Sprinkled a little wood ash around my red maples and the leaf color caught me off guard
I have three red maples in my front yard in Albany that have looked rough for two seasons now. Pale leaves, not much fall color, just kind of blah. My neighbor mentioned his dad used to dump fireplace ash around his trees, so I figured why not, I had a bucket of it from the winter. Scattered maybe two cups around the drip line of each tree back in early spring and honestly forgot about it. Come October those trees went deep burgundy, way more color than they have shown since I moved in. I pulled a soil test after and my pH had climbed a bit, which I guess freed up some nutrients that were locked up. Lesson I took from it is ash is not free fertilizer, it is more like a pH adjustment, so I would not do it every season without testing. Wondering if anyone else uses ash on maples or if I just got lucky with my soil, because I do not want to overdo it and burn the roots next year.