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Town of Huntington finishes first successful year of sugar kelp program

Outdoors

by Chrissy Ruggeri | Tue, May 30 2023

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Last fall, the Town of Huntington (TOH) began a pilot program to grow sugar kelp, a seaweed that is native to Long Island and requires little effort to grow in our bays and harbors. Kelp serves as a natural fertilizer that also helps to improve water quality by removing the harmful nitrogen that causes algae blooms.

The Sugar Kelp Program, which is under the coordination of TOH’s Maritime Department, has two purposes: to reduce harmful nitrogen in our waterways and provide a healthier alternative for fortifying the town’s landscapes, and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers at town parks and golf courses by applying the homegrown kelp.

Kelp is well-known for its value as a soil amendment. It has the nitrogen, phosphorus and mineral varieties similar to conventional fertilizers, but in healthier concentrations. As an organic fertilizer, it releases these nutrients slowly into the soil. Sugar kelp is known to increase soil moisture retention and stimulate root growth for a variety of plants.

With the help of Captain Mitch Kramer from TowBoatUS and a donation of kelp seed from Wendy Moore, executive director and founder of Lazy Point Farms, the seeded kelp lines were deployed in December near the mouth of Cold Spring Harbor, between four mooring buoys far removed from boating traffic.

The sugar kelp growth timeline was not only encouraging, but amazing to watch, the TOH wrote in a press release. In little over a month, small seedlings started to emerge along the kelp lines. On the second visit, Captain Kramer saw healthy kelp growing on the lines, and with each visit, there were increasingly larger results until heaping bundles of kelp, stretching as much as five feet below the lines, were visible.

Sugar kelp does not grow in the warmer months, when the water temperature hits 55 degrees, so the first harvest took place on April 25, in advance of boating season. The total weight of the wet kelp, which included two 100-foot lines, was 250 pounds, according to the TOH report.

Once dried, the sugar kelp was processed into powder form, and then bagged and shared with eager resident gardeners, all excited to try the new fertilizer on their properties. Groundskeepers at several town parks and the two town golf courses will use the remaining kelp to apply to the grounds as fertilizer.

“The sugar kelp project was a resounding success,” said Huntington Town Supervisor Ed Smyth. “We were able to create an end-to-end green solution to several problems simultaneously. The Town of Huntington plans to expand this project in the fall of 2023 and into the spring of 2024 with many more additional kelp lines in all the town’s bays and harbors,” Smyth added.

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