At a certain point, us northerners become sick and tired of the snow. What if I told you that you can dissapear that snow faster and also serve your garden at the same time?
One of the things we do is spread wood ashes over the snow above one of our raised beds. We typically do this right when we start to see temperatures rise above freezing during the day.
As we discuss here a bit, darker colors absorb thermal energy better than lighter colors. The wood ash helps collect greater amounts of the sun’s radiant energy, which means the snow will melt considerably faster in that area!
If you didn’t know, wood ash has quite a bit of potassium, phosphorus and other micronutrients in it. So, it’s almost like a fertilizer. Just don’t go too hog wild, though, too much of anything is rarely a good thing.
In our case, this area collects a lot of snow since it lies right off our deck and is right where we shovel our deck snow all winter long. Even with this being a huge snow pile, we usually notice this snow is gone before most other places on our property when we treat with ash.
The underlying bed is our perennial flower bed. Which means it’s helpful to get the snow off as soon as possible to allow for the perennial’s emergence. Although wood ash on snow is perhaps a bit unsightly, it’s also very temporary and provides multiple benefits!
