I use it too, and agree with everything aloha said. The only place I won't use it is in the front of ornamental beds, because in that setting it's a bit messy looking, and I make enough of a mess to not want more. It does bleach out to almost white when it dries, which might inhibit soil warming in the spring, but the price is right and the micro-nutrient value is beyond anything else you can find (OK, that last is a guess, I have no facts/studies to back it up).

I'd like to point out that I add seaweed for a few reasons based on scientific fact but maybe more of my own intuition:

1. the seashells are made of calcium carbonate and release calcium carbon and oxygen into the soil when they break down from rain.

2. the bacteria and plant matter helped improve the soil structure around plants that I used seaweed as mulch. Biodiversity of soil is increased from breakdown of seaweed

3. potassic and sodic salts are deposited into the soil. because I add a tremendous amount of compost to my beds each year i don't rinse off the salts from the seaweed so that they can be incorporated into the compost's biogeochemistry.

The plants I used seaweed with grew better. I was able to till into the soil what ever hadn't broken down during the season. Next year I'll be using seaweed again, but I think I will partially compost and then top dress the beds with seaweed. The seaweed was collected in Harwichport, MA, but this year I will try to get seaweed from a closer locale (i.e. Buzzards or Narragansett Bay).

Adding to the value of seaweed, I forgot to mention the faded twenty dollar bill once found some years back in a knotted mass of washed up eel grass.

Gifts from the sea!

LOL, Aloha - I have to admit that I often worry about what I might find in my seaweed hauls! Never found any money, though ... not yet, anyway.

I stay away from "fishy" smelling things in the garden. Maybe I've just had some bad luck with it but anything I've ever added that has the fishy smell tends to attract a lot of unwanted pests to the garden.

This is a topic several months old, but I'm looking for some answers re: using seaweed as a mulch (and thus a fertilizer/soil enricher as well, as it breaks down). Do I have to rinse it out to get rid of "sea bugs" or anything in it? If so, what is the recommended process? Someone mentions letting it dry out (?) first before putting on gardens. i will mostly be using it for flower gardens, as I am only growin tomatoes and summer squash. The rest of my gardens are flowers/shrubs, etc.

Thank you in advance for your help & input!

Where are the beaches you collect. there are some "new" (increasing) jelly fish ('clingers') which are rapidly increasing in eel grass at some east coast beaches. They are pretty toxic. Two friends were concerned about encountering them at their usual seaweed foraging site.

Better to be informed.

I don't rinse it, but I often let it sit on the (gravel) driveway for a week or more, mainly because I'm lazy (or busy), so in theory some of the sand and salt may be gone by the time apply it. Also, I agree that these jellyfish called clingers could potentially be a problem, but I don't know how toxic they are if they're dried up - you'd just maybe get a contact rash, not a 'bite' per se.

I read everything I could find on the web and that question wasn't addressed. I assume that the researchers looked at the eel grass at different tide lines. Even if you weren't stung, a contact rash would be unpleasant...like poison ivy ...... so it is not irrelevant to our shoreline gardeners. I remain curious!