Seaweed tea/extract?

15 years ago

I want to start a completely organic vegetable garden next year and I've been doing a bunch of research on the subject. I've been reading a lot about home-made liquid seaweed extracts lately. I have a lot of questions and would like some opinions from experienced seaweed tea makers or anyone who can point me in the right direction. I've searched google intensely and still haven't gotten good decisive answers to these questions.

-First off, the process of making it sounds too simple to me. From what I've read, all you need to do is chop up a bunch of seaweed, soak it in a closed container of fresh water for 1-3 months, stir occasionally and you end up with a very concentrated nutrient solution loaded with micro-nutrients.

-Wouldn't this process make a good home for all kinds of pathogens, especially sitting stagnant for so long?

-Do I need to use seaweed from the ocean or could I use some from a fresh water river or lake?

-I've read varying recipes for the proper ratio of water to seaweed. Can someone give me a good recipe?

-Does the seaweed dissolve completely, or is straining required?

-How concentrated is it? If I wanted to use it for soil feeding (rather than a foliar spray), how much tea per gallon of water should I use? If I wanted to add it to the soil in early spring before planting, how much do I need?

-If I wanted to make a large batch and use it through out the growing season, how long could I store it for and how often do I feed it to the plants?

-I've also read that this stuff contains very little "soluble" NPK. Does that mean that it's not available to the plants at all, or does it mean that it will become available gradually over time, making the tea more of a time-release fertilizer?

Thanks!

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Comments (4)

stompede
15 years ago
Here's a good site that may help with a lot of the misconceptions, commercial hype, and actual research on seaweed/kelp extracts.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hort Myths
lorna-organic
15 years ago
I made my own fresh kelp tea once, and will never do it again. I collected the kelp from a beach. The trunk of my car stunk for awhile afterwards even though I had the stuff in bags and buckets.

I washed the kelp well before making the tea to get rid of salt. I only steeped the kelp for a couple of days. The stuff draws flies like crazy. It stinks to high heaven! It is slimy and not fun to deal with. You have to bathe and change your clothing every time you handle the stuff because you cannot avoid splashing it. Did I mention, how much it STINKS?!

I don't know the answer to many of your questions. However, the seaweed does not dissolve. Yes, it has to be strained. You don't want pieces of it in your garden because bacteria like salmonella can grow in the pieces. I believe seaweed from the ocean is more rich in nutrients. Your question about concentration is relative--how concentrated is your concoction going to be? You cannot be sure of that without performing lab analysis.

My advice to you is to buy a bottle of seaweed fertilizer and follow the instructions on the label. It will save you a lot of work, and it isn't expensive when you consider how much it will be diulted for use in fertilizing. However, the nutrients from seaweed and kelp are only part of the picture in organic fertilizing. There are other options to consider. I've been gardening organically for about ten years. I grow flowering plants, and edibles. I now use Earth Juice for fertilzing, seaweed is one of the components.

This year I am going to try a winter cover crop. I bought a bag of seeds called GardenWay. It has Austrian winter peas, cereal rye, clover and a couple of other things. It should be dug in as green manure before it sets seed.

Now is the time to begin to prepare your soil for planting next spring. Start by digging in some manure. Have you looked into the lasagne method? If you can get your hands on a lot of chopped dry leaves, distribute them on the ground, cover them with 7-9 layers of newspaper, wet it down, then mulch over the top or cover with tarps, you will have some nice soil come spring. Or, you could try a cover crop. Organic gardening begins with soil building.

You can ask neighbors for whatever leaves they have collected. You can use a lawn mower to chop leaves.
Lorna
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robertz6
15 years ago
It sounds like you are further along with teas than most of us.

My one tea (excluding compost tea) was a try at weed tea two years ago. It stank so badly that I pitched it after three days. I have learned a few things since and could probably do better, but have no desire to at present.

I think next years compost tea will include molasses, fish em. and seaweed extract; but only if I get ambitious.

Most of the tea talk in this forum is about compost tea, with a bit or weed and manure teas. If there has been interest in seaweed tea recently, I've missed it.
tiffy_z5_6_can
15 years ago
Jeremy,

If you compost or do lasagna beds, then that's where it should go. I gather a lot of seaweed from my neighbours who have slips/launches for their sailboats upon which the seaweed grows continually and they are only too happy to see me coming down with my cart to gather the stuff. I mix it into the compost after it has heated a couple of times and layer some into lasagna beds when I build them.

The compost in which the seaweed is added is left to do it's thing over the winter as are the lasagna beds. Then the next spring all is put to good use.

I have two lasagna beds in which I used a lot of seaweed a couple of years ago and in them I start seedlings and new plants from stem propagation. The results have been fabulous and one of the garden beds is now considered a permanent garden and no longer a holding bed.

One which I created last fall will be planted in this weekend. The soil, despite the fact that it is in a most dry area of the property, is now so moist and ladened with worms it is truly incredible.

My thought is that if you incorporate the seaweed into your soil, you'll get much more out of it.