I have basic soil, but the wood ash has a lot of good stuff in it. That is why slash and burn agriculture works (at least for a while). So I toss the occasional bucket of wood ash into the compost heap along with all the food stuff (banana peels, vegetable scraps, etc.) and a few loads of quail manure (we keep coturnix and their poop needs to compost before you put it in the soil) and let it cook all summer. Come the Fall, I dig it into the raised beds after the frost has killed everything.