12 May 1973 There are fashions in fertilisers. At the moment the “in” thing is seaweedThere are fashions in fertilisers. At the moment the “in” thing is seaweed. Unquestionably organic, it has a sure-fire appeal for the suburban gardener of the muck-and-mystery school who cannot get the muck. Even the flat-dweller whose gardening is confined to pot plants now finds himself assured that almost every new product manufactured for their nourishment contains the magic elixir, “seaweed extract.”The seaweed in question is usually Ascophyllum nodosum, the common brown bladder-wrack or bladder-kelp that keeps itself afloat by means of those airfilled swellings which children so delight to pop underfoot when scrambling over rocks at low tide. And there is of course, nothing new about its use as a fertiliser, or at least as a soil-conditioner. For centuries growers of arable crops around our coasts from Cornwall and County Cork to Shetland have been spreading it, raw or composted, in thick layers on their land each autumn and ploughing it in each spring. Continue reading…
Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Gardening: the virtues of seaweed – archive, 12 May 1973
