Kitchen Garden Forum

I use a lot of seaweed in our garden it covers most beds now this time of year.last year there was a lot of white specks on the seaweed . I found out through a friend that this is calcium on the seaweed.calcium is similar to lime would this cause the terrible scab I had on most of my setanta potatoes
calcified seaweed fertilizer is made up the coast from me in west cork.had anyone else had bad scab on setanta potatoes or could it be the calcium on the seaweed.
any thoughts
regards nemo

Dry soil can exacerbate scab, I would think the seaweed would help water retention. a link here to RHS advice -
http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Pro ... px?pid=230
Maybe check soil ph, and it can live in the soil for quite a whille so avoid susceptable crops in that area.
Lucky it only affects the skin not the eating qualities.

Sure the specks weren't salt?

the specks were about 5-10mm wide i am certain they they aren't salt.it is calcium build up im wondering if so little calcium would cause the potatoes to get bad scab

Last year was a very bad year for scab being very dry in summer. One of the worst years I can remember, we grew 6 varieties all were affected especially desiree. Had to sell most of our potatoes to fish and chip shops due to the scab and only got out about 1/5th of our crop out of the grown due to the wet autumn, feeding them to our pigs now, they love frosted and scabby potatoes.