Often people spend a small fortune on fertiliser and soil amenders to help their garden grow but an old tradition in Ireland of collecting and distributing seaweed may well save you quite a bit of money and net results that are potentially far better than any shop bought solution.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello, well I'm not at the garden today as you can see, I'm at the beach, and the reason
00:26I'm going here is to collect some seaweed. I'll just show you the view here, it's beautiful
00:33down here today, it's the 1st of October but you would not think it.
00:38I'll just...
00:51Clear blue skies in October, very much a rare thing in Ireland, and this is a particularly
00:57good beach for seaweed, which I'm going to put into the garden, and I just can't get
01:04over how beautiful day it is, but we may as well get started, so...
02:04So that turned out to be relatively easy, 10 minutes later I have a full bag of seaweed,
02:18it's all different types of seaweed now, so all mixed in, I think they're all good
02:24for different things, so I'm just going to throw them in the garden, and this beach is
02:31very clean, no real rubbish is going to fall out here, no bird shatters like this, and
02:38that's important, you don't want to get up seaweed from near a sewage outlet or something
02:44like that, because it will contaminate everything, but this seaweed just looks completely okay,
02:51I'm only taking the stuff that's washed off, I wouldn't take seaweed that's attached to
02:56anything, only the stuff that's become onward, or the stuff that's dead and put it in, and
03:03it looks dead, and it's become detested, and it's just scattered all over the beach, so
03:10I'm just going to put it here, and I'll just do a 360 with the camera too.
03:26There's the sun up there.
03:57And as you can see, there's not a being on the beach, it's just, it's Ireland all over,
04:04you'll always find spots where you're the only person on the beach, and it's fantastic,
04:11especially on a day like today, there's hardly any breeze, and it's just nice.
04:21I'm just looking at the way I'm dressed, I think I've prepped for winter.
04:27So, we're back home now, and as you can see behind me here, I have a big bin, which is
04:36just a household waste bin, or a garden waste bin, and this is the bag of seaweed that we
04:41picked up earlier.
04:44I'm wearing shades because it's about summery today.
04:48First thing I'm going to do, I'm going to deal with the sun.
04:52It's one of the recent ones, it's a bit of heat, but I've packed it down a good bit here.
05:00So, what I'm going to do is put about, maybe a third to a half of this under the, I fold
05:08this with hot water, it's about, just over half filled, and what I'm going to do is put
05:16the seaweed in here, and then put the lid on it, and just leave it here for a couple
05:20of weeks to ferment.
05:22So, we'll see how that goes.
05:24Apparently it's quite smelly, so I'm glad I won't be in the house tonight.
05:29The rest of it I'm going to put round flower beds, and the wee raised bed as well, and
05:36I'm just going to sort of lay it down there.
05:39So, might as well get started.
06:06Basically, I'll bring the camera down there to show you, so you can see it in there, it's
06:31about a third of the bag I've put in so far, and squish that away, and now I'm just going
06:46to seal it, and leave it.
07:14And that is basically it, so I'll take you around now, and I'll show you what I'm doing
07:36here.
07:37The flower beds are still flowering, so I'm a wee bit, probably premature in doing this,
07:44but I'm going to start cutting some of them back, and then leaving the roots in the ground,
07:51because I don't want to disturb anything that's underground, and then I will just leave the
07:59dead annual plants as well, just lying on top, so that they can break down into the
08:05soil, help with the soil health as well, and then add in the seaweed as well, and around
08:12the plants, but not directly beside them.
08:15So, here goes.
09:16And that's basically it, you just leave them there, so we'll do some more of the back here
09:21now.
09:23So, this little pot, I'll put a few of them here.
09:34You don't want to touch any of the plants, really, you just want to ride them, if you
09:39can.
09:40I have some very young plants on there, so I'm not going to put any in, that's it.
09:45And actually, the rest I'm probably just going to string about here.
