Ran across an interesting article on long term storage of tomatoes in dry (sifted) wood ash. Digging around a bit more and it turns out that this isn’t actually a new idea, and that it actually works. Science abstract here (gotta track down the full text, they tried various levels of moisture). Additional info here.
Kinda cool. My problem with trying it here is the moisture content. I gotta see if I can track down the full article from the testing to see what moisture levels weren’t worth it. We tend to be pretty damp here through the fall at least.
Hu, that is interesting. Unfortunately, I’m sure that ash from the pellet stove would be too corrosive to do this (it is way more corrosive than ash from a wood stove and requires special exhaust tubing for that reason).
Its basically just wood ash though, right. I always thought that the reason for the different piping was because the pellet stoves burned hotter producing different gasses?
Actually I was thinking of a corn/wood pellet mixture being more corrosive, so I misspoke.
The advantage with a pellet stove over a wood stove is it is less likely to create creosote. Not because it burns hotter but because the burn is controlled better with air forced into the burn pot and the exhaust is forced out at a high rate of speed. And some pellet stoves (like mine) actively track the exhaust temp and will take more heat from the stove to keep that exhaust at the optimum temp (reducing the heat blown out into the room).
that makes sense!