Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi everyone, our local chimney sweep has told me he takes all his 'used soot'up to the local farm where its stored for a year then used on the land.
So, is it good to put on the veg plot? any advise would be helpful.

It used to be looked on as black gold and as a soil conditioner it is superb.

HOWEVER,

it is full of heavy metals and other nasties that you would not want in your soil so I suggest you give it a miss and make as much compost and leaf mould as you can instead.

Like wise wood ash is great sprinkled about fruit bushes and trees or added to a compost heap but DONT use any coal ash for the reasons mentioned above.

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated at last - Saturday 9th at 2040hrs

It helps the soil heat up quickly because it absorbs the suns rays but it makes you look like a 'Black n White minstrel' after a weeding session!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Thanks for the advise, I'll continue to put spent ashes in the wheelie bin which does seen a shame

If we burn just wood and I know I'm going to put smokeless fuel in the stove - say for overnight, or if I'm going out for a long time- then I'll empty the wood ash and keep it to one side for the fruit bushes on the lottie.
The mixture of 'coal' and wood gets chucked out.
When my flue is cleaned I get a pile of what looks like burnt bits of cake/biscuits- not soot!

We get soot delivered to the allotment by a sweep, I spread it where I am going to plant my spuds and let it overwinter then rotavate it in, the best thing about this is the lack of slugs in your spuds afterwards.

We only burn wood so I hope our soot is o.k. for the garden?