09:59Put a little clump in this corner, where it's not really touching the vegetables, and that'll
10:07break down, the organisms will break that down, and rain and time will wash it in for
10:16you, and all the nutrients will go into the soil.
10:38While I'm here, I might as well show you what's been flowering, what's been growing.
10:46So here we have the sprouts, coming along nicely now, getting a lot bigger, still have
10:57some chamomile, and a few sunflowers, sunflowers in October in Ireland, who would have thought
11:05that?
11:06There's a bee on one of them, acting busy.
11:15Some more, and we have these tiny hollyhocks that were planted in March, just opening as
11:23well.
11:24A lot of cosmos opening, there's some, up there, some petunias, that grew very tall.
11:33Marigold still going, some chamomile as I said, more hollyhock, a few pansies still
11:43going from the summer, and up here we have a lot more cosmos, hollyhock and sweet pea
11:52all growing.
11:54Sweet pea's been doing tremendous, it's been going for months now.
12:00At the back there at the back, the stuff out the front I've pulled out because that's
12:04died back, but this stuff's just been great, it's really loved this spot where it is, it's
12:10just up against a fence here with a bit of netting on it.
12:14Everything else in the middle here has died back, there's still a few cornflowers, but
12:19most of them are gone.
12:22Most of these codicia are gone too, beautiful flowers, I'm trying to collect seeds off these
12:28so I can grow them again next year, but there's lovely different purples and pinks in them,
12:35and there's still a couple of strawflowers going at the back too.
12:41Bells of Ireland is dying back a wee bit, more cosmos, we're younger, he's gladiola, he's
12:49red gladiola, got a bit battered in the wind, but they're still beautiful, and this is immortal
12:58here, which is a lovely wee kind of strawflower as well, supposed to be very good for pollinators,
13:07and they came up from wild seeds that I just sowed, just scatter sowed, and here is the
13:14calendula, and then you can see everything that's in the polytunnel, a lot of which will
13:23be going under this ground in the next few weeks when everything dies back, or I cut
13:27everything back, and a lot of grass in here because I'm going to have to do a bit of weeding
13:33I think, and here you can see a lot more, gone a bit crazy planting over the summer,
13:42but a lot more young plants, not all of them will survive, but I'm hoping some will, and
13:51some more cosmos, and we'll go round the front too now while we're here sir, some more canterbury
13:58bells in there, these are wild strawberries, grew from seed, these are california poppies
14:05coming back up, and here we have green tomatoes, and I'm going to, with them, the chamomile,
14:12the mint and the lemon balm, I'm going to lick a few things because the chances of them
14:18turning red now are not good, so out the front here still plenty flowering as well, these
14:24have never stopped basically since May, these are poor mans orchid, definitely trying them
14:31again next year, still these wee spanish marigolds are going strong, got a wee lease on them there,
14:38petunias have been absolutely bullet proof as well, loads of them, all grown from seed
14:49as well, very hard to grow from seed, but got a good few of them up, just very very
14:56slow growers at the start of the season, and then they just flower all summer long, more
15:01young ones in here, more petunias, more petunias, and I've seen a lot of these black bees, if
15:12they are bees, and the petunias today, I don't know, nothing really much touches the
15:19petunias normally, because there's a lot of choice, but here's some neon marigolds as
15:24well, and lobelia, the front out here gets most of the sun, and oh I just see something
15:32there's more bees on the cosmos, some more pansies down here, these are winter pansies
15:42I sowed in July, and I've already got our first one, it's a dark one, I can show you
15:51it's just a deep dark red, the dailies are still going, so, I thought everything would
16:04be dead by this stage, but obviously not, and these that we'll lease them to are our
16:12bullet proof plant, they come back every year as well, so they're well worth sowing, they
16:19smell like honey as well, so you can throw them in salads and stuff too, they brighten
16:27them up, and that's everything that's happening out here, so hopefully we've supercharged
16:33the garden for next year.