I often chime in on this subject .... I live on alkaline soils, the pH varies from 7.2 to 7.8. I burn 6-8 cords of wood a year, as did the owner before me, so figure 50 years of every winter week, throwing 3 gallons of wood ash around the place. When there's snow on the ground, I just heave it out widely over the snowy lawn so that any coals go out quickly. When there's no snow, I dump it in a pit, which is 5 feet from an oak tree. In the spring, the first grass to 'green up' is where I've thrown the ash. The oak tree pit gets flooded / seeps out, flooded/ seeps out etc. with irrigation water over the course of the summer, and the ash gets washed on down the slope. Where the grass grows much better, deeper green, thicker, than anywhere else on the lawn. The only times I've had problems are when I throw a 4-6" thick clump of ash on soils that are only a few inches deep, with sandstone underneath. That will kill the grass. But even then, by the end of the summer, the dead patch is covered by the grasses encroaching from around. I throw ash in my snow-covered flower beds all the time. I've stopped throwing ash in the vegetable gardens because I pile up grass clippings and chopped leaves all over the beds in the fall, and I'd likely set that on fire. I've also gardened on acid soils for years when I lived overseas, and we often burned charcoal for cooking, and used the ash constantly. The benefits were pretty dramatic. Of course, your milage may vary. I'd suggest starting off by dumping the ash in some out-of-the-way place and see what effect you find.

I would not try it in the tea unless you had some way of determining its affect on the microbes. If it a diet soda then it has chemical sweeteners in it. I would not put that in my tea - period. I don't know what effect, if an, the CO2 would have on the tea. I don't think it would have any appreciable impact on the compost - as long as the pile is not drenched in it. The tea on the other hand is more fragile and suseptible to minor changes in its environment. In a decent sized compost pile the volume of coke to the rest of the pile is really small. However, in a 5 gal bucket I think the volume ratio could be more of a factor. In the end I think the old addage for a compost pile or tea holds true: if it did not come from the earth it should not go into the compost pile (or tea). Just my way of thinking about it. tom

If they are just small scraps, you can also put them in strategic places for birds to find in late winter. I included a link to another thread (ha) on the subject. It's quite a treat to find a nest with scraps of your latest project in it! Of course, natural fibers are best, but others can also work as long as they don't degrade into long, nonbiodegradeable string that can injure or kill a chick. Here is a link that might be useful: Fabric Scraps for Birds

When I was a child (growing up in the mid-20th century) there was a man who came by the school everyday to pick up the milk and food which was discarded from lunch. He fed it to his pigs. He was doing the Jefferson county school system a favor by disposing of it for free. Later he was stopped because someone else complained because they weren't getting free slop for their hogs and dogs. This should have been a situation of "first-asked" but I'm sure our screwed up legal system would have seen it differently. I have been an advocate of recycling for many years. I believe we should build a long tin roofed shed at every garbage dump. The garbage should be dumped on a conveyor. The able bodied (A Medicaid paid physical) people on government assistance who receive food cards, rent supplements, Medicaid, etc.; should be required to sort through the garbage. Plastics, paper, glass, metals should be sorted and sold to recyclers. If they are able bodied then the recycling work would serve as public services work in exchange for taxpayer subsidies. If they miss a day's work without a doctor's excuse they would be cut that amount of pay from their government dole. Reclaimed wood and paper could be burned to generate electricity to run the recycling plant, shredders, blowers for the boilers and smoke scrubbers. Extra electricity would be sold to APCO. Ash could be sold or given away as soil additives (potassium, some phosphorus and magnesium). Some shredded would could be sold as mulch or composted to sell to gardeners. I watched an episode of Dirty Jobs today at a metal recycling center. They make a ton of money (no pun intended) from tons of metals. For those sorted who can't recognize iron from non-ferrous metals, the sorters had a magnet around their necks. Well, if I was a politician, I couldn't get elected dawg catcher on this platform. One of the most important aspects is we would save landfill space and recover some of the cost of operating dumps.