Atlantic Gold - Horticulture

The ocean is a beautiful place. Walking along the beach, body surfing and picnics and inhaling salt air. Beneath the waves, you'll find a world teeming with life. There are dolphins, salmon, hermit crabs and kelp forests. It's the kelp that connects gardeners to the sea...

For example, did you know that every natural element known to man exists in the ocean? Or that seaweed, which concentrates these elements in its tissues, in turn provides plants with more than 70 minerals, vitamins and enzymes?

Why good soil is so-o- o important

You'll want to share this bit of wisdom with all your friends: Healthy soil is the key to successful gardening. We're so focused on what happens above the soil, we often forget that what's happening below the soil's surface is a whole lot more than we realize.

The best way to achieve healthy soil is to add natural materials. Nope, sorry, chemical fertilizers do not promote healthy soil. They offer impressive results by making plants look good, but that's only for the short term. Studies confirm that in the long run they do much more harm than good.

Here's another way to put it: Feeding plants without concern the long term health of the soil is like building a house on sand. Thus, gardening practices are by far the best way to improve this critical part of your plants' living space.

Atlantic Gold - Amenity

All over the world Grounds men use seaweed on sporting grounds and manicured prestige lawns because of the regular, strong growth it promotes, and for how green the grass starts to look after just a couple of applications.

Liquid seaweed fertilizer along with seaweed meal (Soil conditioner) is used by many of the Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Championship Golf Courses, along with many of the Football Premiership Grounds, in the UK. A very high number of quality top sporting venues that use liquid seaweed extract as a fertilizer prove that it is extremely effective as a plant food.

Seaweed contains a wide range of nutrients and trace elements which combine in such a unique manner that, when seaweed is added to heavy clay soils, it acts as a floculator, which means it breaks down the heavy soil into a friable crumb structure, thereby providing a vastly improved growing medium. This, of course, does not happen overnight, but is one of the greatest benefits of long term applications on these types of soils.

On the other side of the coin, seaweed is an excellent addition to sandy soils, adding to the humous content and nutrient levels, and increasing drought resistance.

It is also a valuable addition to divoting material, as germination and establishment is dramatically enhanced. In fact, I always advise adding seaweed meal or granules to the divot mix, as it is of great benefit on any golf course. Or sports pitches

Seaweed both in liquid or meal form is a natural conditioner of nutrient deficiency soils and clays

Atlantic Gold - Agriculture

The use of seaweed in farming and agriculture has a long history. Seaweed has always been harvested in coastal areas to be used as mulch in vegetable gardens and to supplement feed for animals.

It was not until after WWII that systematic research into the benefits of seaweed took place. Even though seaweed has been researched for over 50 years now, the exact mechanism through which it exerts its positive influence is still not fully known.

Seaweeds, unlike plants growing in soil, take up the majority of their nutrients from the medium they live in: the seawater. They absorb nutrients directly into their tissues. The ‘roots’ on seaweed have the main function of anchoring the plant. There are over 79 minerals and trace elements in seaweed, and using seaweed is a superior way of bringing in copper, manganese, potassium, phosphorus, iron and zinc to the soil, plants and animals in a plant-available form.

In biological agriculture and horticulture diluted extracts of seaweed are applied to promote growth, prevent pests and diseases and improve the quality of the products. The efficacy of the extracts is probably based upon plant hormones (mainly cytokinins) and trace nutrients present in the seaweed extracts.

Seaweed extracts are the new type of products currently used in plant cultivation. The sources of seaweed extracts are different species of marine algae which seem to be valuable and not wholly discovered biological material For ages, extracts obtained from algae have been used as feed additives for animals nutrition improvement Furthermore, they have been used as industrial raw material or in production of natural cosmetics. Nowadays, seaweeds and products obtained from marine algae constitute the subject of interest in agriculture with emphasis on its application in sustainable agriculture. Marine algae are classified by the researchers as the most important group of organisms which can be widely used in plants nutrition.

Atlantic Gold - Animal Feeds

The benefits of feeding seaweed to animals seem out of all proportion to the apparent food value of the seaweed itself. Trace elements and growth hormones are probably involved, although the fact that seaweed modifies the intestinal flora of livestock may be chiefly responsible.

It may be that in modifying their intestinal bacteria to help them digest the seaweed, livestock are better able to exploit other ingredients in their diet.

The benefits of feeding seaweed to animals

Daily nutritional balance is the foundation of sustained growth and health.

Yet important natural nutrients are missing from soils and feed whatever the quality of stable, stud or farm management.

The ocean provides a constant ‘reservoir’ of these nutrients and Seagreens® wild Ascophyllum absorbs and concentrates them in an ideal soluble or ‘colloidal’ (readily absorbed) state as a natural whole food.

Principally, the seaweed is used to:

1. Ensure the entire range of micronutrients vital to growth, performance and disease resistance without the attendant dangers of deficiency or toxicity which may accompany formulated feed additives
2. Increase beneficial bacteria and the condition of the gut to enhance immunity and the uptake of other feed nutrients particularly on low grade rations
3. Secure the nutritional balance most significantly for debility and recovery, fertility, reproduction, gestation and in the newborn, and during other periods of stress