Growing Potatoes in Seaweed - Anyone Tried It?

[Susan BBPM]

I've read that this can be done in a variety of ways.

Plant potatoes in ground as normal but earth up with pile of fresh seaweed.
Create piles of seaweed on the ground and plant into the seaweed
In containers of seaweed - nothing else...just seaweed
In containers with a little bit of soil to plant the potatoes in, but then filled to the top of the container with seaweed.

Apparently you don't need to bother about washing the salt off. Worms supposedly love it.

I've read that potatoes grow so well in Ireland because of soil built from manure, sand and seaweed.

I've also read that commercial potato growers in West of Scotland cover their potato fields with seaweed from local beaches.

Is this something you're familiar with @headfullofbeas

 

[headfullofbees]

Potatoes grow well in Ireland because of the peat.
Seaweed is not enough on its own to grow potatoes, as it has no nitrogen.
I dig trenches 12" deep & line them with a dusting of woodash, comfrey & seaweed prior to planting potatoes (apart from my extra earlies which I plant before the comfrey is harvestable, so I use comfrey tea from previous year instead.)
I tend to give another feed of comfrey at 6 weeks & for main crop 12 weeks. The extra potash in the comfrey seems to do really well.
Farmers here are so close to the sea, that the sea air is enough fertiliser. (Remember, it is the sea which provides the seaweed with its nutrients.)