Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1909 — SEAWEED AS A FERTILIZER. [ARTICLE]

SEAWEED AS A FERTILIZER.

Its Value to Coast Farmers is lR’ creasing. Seaweed is a valuable fertilizer. The Irish peasants prefer it to manure, and the farmers of the Orkney islands formerly let farmyard manure accumulate unused on account of its inferiority to seaweed as a fertilizer. The seaweed that is brought ashore or drifts there is dried and burned, and the ashes are spread over the land. The ashes contain a good proportion of potash and phosphates, and some kinds of weed also yield nitrates. These three substances are the life of vegetation, and for this reason the ashes of seaweed are an ideal food for crops. Some years ago a French sea captain attempted to organize a company to send ships to the Sargasso sea, where they could easily collect big cargoes of drift weed and bring it to France to be burned for the fertilizing ashes. Capitalists told him, however, that they did not think it would pay to carry the weed so far, and the money was not raised. It is asserted by some authorities that the great deposits of nitrate of soda which are sent from Chile to all parts of Europe and the United States to be spread over the farm lands were formed by the decay of huge masses of seaweed when the land was sunk under the sea. Undecomposed parts of seaweed, it is said, are still found there.

The attention of the Cape Colony government was recently called to the fact that very large quantities of seaweed are constantly being washed ashore along the northwest coast, and at last accounts the government had sent for samples of the weed to determine its value as a fertilizer. « Sir Humphry Davy was one of the first to recommend seaweed as a fertilizer about a century ago. For generations the inhabitants of the Channel islands have gained a fair living by collecting and burning the weed and selling the ashes as manure. These arhes are also largely used In the British isles and along the Norwegian and French coasts. The publications of the United States agricultural department say that the use of seaweed as a fertilizer is Increasing tn this country, that for long stretches of the New England coast the weed is utilized by the farmers for fifteen to twenty miles Inland and that It Is especially favored for the stimulation of clover fields. Rye beach is almost always strewn with the weed, and few lands ever show so luxuriant growth of red clover as those in the neighborhood of this beach. The seaweed thrown up on the shores tn the neighborhood of Cape Town has long been regarded as an expensive nuisance. The city government has for years been paying teamsters to collect the stuff, haul it away and bury it. The amount of weed thus disposed of has been about 1.500 tons a year. The city authorities have now seen a new light and are spreading the news among the farmers that the weed is a very valuable fertilizer. .