guess the average household trash has a lot of really nasty stuff in it that I would rather not burn or put in my garden. Of course, it would be better if it was not there at all, since putting it into landfill is not much better. Looking in my own trash bin - the styrofoam, painted cardboard and colored print in magazines and papers and labels, plastic containers not being recycled would be on the list. And while I am thankfully beyond this stage, I shudder to think about what would happen if you were burning disposable diapers (although maybe the Depends are not that far away...).

But since my own burn pile is just brush, I may put some of the ashes into the garden. Or, since the current burn pile is where I am considering planting corn next year, I may just till it in.

We do not lanfill any more in my county. All of our trash goes to a very large incinerator with scrubbers on the stacks to remove any hazardous vapors. I actually saw the test results and the exhaust air was "cleaner" than the ambient air. Prior to the incinerator are large magnets to remove metal items but of course there are heavy metals in the remaining ash even though the incinerator operates at 1200 degrees Farenheight. I believe that the remaining ashes are buried in specially lined pits that are monitored but it has been a few years since I visited and I don't remember the exact details.

At my house we put out about 1 bag per week and compost or recycle the remainder of our waste.

ive noticed that now we recycle, and burn the burnable and any type of meat scraps from our meals...there is very little garbage going out. i figured this was a good thing.

our county closed its landfill and now all trash is shipped to the nearest city and its collection center...from there, im not sure.

When using ashes, its best to only use pure hardwood ash. Use 1 cup per 1000 square feet. You don't need much. Plenty of trace minerals. Its powerful stuff. Soil test help determine if you need them or not.

DR, this is not an admonishment. I'm not sure your state permits burn barrels.

My old home state (NH) would've been on a house hold using a burn barrel with fines and or arrest. My new state (OH) I'm not so sure. But I suspect the official answer would still be fines and or arrest.

I do not have one but burning barrels are used by many people here in rural PA. I'm assuming that they are legal or I would probably have heard about it.

DR, keep in mind that while lead (along with other toxins) has been removed from paint and inks and dyes in the US, a lot of things we buy in the store come from other countries. The packaging may contain a lot of toxins that you wouldn't expect.

As for animal scraps and waste, can you bury them? (While planting an evergreen windscreen, I was gifted with many a marauding rodent by my mighty mouser...all of which went into the planting holes.) Raccoons and coyotes can make this problematic as well, loose or stray dogs too, but the carcass would rot underground and enrich the soil in the end.

Most all of the research I have seen on ashes has been done on wood ashes, both hardwood and softwood, but not the paper trash that many homes do burn. The burning produces more pollution then spreading the ashes from that burning would add to the soil because the burning is not all that complete, too little oxygen feeds the fire. Many people, improperly, equate the paper ashes with wood ashes becasue paper is made from wood, but that should not be done. Many people think that all paper has dioxins even though that is the result of the chlorine bleaching process and those dioxins are washed from the pulp before it is sent to the paper machine. Many people think the inks used in printing this paper can be harmful based on the concept that inks are made of petroleum, leads, and other toxic materials which today they are not.
Just what those paper ashes would contain will depend on how the paper was made since most minerals, ie. calcium, will be from clays used and not the wood the paper was made from, again depending on how that paper was made, groundwood, newsprint, will have more of the woods nutrients then would bleached paper.
Much of what I can find posted on the internet about paper ash is based on pseudo science.