Seaweed—An Excellent Garden Fertilizer

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Found throughout the world's oceans and seas, there are no poisonous seaweeds. In many coastal areas, they're eaten as part of a regular diet.

Europeans use seaweed layered on the soil for crops like potatoes.

Gardeners on barren soils use them as a mulch, which has helped most areas become fertile soils capable of sustainable food production.

In Britain, a mixture of grass seed and an extract of brown algae is sprayed on slopes along highways. The mixture keeps the seed in place, retains moisture and binds the soil.

Its Use as a Gardening Fertilizer

Since seaweed decomposes very slowly, most of it used for gardening fertilizers is turned into liquid extracts. It's one of the main ingredients in the higher quality organic fertilizers.

Manufacturers use a hot water process to extract the nutrients from either dried or fresh seaweed fronds. Some of the products around the world are Maxicrop in the United Kingdom, Kelpak 66 in South Africa, Algifert in Norway, Seagro in New Zealand, and Seasol in Tasmania.

A wide range of beneficial effects have been reported from the use of liquid seaweed extracts, including:

• increased crop yields
• resistance of plants to frost
• increased uptake of inorganic constituents from the soil
• more resistance to stress conditions
• reductions in storage losses of fruit

From Seaweed to Organic Fertilizers