Thanks, everyone for the responses! It's one of those things - I almost wanted to cry when I saw what he had done but on the other hand, he was trying to be 'helpful'. We have a great deal of nettle in & around our property. I wonder if culling a good bit of that and throwing it in with the compost will help. I hear it has almost 'magical' properties as fertilizer. Normally we just put yard waste and table scraps in the bin. Thanks again for all the help!

Heh. So much blather running all over the place that the Original Post gets lost. "Would it be safe for my plants to start dumping ash from my fireplace into my composting bin?" Safe? Yes. As one highly reliable poster from GB has said: "if it has ever lived, pile it on" (or something like that...). "Would it add any benefits to the soil?" Yes, No, It depends. It WILL add stuff. You could wing it and judge the results over time as most people do, but that might be instant or it might be interminable. You need to know what's in the ash and you need to know what's in your soil. " My only concern is that we used Duralogs to fuel the fires, and im not sure if they have any harmful chemicals" Do you trust modern industry? I do not, but these logs seem to be cool, emissions-wise, sustainability-wise, and residue-wise. Forget all the bogus stuff. This is amending with lime at a chemical level of intensity and you don't yet know your general pH range. Since all gardening is local, do the numbers or you're just taking your chances. Nobody can do this but you.

carissimiv Maybe someone can give you sounder advice about adding it to your garden or not, but whenever I've thought of doing it, I decided not to because of the greases from the meats dripping into the ashes. Maybe it all gets consumed by the fire but I just don't know. Just in case, I do know that I don't want animal fat in my vegetable soil!

The poor guy probably thought he was making you happy. I would not add formed charcoal briquette ash to my bin. I do not think the ash from one cookout would harm the bin. Like mendopete I put purchased, on clearance wood char into my bin. It is not for the worms, the worms do a process for me on the char. I process the char twice. Once through to get the water phobic char wet. The second time I wrap it in paper and step on it to crush. This makes no dust particles floating in the air. I want to add the char to my garden and purchased it for that. The worms get the char ready for the garden by helping it to gain life. I use slow times of food availability to keep the bin filled to the top with char. I want to try to get the whole bag through the tiny system over the winter. People have been tossing wood ashes into their garden for years. Maybe he will try to make up by giving them them a big pumpkin? The worms would forgive him then. If in the past you posted about using seaweed in the bin I think seeweed that was rained on or rinsed even a bit would be a good addition to bin or garden due to the minerals and trace minerals. I have no seaweed. Sad. Those who have it are lucky.