Seaweed the Easy Way

We've had a wonderful crop of fruit and vegetables from our small back garden over the last year, and are still harvesting leeks, broccoli, cabbage, brussell sprouts and spinach, all of which we put down to our fertilizing the garden last January in the traditional Highland manner using seaweed from the beach (see blog entry here).  We were not, however, willing to break our backs as we did then by shifting it up from the bay below our house using a wheelbarrow or a sedan chair-like machine.  So this year we decided to cheat by asking a local crofter to deliver us a load by mechanical means, namely in the bucket of a large tractor.

What arrived looked absolutely wonderful to us, but it came with an apology, that it included some sand.  An apology!  The way we saw it, the sand has got to be a bonus, as it's shell sand, calcium carbonate, which the vegetables also need.  Moreover, the seaweed we've been brought is much better than last year's, having less of the stalky kelp and more variety of seaweed species, which has got to be good.

The tractor being rather too large go up the path and steps to the back garden, we still had to haul our precious fertilizer up from the front drive.  The first stage took it to the back terrace, where we added a refinement, using a pair of shears to chop up the seaweed so it'll break down more readily.  We also mixed the seaweed thoroughly with the sand, and then....

....put it in buckets for the haul up the steps to the vegetable garden.  The last stage is to dig it in, giving it plenty of time to rot down before we start planting the first of this year's crop in May.

Many thanks to the crofter - he knows who he is - for the super seaweed.