I picked up some seaweed from the beach on Sunday afternoon and put it in my garden yesterday:

I wrote on seaweed fertilizer a week ago and noted my plan to do this. I figured while I was at it I might as well make a video out of it. With cheese-ball dance music. And so I did!

Seaweed fertilizer is well-known as an amendment for the garden. I’ve bought and used seaweed fertilizer before in the form of kelp meal. There are popular concentrates, such as those made by Neptune’s Harvest, which will really get your plants going strong.

But what if you’re cheap?

What if you just pick up seaweed for free on the beach, then add it to the garden?

Over time, it rots down and feed the plants. I decided to do that in this recently planted garden bed, then leave the bed next to it without seaweed. Now we should if adding seaweed makes a difference in plant growth.

Seaweed is full of micronutrients, so adding it as mulch to a garden makes sense. I didn’t have enough to fully mulch this time so I went ahead and just made little rings around the plants. I also rinsed the seaweed three times to ensure the seedlings wouldn’t get too much salt.

Now we’ll see over time what happens – my favorite kind of gardening. We’ll get some ocean minerals in there, and I bet the vegetables are going to taste better.

By the way, if you don’t own a copy of Steve Solomon and Erica Reinheimer’s The Intelligent Gardener, you should get a copy. It’s quite inspiring.

Soon I’ll show you my other amendments to these beds. Stay tuned.