I have found that 1 litre of white wine vinegar per 2kg of wood ash is approximately correct. I use pH strips, and just bring it back to ~7ish, dilute with 150 litres of water. Stir. Allow 5-6hrs to settle. Stir again and use.

have your soil tested before adding wood ashes - pH neutralized or not.

Vinegar would add potassium and calcium acetates, and unless your soil os low in those elements, might make poor soil worse.

my garden is dominated by clay. throwing enormous amounts of horse manure at it for 7 months, and likely will need to for 7 years! I've been using the wood ash/mix for some months now on seedlings, and gradually as i became more comfortable with it, on rockerys and rosebeds. The effect on the rose was near instantaneous (~days) and gratifying.

Another use for wine gone bad?

surely this will work with any acid, if a ratio is correctly calculated.

There was a guy, bamboo rabbit, in the Fruit forum (now almost deserted), that grew blueberries irrigated with very hard water. He used battery acid (sulfuric acid). I avoid all this by growing tolerant plants, but my pH=9.2 water coupled with ph=7.6 soil has given me thoughts occasionally about using acid.

How much Acetic Acid is in that white wine vinegar? 5 percent, 20 percent? something else? Since that is sold for use in cooking I would suspect probably around 5 percent.

kimmq is kimmsr

Bottle does not say, but its definitely cooking grade. Most recent batch took 5 litres to quench the ash/water mix. Simple observation suggests the hotter the fire the more alkaline the ash. (log fire>bbq>simple garden fire.)

Now I am reading about using vinegar for weight loss, reducing blood sugar levels for diabetics, and a host of other remedies.

The moral is don't throw that old wine out ;)

Yes, vinegar is very healthy. I make my own and intake it every day. Commercial white vinegar is 5-7% acetic acid. And wood ash can get to about 11 in pH. The more charcoal is left in there, the lower the pH.

The one source of reliable information I could find about the pH of wood ash puts it at about 10. Wood ash is 20 to 25 percent Calcium Carbonate and is the equivalent of 25 to 33 percent of lime (the Calcium Carbonate Equivalent, or CCE)

If you have vinegar with an Acetic Acid level of 5 percent and you dilute it with some water what does that do to the Acetic Acid level?

kimmq is kimmsr

I'm guessing if you add water to acid you would raise the volume level

The level of penetrating scientific thought here is astounding. :-D