"Derek-G" wrote in message
Val;820155 Wrote:

I grew up on an island in Puget Sound and we collected seaweed,
actually it
was kelp, every fall to put on our big vegetable garden. There were
huge
beds of 'bullwhip kelp' in front of the house that would wash up on the

beach during the first fall storms. My brother and I had the chore of
spending two weekends of each year in the fall hauling wheelbarrow
loads of
this up to our vegetable garden and spreading it around. That was long
ago
when kids still did as they were told. By the time we were done it was
about
a foot thick all over. It would sit there to rot all winter and in the
early
spring my dad would till it in. It was about the only fertilizer that
garden
ever got. Maybe because of our rainy winters the salt wasn't a problem,
I
really don't know but we always had a spectacular, productive garden.
Now
that I think about it the compost pile was never used in the veggie
garden,
that was always put in mother's flower beds. My folks were by no means

"organic gardeners". The kelp and compost was just a source of free
fertilizer for them. My dad was big on weed & feed for his prized half
acre
of lawn and I can still remember the stench of insecticides used at the

first sign of a bug on anything. It's a wonder all of us kids, or our
children, didn't grow up with extra thumbs!

That kelp you hauled up every year was not just free fertilizer, for I
am told it's the BEST fertilizer you can get AND it's free! If that is
not true now, it almost certainly was then. There are records of many
small seaweed businesses around the U.K., although mainly in Scotland &
the Islands, less than 100 years ago, and of villages battling with
neighbouring villages as to who had the right to collect seaweed from
the shore. Now, the cottage industries have all but disappeared and
seaweed is in the domaine of big(ger) business. All of which brings me
no nearer to learning what my dilution rates should be, but it's
interesting nevertheless.

And who can forget the Irish potato beds that used seaweed.