SEAWEED ?

[confused]

What about seaweed for the garden , any use .?

[Green Aura]

Absolutely - it's fantastic. If you live close enough to the sea to collect washed up seaweed, get loads. Just put it on your garden in the autumn and let it over winter. You can also put some in water to make tea - we add comfrey, nettle and horsetail too for the foulest smelling, but most nutritional brew imaginable

If you're not near the sea you can get liquid seaweed feed from most garden centres.

Calcified seaweed is a bit different - use it for reducing pH of your soil - prior to planting carrots. And chuck some in the worm bin - the worms like an alkaline environment.

[Odsox]

Yep .. what Maggie said, plus I would add that I would chuck it in a pile somewhere first and play a hose over it for a while to wash some of the salt out, especially important if you intend to keep on using it, for instance in a polytunnel.
Seaweed is one of the best fertilisers going as it contains loads of trace elements that other manure/fertilisers don't have .. and it's free.

[StripyPixieSocks]

Yep, we're planning on gathering bunches of Kelp to go under our raised beds when we build them. Once shredded it will be a nice thick nutrient rich base!

We already have a serious bucked of gloop... errr... rotting seaweed in a bucket with water for sieving later and keeping for fertilizing plants (mostly herbs).

It's particularly easy to harvest at the moment as there has been some storms off the coast and it's all washing onto the beaches!

[confused]

Superb, i live by the sea, i will fill a couple of buckets , (the big horse muck ones with the rope handles,) eachtime i go up to the lotty, and spread it under my new raised beds .

[Big Al]

I was told that you could only collect the seaweed that was not attached to anything like rocks etc. Don't know if it's true but there you have it. Mind you coming from Hartlepool our seaweed positivly glows....

[possum]

if you have got it, eat it! very nutritious. All seaweed is edible, some just nicer than others. In summer we harvest it here when we go snorkling, anything we dont eat is then chucked on the garden.

[KathyLauren]

Where I live, seaweed is most people's fertilizer of choice. Definitely good stuff.

[confused]

Thanks , i'm now a beach -raker !!

[oldjerry]

For some reason,especially brilliant on raspberries as a mulch.