He took a GI Joe and packed him in a bunch of ...seaaa weeeed.

A friend loaned me his F150 for a couple of days so I made plans to go visit family. I was raised near Galveston and in my time on Google, I've discovered that seaweed makes for an EXCELLENT fertilizer/mulch/tea. The main benefit of seaweed is that it develops a strong root system and it is excellent for moisture retention within the soil. There is a seaweed season from mid-May to about early August where it washes up at least knee-high on the Galveston beaches. The kind that washes up is called sargassum. It's somewhat spongy and stinks to high heaven. It appears to be viewed as a bane in the seaweed community as it is highly invasive, grows quickly and appears to prosper from high waste output from factories, humans and animals. But then again milkweed is by it's very name viewed as a weed and it too is seen as invasive 'round these parts. But it is also the only source of food for Monarch butterflies. So I decided to take the approach that one man's trash is another man's treasure and decided to give it a try. I got just enough to put on my gardens, I didn't want to get too much because I still have to "process" it for lack of a better word once here. Because it stinks so much I'm definitely not going to use it as mulch but I think I'm going to use it more for my next crops because the main benefit seems to be early on. Before the next planting, I'll probably work it into the soil to really build up the soil. We are planning on going to the Annual Sand Castle Competition in Galveston so I'll probably pick up more then and just put it in plastic bags.

One thing about using seaweed. It's suggested that you rinse the seaweed before storing it for use because of the salt content. I've not found any real direction on how or how long to rinse the seaweed. Some opinions even say don't worry about rinsing because you don't want to put a lot on your gardens to begin with due to it's overall high nutrient value. With these variances of opinions from "OMG RINSE!RINSE! RINSE!" to "The amount of salt contained is determined by nature and thus good for your garden", I think I'm just going to wait until the next garden so that I can do some more research and see how my garden takes without the seaweed benefit. Then once I use it, I'll have something to compare it against.