No, rinsing it is not worthwhile. It's a waste of your time, and more importantly, it's a waste of water. The amount of salt on seaweed is negligible for soil systems and compost systems. If you're adding so much seaweed that salt becomes a problem, then your soil system or compost system isn't going to be well balanced enough anyways to be successful. Salt is no good for plants but with enough organic matter in a system other than seaweed you will be fine. What I do is usually add seaweed but in small layers at a time, separated with other organic material like leaves/grass/etc. Space it out and don't go overboard. You'll be fine. Don't waste precious water and don't waste your time.

I used to know an old timer who farmed sustainably long before the term became popular. We used to talk od "laying land by". ley might be the more accepted spelling? What he did and I have done since is to lay some land aside for 1-3 years and not harvest a crop from it. Keeping the laid by land mowed helps to suppress weeds, addition of animal manures if/when available is beneficial as is tilling and returning a green crop for tillage. I use 1/2 my gardens space for production as the remining 1/2 is in green manure production, usually winter rye, oats and buckwheat. My plots are 50 ' wide x 150' in length with the same areas between plots always in rotation. land which may be idled longer may be planted to clover, alfalfa, orchard grass and timothy. I use very minimal amounts of commercial fertilizers and rarely need lime. This year I am going to experiment in a small plot by adding as much chipped wood as I can muster. small branches and such which is not usable in the wood stove. I will distribute it in grassy area which I hope to till in 2-3 years.

Sherry, Well, I think you can plant them and have limited success. Onions have to be in the ground and achieve a certain amount of growth before bulbing is induced. Since bulbing is induced by a combination of daylength and temperature, it is going to happen when the daylength-temperature combo is achieved, whether the onions have been in the ground for one week, one month, or whatever. So, that is why we have to plant onions so very early--to get maximum growth before initiation of the bulbing process begins. Most onions needs to be in the ground a minimum of 90 to 100 days before bulb initiation starts in order to size up fully, and some need 100 to 120 days. Short day-length onions will begin to bulb up once the daylength (hours of sunlight) reaches about 10-12 hours in combination with the right temperature. Intermediate day-length onions need 12-14 hours days to bulb up. Long day-length onions will begin to bulb up once the daylength is 14-16 hours and the temperature is right, which is why the long daylength onions are not grown in our part of the county. (Our daylength here maxes out around 14 hours.) So, if the onions go into the ground late, they will grow and they still will bulb up once bulb initiation occurs. They'll just be smaller when bulb initiation occurs, thus, they will be smaller at maturity than onions that were planted earlier. One reason that short day-length and intermediate day-length onions planted in the southern third of the country get bigger than those EXACT same varieties grown in the upper 2/3s of the country is that our weather allows us to plant the onions up to 5 months prior to bulb initiation, and the northern states' colder weather does not allow them to plant until approx. 75 days before bulb initiation. So, if you plant late this year, you'll get onions that are "northern-sized" instead of "southern-sized", but you'll still get onions! If you don't mind knowing you'll get smaller onions, go ahead and go for it. It would be a good learning experience if you've never grown onions before. Some commonly-sold short day-length onions are TX 1015Y (aka Texas Sweet or Texas Supersweet), Yellow Granex, White Bermuda, Southern Belle Red and Contessa. Some commonly-sold intermediate day-length onions are Candy, Stockton Sweet Red and Superstar. Some commonly sold long day-length onions (and these should NOT be sold in our region) include Borrettana Cippolini, Red Torpedo Tropea, Ailsa Craig (there's also a tomato by this name), Copra, Big Daddy, Red Burgermaster, Red Zeppelin, Walla Walla, Yellow Sweet Spanish and Ringmaster. I've already planted my main crop of onions, but I do continue planting onions in various spots around the garden as companion plants, and I will, probably through mid-to-late April. Of course, I don't care if those companion-planted onions bulb up or not. Sometimes I leave the companion plant onions in the ground until the following year, and let them bloom in the spring. Their tiny flowers attract a TON of tiny pollinators and beneficial insects, and are quite attractive as well. Dawn

sconticut, Great idea about lining your potato beds with seaweed. I have used seaweed as mulch off and on over a number of years and in the beginning took great pains to rinse all of the salt/sand off the weed and as time went on (as with most things) I became sloppier about that. I don't mind the look even when bleached but it is a big chore if your doing more than a small bed. Rose Treat lives in my community and has created a name for herself in the art world using seaweed she also has written a children's book "The Seaweed Book How to Find and Have Fun with Seaweed". It has some photos/name/descriptions of our local weed that I found interesting. kt