Mora,
I've been using seaweed in the gardens for a couple of years now, but discovered that generations of Acadians before me have been using the stuff for years!! On a visit home this summer, spent some time with a neighbour in her early nineties who still gardens. Her Dahlias were fabulous, and the other flowers in the gardens were amazing. She told me her secret was seaweed!!

She never rinses it either. Neither do I. I just apply it in the fall a couple of inches from the crowns of the plants, and then when things start to get really cool, I apply a mulch of chopped leaves or wood shavings. By spring, I find that most of it has 'disappeared' into oblivion, and just mulch with compost which has seaweed in it too. I get mine from our neighbours who have slips for their boats and small beaches which they want to rid of seaweed during the warm months.

It's full of potassium and micronutrients which are not found elsewhere. Sometimes I leave some in a bucket, and after a week make a tea for the plants or a foliar spray for the leaves.

You should find a few less slugs too! Won't make them disappear altogether, but they will die from the small amount of salt present when you lay it down.

Hope this helps!

Thankyou Tiffy, from myself and a PEI gardener who E mailed on the subject( somehow I knew you would come through for us LOL ) M

My mother-in-law uses seaweed by the ton as well. I don't believe she ever rinses it either. The salt doesn't seem to do her garden any harm - her garden is fantastic!

BP

I use seaweed, too-eelgrass. It's great and so easily available to me , living on an island.

Would love to get some of that eelgrass, Deanie! (How have you been?) What I get is mostly the seaweed with the little 'bubbles' in it.

But having sandy AND clay soil, anything is good!

I have also heard that you can grow potatoes in seaweed. I use it in my gardens when I can get it, it is great stuff.

Valerie

i found your site and would like to know more of your findings on seaweed.
i live between campbeltown and machrihanish in kintyre -west coast scotland, and have used ever increasing amounts of seaweed on my garden. my soil is heavy clay, and the ground slopes to the north, yet i grow the earliest potatoes.
can too much seaweed be used?
my asparagus is not two years old from seed, yet is still thrusting up new shoots through the heavy seaweed mulch. this spring some of the one year old plants had two dozen thin shoots.
i have filled a plastic 45 gallon drum with seaweed, and draw off the liquid into 5 gallon containers. i was thinking of diluting this fluid with water, as a greenhouse plant food next year, but i have fitted the screw tops, so no air can get in. there is a high salt content (discovered whilst siphoning), but i know that salt has been used as a fertiliser, so am not too concerned. should i try to get air into the liquid?
regards from walter bell

greetings from canada (new brunswick).I am sorry i cannot answer your questions concerning the seaweed .I use it in my compost pile when i can get it but have never used it as a mulch ,however i have a friend who adds it to her vegetable garden by laying it in trenches in the fall and planting over that in the spring with great resuls for many years .There is a commerical harvest of seaweed in our local area here where they lay it out to dry on an old tarmac and then process and ship away for use in medinal products i belive .would be interesting to know what the seaweed tea contains as far as nutrients ....
from across the water ;bonnygardener