This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
I'm taking you on a field trip today.
You have another field trip, I love to take you to field trips when I get out of the house,
actually I like to travel more than I like to be at home actually, except if it wasn't
for my darn garden that I am growing, kind of ties me up a little bit but I have ( gotta
really gone on trip 0:16 ) So I am pretty good.
But in any case today we are on a field trip.
We are here on Shell Beach, Sonoma Coast State Park.
We are here in beautiful northern California on a beautiful June day and we are here for
one very important reason because today I'm gonna make a video of me nude sunbathing.
Just kidding.
So today what we are here to do is gather some resource from this state park.
It's somewhere you get actually legally take up to, ten pounds a day.
So what we are here to do today is gather a sustainable resource also known as seaweed
or sea vegetables.
So the seaweeds here can be harvested up to 10 pounds, most varieties except for the silky
sea palm which is not harvestable unless you have a license.
You can get a fish and game license to harvest seaweed, costs about 130$ at present time,
then you are going to harvest up to 2000 pounds a day.
So that would be like if you want to go and business for yourself to sale sea vegetables.
But an average person can come to the beach and bring your family and each person can
harvest ten pounds so one trip to the beach, you can knit out a whole bunch of nutrition
for your soil.
Now I am not going to talk about the edibility of the seaweeds, in this I will just be talking
about using the seaweeds to bring in the trace minerals and minerals back in your soil and
home.
In any case, let's head down to the beach and show you the best way to harvest sea weed
for your home garden.
You can see we are on the bluff above the beach there and that's where we are going
to go to harvest our seaweed for use in the garden.
Now there is nothing really special about harvesting seaweed for use in the garden,
you can do it at a beach like this that have a lot of rocks because in this there is going
to be more seaweed that is going to wash up bout of course on most beaches there is always
going to be some kind of seaweed that floats on to the beach and actually got some of the
best stuff that you want to be harvesting to use in your garden so, I'm going to head
down there and share some more tips with you on harvesting your own sea weed.
So we are here on the beach and now we are going to talk about some sea weed.
So you can see on the rocks all the seaweed is attached and currently growing.
Now if you are harvesting seaweed for your garden I'd, well you can't harvest the fresh
stuff.
I highly discourage you from doing that primarily for the one main reason, is that, there is
a limit on how much seaweed you can take per day without a license.
You can take up to 10 pounds per day without a license and guess what?
If you harvest a fresh stuff, it's wet and the wet stuff weighs more.
So if you harvest 10 pounds of wet stuff, it only condenses down to 2 pounds of dry
stuff.
So it's far better to get the dry stuff, harvest the dry stuff, then you can get a larger quantity
of seaweed and if you want it hydrated, you can actually hydrate it later at your house,
to get away, it will help facilitate breaking down when it's in fresh water verses the salt
water.
So that makes sense, since you want to get the dry stuff, luckily on the beach seaweed
will detach from the rocks and wind up on the beach and guess what?
With the nice beautiful sun and the rocks, which acts to hold the heat, they dry naturally.
So what you are going to do is cover the beach, get out your bag and start filling it up with
some of the dry stuff.
Now I prefer that you guys pick small little pieces verses like large branch.
Once again the large branch with the plant itself, this stuff weighs a lot and this is
harder to break down in your garden.
I mean I could break it off there but it's probably better to get the thin stuff that
can be better broken down.
The other reason that picking up sea weeds is really cool is for ( 3:54 toys, so if you
are so cheap in ....whips, whip it good......)
But that being said since I do of this whip in the hand, this is actually a kombu seaweed
and I'm not going to talk about the edibility, this is edible.
But we are going to talk about how seaweeds work and how they grow.
Now seaweeds or more properly termed should be called sea vegetables because these are
vegetables.
They are not actually a vegetable at all, what they are is, they are algae.
They are multi-cellular algae unlike spirulina or chlorella or blue-green algae which is
single cell algae, this is a big algae.
But yet it does grow similar to a plant but it's not a plant once again and it does have
some similar functions and down here is what'd be similar to a root zone in the plant although
it is not the root zone and this is the part that will actually attach to the rock to it
in place, it then has a nice long stem like thing, which is not actually a stem, it's
a stem like thing and then it has the leaves and in some cases, I don't see in a year washed
up on the beach, they'll have like little a (point 5:04 .... wings) that'll actually
keep it afloat so that the sun can get absorbed into the leaves or the leaf like structures
and photosynthesize to make more, to grow more and absorb more nutrition from the ocean.
So that's your seaweed botany class for the day and I'll take it to home as a whip.
So one of the main reasons why I like collecting seaweeds is because it's really rich in minerals
and I want to encourage you guys to use trace minerals ( 5:36 sedimentation whether it's
a rock dust or rock powder from a……) or even just seaweed that you could harvest yourself
for free locally.
I mean they sell kelp powders and kelp meals at nurseries and in some cases like whole
sales like a dollar a pound, like fifty bucks for fifty pound bag and if you go and buy
it in a small little container, it could cost you several dollars a pound, when there is
all this seaweed on the beach literally for free.
