Seaweed as a Fertilizer for Potatoes.

New Zealand Mail, 22 April 1887, Page 15

Seaweed as a Fertilizer for Potatoes.

Seaweed or ‘wrack,’ as it is often called, is -extensively used on the seacoast of Maine, -and perhaps in other States of our Union, the effect of which is the production of an extra large crop of potatoes. But the objec«on to this fertilizer is, that it gives the potato a ‘ tangy taste’-the ocal term for a disagreeable. On the southern coast of England, and on the Channel Islands, France, opposite, and other parts of Europe, seaweed is extensively used for growing potatoes and we hear no complaints against their taste. Perhaps this may arise from a difference in the quality of the weed, or they may compost it with something to neutralize the disagreeable flavour it gives to the tubers. We have u3ed Beaweed for many years past, composted in autumn with stable manure, laid up in beds to lie all winter. By spring it became well rotted, and on being tossed ever made a fine, homogeneous mass Perhaps guano, bone dust, Superphosphate, or rich muck and lime might have the same effect ; but unleached, or even leached, wood ashes certainly would, and these are the best possible fertilszers for potatoes grown in a moderately good soil, with little or no sand in it to be easily leached through. Use seaweed wherever it iB obtainable.