Down to the sea... for seaweed

I'm not up so much on my marine botany so I can't tell you the exact name of the  treasures I have harvested this day.

Normally here in Beachmere, where I live, the tides and winds wash up seagrass in various forms of harvest and decay. When I can I collect it and spread it on the vegetable garden. Most times it is so pulped that it arrives on the shoreline like compost.

But this week a new species has been washed up -- a brown, raggedy  seaweed with floaters attached. This plant is either, I gather:

Brown Seaweed (Dictyopteris acrostichoides) or

Brown Seaweed (Dilophus intermedius) or

Brown Seaweed (Sargassum biserrula)

Why it should suddenly arrive on the shoreline in massive heaps is something I cannot fathom. But with its arrival I have been offered a wonderful opportunity to expand my mulch resources. 

So when I'm out on the kickbike -- or walking the dogs -- I make sure I bring a bit of the offerings back with me (kickbike cartage as seen in image above). 

It'd great stuff -- gelatinous and taut, each handful its own jungle. 

I've worked out that on my morning kickbikery northbound I can at least carry some of the stuff in the front basket of my scooter. It makes for a weighted  and harder yakker journey home.

But to harvest the massive quantities along the shoreline of the southern swamp I need to walk a kilometre to get there and load the seaweed into...(my solution!)  a shopping trolly to cart it back home.

Wet seaweed is wet heavy. Wet and sandy seaweed is heavier...

Once home, as I break it up into handfulls I throw it on the garden beds.

You can never have too much seaweed.