ASHES. 



ASHES. 



one gardener imbedded his potted chrysan- 

 themums, by placing a " large handful " at 

 the bottom of each of his pots, and then was 

 surprised that other pots, not thus partly filled, 

 produced better plants. Another "horticultural 

 friend" states the case of a Scotch gardener, 

 who " coated over," for two successive years, 

 his garden with coal ashes ; and then our ex- 

 perimentalist, who was, doubtless, a persever- 

 ing character, finding that, with this over-dose 

 of cinders, the " fruit trees did not thrive so 

 well as he expected," actually took them up, 

 and placed them under a "substratum of ashes, 

 in order to lay them," as he said, " dry and 

 comfortable." The trees of course grew worse, 

 and were taken up. (Gard. Mag. vol. vi. p. 

 224.) It is to be lamented that such trials as 

 these are ever brought forward; they are 

 merely sources of erroneous conclusions, and 

 strong proofs of the ignorance of those who 

 have thus been wasting their master's time 

 and property. 



Mr. Loudon has, in another place (Gard. 

 Mug. vol. ii. p. 406), given some experiments 

 of a very different character, which I shall 

 give in his correspondent's own words : " I 

 sowed, on the 15th of May, 1826, three rows 

 of Swedish turnips. No. 1, was manured with 

 well-rotted dung from an old melon bed. No. 2, 

 with the tops of cabbages just come into bloom. 

 No. 3, with coal ashes. They vegetated about 

 the same time, but the row manured with the 

 cabbage-tops seemed to suffer most from the 

 drought ; the season being hot and dry, they 

 made little progress until the end of August, 

 and in November they were a middling, or 

 rather a bad crop. The row manured with 

 coal ashes had, all along, a more luxuriant 

 appearance than the other two. The rows 

 were 20 yards in length, 3 feet apart, and 15 

 inches from plant to plant in the row. I took 

 them up in February, and they weighed as fol- 

 lows : No. 1, 78 Ibs.; No. 2, 88 Ibs. ; No. 3, 

 121 Ibs.; which is very much in favour of the 

 coal ashes." It may be remarked, that sulphate 

 of lime, which abounds in coal ashes, is found 

 in very sensible quantities in turnips. In the 

 garden, coal ashes are very useful when spread 

 over the surface, to prevent the depredations 

 of garden-mice ; they cannot burrow through 

 them ; and, in the case of early sown peas, it 

 will be found that the peas covered on the sur- 

 face of the ground, with coal ashes, say a 

 quarter, or half an inch in thickness, will be 

 three or four days earlier than those to which 

 the ashes have not been applied. This may 

 be attributed to the greater heat absorbed from 

 the sun by the black coal ashes. 



Wood Ashes. The wood of various trees, &c., 

 has been analyzed by M. Saussure, Jun. ; the 

 following was the result (Chem. Rec. Veg.) : 



1000 parts of the dry wood of a young 



oak, yielded - 

 1000 ditto of the bark of oak 

 1000 ditto of perfect oak wood - 

 1000 ditto of poplar wood - 

 1000 ditto of poplar bark - 

 1000 ditto of wood of hazel 

 1000 ditto bark of ditto - 

 1000 ditto wood of mulberry 

 1000 ditto bark of ditto ... 

 1000 ditto wood of hornbeam 

 116 



Parts of 

 Ashes. 



2 

 60 

 2 



1000 ditto bark of ditto - - - - 134 



1000 ditto wood of horse-chestnut - 35 



1000 ditto straw of wheat ... 43 



1000 ditto branches of the pine ... 15 



100 parts of these ashes were found to consist 

 of the following substances, in varying propor- 

 tions. I have arranged the results in a tabular 

 form, by which my readers will readily ascer- 

 tain the composition of the ashes procured by 

 the combustion of various woods, barks, &c.: 



The soluble salts of these ashes are chiefly 

 carbonate and muriate of potash. The earthy 

 phosphates are the phosphates of lime and 

 magnesia (or the principal salt of bones) ; the 

 earthy carbonates are those of lime (chalk), 

 and magnesia ; silica is the pure earth of flint; 

 and the oxides were those of iron and manga- 

 nese. 



The cultivator will readily see, by the results 

 of these valuable investigations, the reason 

 why wood ashes are so much superior to those 

 from coal as a manure. The ashes from 

 wood, he will notice, contain a very consider- 

 able proportion of the phosphates of lime and 

 magnesia ; those from the hazel, containing 35 

 per cent., and those from the wood of young oak 

 25 per cent., essential vegetable ingredients, of 

 which the ashes from coal are entirely desti- 

 tute. The phosphate of lime, it will be re- 

 membered, is the chief fertilizing constituent 

 of bones, in which valuable manure it is inva- 

 riably present, in proportion varying from 37 

 per cent, in the bones of the ox, to 35 per cent, 

 in those of the hare. Wood ashes also contain 

 a considerable proportion of carbonate of pot- 

 ash, a salt which is more or less present in all 

 vegetable substances, and for which, therefore, 

 it must be highly serviceable as a food. The 

 carbonate of potash, too, promotes the disso- 

 lution of dead vegetable substances, and it 

 also, from its attraction of moisture from the 

 atmosphere, must promote an increased sup- 

 ply to the soil. Wood ashes are often very 

 judiciously added to common manure, the 

 quality of which is much improved by the mix- 

 ture. The leaves of trees, when burnt, gene- 

 rally produce more ashes, or potashes as they 

 are called, (from being formerly produced by 

 burning vegetable substances in large open 

 pots), than the branches, and the stem of the 

 tree the least of all ; herbs produce four or 

 five times, and shrubs three or four times as 

 much as either. All vegetables produce more 



