Some may have missed the fact that yesterday’s Valentine’s Day was also Ash Wednesday. For those aware it was possible to not only enjoy a box of chocolates from your sweet other, but also share a pot of ash tea to wash down the sweetness.
Yes, the ashes left over from the last patio pan fire (or fireplace if available) could have been used for tea. However, wood ash tea has never really been recommended for a Valentine sweetheart. In truth, ash tea is best reserved for the future garden varieties of plants that thrive with the drink. Corn and tomatoes benefit with a bit of a drink, now and again.
Don’t get carried away. Wood ash tea boosts soil pH by providing more calcium and potassium. Who needs tomatoes drunk on an overindulgence of wood ash tea? Plants might feel like you did yesterday after overindulging in too many chocolates at one time.
If you have no recipe, there’s one for the season ahead. Three pounds of wood ash steeped in a 30-gallon trash bin.
A compost tea can be created by gardeners who recycle plant life. A small amount of ash from that wiener roast, alternated between layers of the compost pile, will add desired calcium and potassium plus smaller amounts of aluminum, magnesium, phosphorus, and sodium, saving the cost of buying those nutrients.
Do garden research, unless you already achieved gardener geekdom. Acid-lovers, like rhododendrons and azaleas, will not like you upping their alkaline soil.
The wood ash tea is safer an application for necessary plants. Tea preferred over applying wood ash directly from the ash bucket. If ash is applied directly in the garden bed, the plants’ stems and leaves must be washed afterward. Surely the breeze blows some ash directly on plants. Not good.
Wood ashes can be used as a household cleaner. A bit of water mixed with ash, forming a paste, creates a mild abrasive for tarnished metals, dirty glass, and removing that sticky adhesive from a label. Pioneer-style Goo Gone. Heaven’s yes, even use this paste to clean up those golf club irons.
Angelkeep could use the first patio pan fire ashes to shine up those patio wall double hung window panes. Well, maybe, after the book’s reading is completed.
Wood ashes have a tendency to repel certain less-than-desirable critters. Dribble a line of cooled ash to form a ring around garden plants. It’s like a ring of fire that pests like slugs, snails, and even ants will think twice before crossing. The downside is the fact it needs reapplied after each rain.
Wood ashes can provide some safe traction on those winter left-over icy sidewalks Indiana winter is noted for providing. Rock salt melts ice, but also pits concrete. Bagged sidewalk de-icer granules are expensive. Wood ashes are free. However, guys, don’t track the ashes back into the house on the carpet or you just might undue all the love achieved with yesterday’s big box of Valentine’s Day chocolates.
And guys, if you do your own oil changes, you probably have the occasional auto liquid or oil spill. Don’t fret. Grab your ashes. Ashes are absorbent. Allow ample soak time. Grab the shop vac. Angelkeep accepts no responsibility for handymen who don’t save a filled reserved ash bucket and attempt to use live ashes for any vehicle liquid spill. Angelkeep will read about such a foolish move in News-Banner’s listing of Bluffton first-responder activities.
Angelkeep gave up on self-applied vehicle maintenance after the first vehicle owned. The 1956 Olds 88, V-8, two-door two-toned gray coupe, had a fish-mouth grill. It was traded in Ossian in 1966 for a used four-on-the-floor, bucket seats, flat six, four-door, two-toned hardtop . . . wait for it . . .
Corvair.
Ah, but that old Oldsmobile. Wish it yet lived at Angelkeep. When purchased as a used vehicle from Dick Reimschisel, back in the day, Reimschisel ran the Airplane Service Station, back when stations really did service. Attendants pumped your gas at three gallons per dollar. Washed your windshield too.
The original Olds owner covered the seats with a double layer of seat covers on its first day of use. The original upholstery was cherry. Angelkeep fondly remembers nights in those seats, the Bluffton Drive-In Theater, a going-steady Valentine sweetheart, steamed-over windshield . . .
And that’s all the News-Banner page 4 space we have for this week’s Angelkeep Journals.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
