What to do with the ash from a wood burning stoive is always a dilema because wood ash is about 50 percent Calcium Carbonate, lime, and will very quickly change a soils pH. If your soil normally has a high pH just a small quantity can be problematic.
Your compost pile does not want wood ash, but very thing layers may not be all that bad on garden beds. The link below is what UCONN suggests.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wood Ash

If you use any kind of starter to get your fire started you will want to soak the ash in water and skim the ash that comes to the surface off. Then you can use the rest of the ash.

I don't put woodash in my compost because I've read it's wasted there, leaches out very quickly...I read. (I also have a secret theory that two things cool my pile off---woodash and soil additions.)

I apply mine lightly to gardens in the spring---one dusting. The majority of mine gets flung around the yard during the winter. It's chancy when you add stuff without soil testing, but I do just randomly apply certain things to my garden---seaweed, compost containing manure, green sand, woodash, bonemeal, I lime my beet rows. I'd like to get an annual soil test done, but I don't. I have some failures that tweaking would improve. My onions are never as big as I think they should be.

I have a friend who swears by liberal woodash application.

Careless handling of woodash causes annual house fires here in Maine. NEVER assume that your stove ashes are cold. Ashes should never be shoveled into anything that isn't metal.

We used to put wood ash on our raspberries and they grew very well.

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It would seem the answer to how to use wood ash is: carefully or thinly.

I've found wood ash keeps for a long time so our winter's collection of wood ash gets added very thinly to the compost bins over time with out any ill effects. As long as you're not adding too much at any given time, I find the composting process has a mitigating effect. I usually stick to the 10 percent rule but because wood ash is such a fine powder, I add much less than 10 percent to any given compost pile. I'm usually adding a thin layer and covering when I'm adding that weeks kitchen scraps.

Yeah, keeping a sack of ash is kind of sucky but it doesn't end up in the trash and it doesn't end up killing off some corner of the yard.

I'll have to keep in mind the safety precaution coming out of Maine.

to sense
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Doubt you should use wood ashes. Your soil already has a relatively high pH. Wood ashes will increase it even further.

Check with your county's Univ of CA Extension Service office re the facts for your region.

Use this map to locate the office
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/

Here is a link that might be useful: USDA map to county Extension Service offices

Wood ashes should not be added to a compost pile because they do change the pH and do make life difficult for the bacteria that digest the material to be composted. Some people will tell you that wood ashes can aid in odor control and yes they can, but if you need to add wood ash for that reason you are not building your compost pile properly. Any compost pile that has an offensive odor is not working properly.

I'm busy heaving a 3 gallon bucket of wood ash every 10 days out over the snow, with the wind to my back. Been doing it since I moved in 16 years ago, as did the person I bought the house from. The gardeners around here routinely add wood ash to their gardens. When I asked them if it was harmful for the soil, they all laugh. and start telling me stories about how it helps their gardens. Some of these gardens date from homesteading days, when they used to use wood for cooking.

I did see an ash-thrown area last summer where, in the spring, there were a few dead spots, and what I found was that there was only 1/2 an inch of topsoil/roots over some flat sandstone rocks, and clearly, the wood ash was the culprit. Of course, the lawn grew back over it by the end of the summer.
And I won't heave ashes there again.

Well, out to the field it goes, then (after it's all the way cooled, of course!) Maybe I'll experiment in that area of the field and plant something just to see how it does next spring!

Did you notice t he comment that perhaps wood ashes is the wring thing for your soil?

Field or not, if you want to grow something there somewhere down the line, best to learn the facts about your soil rather than taking advice from folks well-outside your region.

tkhopper, what's the purpose of dissolving wood ash and skimming off anything that floats? What chemicals are you removing, and how much ash can you process this way? Thanks in advance.