We have lived in Maine for 3 years now and have not yet been to the beach.  We have been too busy working on everything to take a day or two to go to the shore.  But I finally have the perfect reason to go: seaweed for the garden soil.

Friends of ours live pretty close to the beach, and we finally got our plans together and made a trip out of it.  We both need some seaweed.  The great thing about this is that the kids think we are going to the beach so they can play.  Little do they know it’s for me to play.

Seaweed is fantastic as mulch for a few reasons.  It adds trace amounts of all the nutrients your plant needs to grow.  The dalt deters slugs and other pests when used on the surface.  Plus it has all the benefits of regular mulch: water retention, weed supression, organic matter, and no weed seeds like you get using leaves sometimes.

Step one (the hard part):

Go to the beach.

Gather seaweed.

Add shells for extra calcium if you want.

Rinse.

Mulch.

Wait.

Super easy way to have nutrient rich mulch.

Here are some helpful links:

Eartheasy

Ventnor Permaculture

Milkwood

TCPermaculture