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Old timer at the dump told me to burn my garden waste instead of composting it
I was unloading some brush at the town transfer station in Concord last spring, and this fellow in his 70s saw my truck full of branches and said I was making a mistake hauling it there. He insisted I should just set a burn pile and let the ash fertilize my soil, said that's how they did it back in the day. I took his advice and tried it out behind my shed, but after three months my garden soil turned hard as rock and nothing would grow. Turns out he was thinking of wood ash from a fireplace, not green waste that just smolders and leaves a mess. I ended up spending $40 on lime to fix the pH balance and then had to start a proper compost bin anyway. Has anyone else gotten bad advice from well meaning old timers around here?
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the_elliot4d ago
Read something a while back about how green waste burns way hotter than wood and leaves behind a different kind of ash that's full of salts and alkaline compounds. Wood ash has potassium and calcium which is good for soil, but wet leafy stuff just smolders and creates a crust of bad stuff on top. Sounds like that old timer forgot half the story and you paid the price for it.
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