So hey that's another god reason to come out to California on vacation, harvest 10 pounds
of dried seaweed everyday you're here.
Well that being said you know if you are getting kelp meal or kelp powder, that's just one
type of seaweed and here on the beach there is at least a dozen types and all of the normal
kinds of seaweed and each kind of seaweed has a tendency to absorb different minerals
and has different nutrition in it that will feed your plants.
So I'd encourage you to collect a variety of seaweeds.
Why you are here on the beach?
To add in the trace minerals and minerals, organic matter and other nutrition that are
contained in these wild plant algae.
I'm here closer to the ocean and just picking up some of the seaweed that's dried off the
top.
Some of the stuff is still attached, you don't want that stuff, you want the stuff that's
just gotta sit in here, that's loose and we are just going to go ahead and fill this bag
up and take it home and enrich our garden.
I want to talk about for a second, how you are going to use it once you get at home like
if you bought it in the store, the kelp powder, it would be a powder or meal all grinded up
into a fine texture, the smaller you can get the particle size, the more absorbable it
is for your garden immediately.
Of course you can just make a seaweed ring around your plants if you like.
If you want to do it the easy way, burry it a little bit or leave it on top water din
and as the regular water hits it, it'll actually degrade down and all the nutrients will go
into the soil.
Another thing you can do is take the seaweed, put in a five gallon bucket and fill it with
water and then use that water to water your plants.
That water will have the minerals in it.
That being said, you may want to be a little bit cautious about using some of that seaweed
water to water your plants.
You know this is going from the ocean and well the ocean has a high percentage of sodium
which depending on where you live, may or may not be a good thing for your garden.
It does have also a wide spectrum of minerals so which I believe is really good for your
garden.
So leave it whole or process it down.
If you do want to process it down, the best way to do that would be to either dehydrate
it at hotter temperature or put it in your oven like 150 degrees for a purity time to
take out all the moisture, once you got all the moisture out, you can put it into a blender
and powder it up into a powder and then put it on your garden.
Of course you can also add this stuff to your compost for the composting in, instead of
putting it directly on garden if you prefer.
Anyways I've got about a 10 pound of harvesting to do, I'll get back to that and I'll come
back, catch you up when I got my ten pounds, with some further tips.
So I'm harvesting a lot of nice seaweed here, filling my bag we are getting it 10 pounds.
We are getting a nice mixture of seaweeds.
Now I want to talk about for a second, besides using the seaweed in your garden, the seaweed
is actually absolutely edible and one of the most mineral rich foods on the planet unless
you grow in your garden in rock dust.
So I'd also encourage you to eat some of the seaweed you harvest.
Now harvesting seaweed that you're going to eat verses using in the garden, different
technique and that's actually a different video.
So I'm not going to cover that in this video today.
But at this beach here we've got some nice kombu, there is also sea lettuce, some Turkish
towel also some nori and bladderwrack.
So the sea is definitely a well of food besides just the fish and other sea creatures that
people it.
I think it's always if you lower on the food chain and seaweed is right at the bottom of
the food chain and the water is coming in and actually that's the next thing is you
want to go when it's low tide, that's the best time to come and harvest your seaweed
for using either eating or actually for your garden because that's when the tides will
actually go out and leave all the stuff washed up on the beach.
So you can do an internet search to find out when low tides are in your area.
I've collected about 10 pounds of seaweed and you might be thinking Hey John!
You didn't bring a scale and I did bring the scale.
How do you know if it's 10 pounds?
Well that's because little Stich here, he was just at the vet, he actually got fixed,
but he weighs 5 pounds so I 'd like lift him up, weigh my bag, oh yeah the bag weighs about
10 pounds.
So he's been having a fun day out here on the beach together.
So once I get this seaweed home, there's many ways you can use, you could dry it and then
powder it up if you like to or use it later.
But I'd prefer you guys use it fresh, if you have this resource local in your area just
go and pick the seaweed are fresh.
Come back home use it because you are going to use it or lose it.
So what we are going to do probably is just take little pieces of seaweed and just put
it next to each plant and cover it over.
That will work.
Another way that may be more beneficial is to break it down better so add a little bit
of seaweed to the blender with water, blend it up on high and fractionate all the different
all the different particles, so that will break down faster in your garden so that the
nutrients from the seaweeds will be more accessible by your plants.
Another way of course, you can add a little bit to your compost, now I wouldn't add too
much.
You can add it to your compost pile to compost it.
I mean there are so many uses for this amazing free local resource in your area if you happen
to live near beach.
So hopefully you guys enjoy this episode learning more about how to collect some seaweed at
your local beach to use in your garden.
I believe seaweed is definitely one of the most sustainable ways you get out trace minerals
in your garden if you live near the beach otherwise you may have to get the seaweeds
( 11:41 or rock their shifting) if you want to have those trace minerals in your garden
so that you can have the most productive and tastiest plants ever.
So once again this is John Kohler with little Stitch from growingyourgreens.com.
We'll see you next time and keep on growing.