California??? Not hardly.
A couple of extracted quotes from Wikipedia concerning Potash.
"Potash (specially potassium carbonate) has been used from the dawn of history in bleaching textiles, making glass, and, from about A.D. 500, in making soap. Potash was principally obtained by leaching of the ashes of land and sea plants.
Potash production provided late-18th and early-19th century settlers in North America a way to obtain badly needed cash and credit as they cleared their wooded land for crops. To make full use of their land, excess wood, including stumps, needed to be disposed. The easiest way to accomplish this was to burn any wood not needed for fuel or construction. Ashes from hardwood trees could then be used to make lye, which could either be used to make soap or boiled down to produce valuable potash.
Potash has been used since antiquity in the manufacture of glass, soap, and soil fertilizer. Potash is important for agriculture because it improves water retention, yield, nutrient value, taste, colour, texture and disease resistance of food crops. It has wide application to fruit and vegetables, rice, wheat and other grains, sugar, corn, soybeans, palm oil and cotton, all of which benefit from the nutrient’s quality enhancing properties.[sup][9] [/sup]
End of quotes.
The ashes from wood products you use for smoking consequently will help your garden. I remember my Grandparents and Parents spreading the ashes from their fireplace and kitchen wood stoves in the garden beds. Hey, it's recycling at it's simplest.
