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Seafood Fertilizer

Give your Plants a Boost with Seafood!

When we garden organically we feed out soil with rich compost.  This provides our plants with all the nutrients they need but sometimes we may have good reason to give them a little extra boost.  During times of stress such as a late or early frost, drought or even too much water like we sometimes get here in Pennsylvania.  Maybe we just want our plants to be the best they can be.

Then we turn to foliar sprays. We use them because it can give a quick fix for problems that have arisen or ones we want to avoid. This works because plants can absorb nutrients through cells in their leaves and stems.

The best time to feed is in the morning when the plants are most hungry but also because this is when the cells on the surface of a plants leaves are open and are most receptive to the nutrients in the foliar spray. Later on in the day they close to prevent evaporation which makes the leaves more resistant to absorption.

What types of foliar sprays to use?

You could make a tea with your compost. Put some compost in a burlap bag or an old pillow case, tie shut and pretend it’s a giant tea bag: Just steep in water for a few days until it is dark like strong coffee. Dilute until it looks like weak tea and spray on your plants.

Or how about trying one of the seafood sprays?

Fish fertilizers supply your plants with the main nutrients they need: Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

But seaweed based products supply plants with much more. Seaweed is loaded with micronutrients (at least 70) and plant growth compounds that, even though they are only needed in small amounts are vitally important to plant health.

Research has shown many benefits of seaweed: Increased yields, survival during stress, disease suppression, pest reduction, protection from frost damage and increased shelf life of many crops.

For those of you in warm climates living near the ocean thinking you might use the seaweed that you can find there, you better think again. The best seaweed sprays found commercially come from cold waters because they are much more nutrient rich.