HARDWOOD RECORD 



23 



Mixed It with the tat and marrow 



Of the reindeer of the mou-ntulns, 



Made a soap of magic virtue, 



Thus to cleanse the iron artist. 

 The foregoing might as well have been written thirty instead 

 of three thousand years ago, there being so little change in 

 process in that long time; except that milk and honey are not now 

 soap-making ingredients. 



"PoHiCK Salt" 

 Wood ashes are little used now as meat preservatives, because 

 better methods are available; yet in former years that was the 

 common way among farmers. It is said the Virginia settlers learned 

 it from Indians who preserved meat by covering it with ashes. 

 Early travelers have left record that Indians on the coast of Mary- 

 land, Virginia, and North Carolina employed hickory wood ashes 

 as salt. It is not likely that the use of ashes was for flavoring, 

 but for a preservative. The white people adopted the method, and 

 called hickory ashes "pohiek salt," the word pohick being one 

 of the Indian names for hickory. There is a village in Fairfax 

 •county, Virginia, called Pohick to this day. 



Up to a few years ago ashes were occasionally used by farmers 

 to preserve bacon. After it had been salted and smoked, it was 

 placed in a trough and covered with ashes. There it remained 

 several days, and was then taken out and the ashes brushed off. 

 The application of ashes was for the purpose of killing or driving 

 away the colonies of lepidopterous insects which infest bacon, and 

 are popularly called skippers. 



Orchardists formerly employed wood ashes, or lye obtained from 

 them, to kill insects injurious to fruit trees. The most common 

 enemy was the borer which tunneled under the bark near the roots 

 of young trees. A quietus can be put on his activities by a liberal 

 application of lye. 



Fertilizing the Soil 

 The largest use of wood ashes in this country has always been 

 in fertilizing the soil, and that will doubtless be the most practical 

 ■employment of this commodity. Sales of ashes as fertilizers do 

 not seem to date very far in the past in this country. Farmers 

 and gardeners used their own to enrich their land. The leached 

 dumpings from ash hoppers were as good as any. It is said that 

 Indians in New England taught the settlers the value of ashes on 

 exhausted soil. However, it scarcely seems credible that the fact 

 was not known long before that time, since primitive agricul- 

 turists must have observed it hundreds of times. 



It was early noted that cucumbers, melons, and pumpkins planted 

 where log heaps had been burned were generally exempt from 

 attacks by beetles, which are apt to destroy the young plants in 

 other situations. The popular notion is that the plants growing in 

 ash beds take up lye and other ingredients from the ashes, and 

 their leaves and stems are so filled with the distasteful substances 

 that the bugs will not eat them. The real reason is probably dif- 

 ferent. The beetles that prey on the plants' young leaves are 

 accustomed to bury themselves in the soil near the plants' roots 

 most of the time, coming up occasionally to feed. The soil which is 

 rank with ashes is uncongenial to the burrowing bugs, and they 

 seek Dew pastures, and the vines are spared. 



Fertilizing Ingredients 



The fertilizing value of wood ashes is due principally to the 

 potash and other ingredients they give the soil. Potash may run 

 six per cent, phosphoric acid two per cent, lime thirty-two. These 

 amounts and ratios are not constant. The soil on which a wood 

 grows is influential in determining the proportionate amounts of 

 fertilizing elements incorporated with the ground. Trees occupy- 

 ing salt marshes do not yield ashes satisfactory as fertilizers, be- 

 cause of the presence of salt in the ashes. Considerable quantities 

 of dirt of different kinds are often present in ashes sold in the 

 market. The dirt is not a part of ashes, but is due to methods of 

 gathering from ash heaps. Leached ashes are often one-third 

 water. 



The potash in wood ashes is taken up by the soil more readily 

 than in most other forms, because the grains are generally ex- 

 tremely fine and the minute particles are easily distributed through 



the soil in convenient form for assimilation by plants. When tan- 

 bark is burned, the ash is poorer in potash and phosphoric acid 

 than wood ash, but may be richer in lime. 



Annual Crop of Ashe,s 



No one knows how much wood ash is used yearly for fertilizing 

 and for other purposes in the United States. Records are not kept, 

 and figures are not obtainable. The amount of such saving is 

 large, but the waste is more. Pew persons save ashes, even when 

 it would be quite convenient to do so. Waste is everywhere that 

 wood is burned; where land is being cleared of logs and brush; 

 where open fireplaces and stoves consume fuel; where mills and 

 factories use wood to generate power; where brick-kilns, potteries, 

 and other wood-burning plants are in operation. Now and then 

 a wagon load or a car load is collected and sold, but such is not 

 the custom. 



The quantities of ash which dift'erent species of wood contain, 

 have been determined experimentally. Figuring on the basis of 

 ninety cubic feet of actual wood per cord, and on wood oven dry, 

 the following table gives the weight of a cord and the weight of 

 the resulting ash when the woods are burned. The table lists 

 twenty -five kinds of wood: 



One Cord of Oven Dry Wood 



Weight of Weight oj 



Species — Ashes, lbs. Wood, lbs. 



Douglas flr 2 2.802 



Sassafras 3 2.S27 



Red cedar 4 2.763 



White pine 4 2.161 



Wild black cherry 5 3.265 



Yellow poplar 5 2,372 



Longleaf pine 10 3.929 



Basswood 14 2,53.S 



Sycamore 15 3,184 



White ash 15 3.669 



White oak 17 4,171 



Red gum 20 3,314 



Beech 21 3,S60 



Locust 21 4,113 



Sugar maple 21 3..S77 



Cottonwood 21 2. 181 



Sweet buckeye 25 2,.">14 



California sycamore 30 3.7.36 



Black walnut 31 3.420 



Slippery elm 32 3.901 



Shellbark hickory 34 4,695 



Mesquite 92 4,241 



Persimmon 158 4,744 



Mastic 291 5.670 



Guiana plum 434 5,241 



It is apparent that the weight of wood is of little value as a 

 guide to the quantity of ash which the wood contains. 

 Some Possibilities 



Slabs and edgings now thrown a^say may be sufficient to produce 

 50,000 tons of ashes annually, calculated on figures given in Louis 

 Margolin's "Waste in Milling." 



Figured on the same basis, ashes from sawdust would total 

 500,000 tons a year. Cordwood now burned as fuel would be good 

 for 500,000 tons, making a total of more than one million tons of 

 ashes annually, little of which is now saved. 



This is all theoretical. The piaetical problem of getting this 

 material burned, and saving and selling the ashes, is not touched. 

 Neither is the further reduction cf the ashes to potash — the form 

 in which the product is salable — given consideration. The problem 

 is stated merely as a possibility. Practical methods of securing 

 results remain to be worked out. Some factories which manu- 

 facture fertilizers buy wood ashes. 



It has been suggested that this country can produce its own potash 

 to make good that cut off by the closing of the German trade. We 

 have been getting about 250,000 tons a year from there. If an attempt 

 is made to convert ashes into potash, we might figure that six pounds 

 of ashes will make one pound of potash. A million tons of ashes 

 would be good for 150,000 tons of potash, or rather more. At recent 

 market prices it would be worth $12,000,000. It would be worth twice 

 that at present quotations, but the usual price is about four cents a 

 pound. 



