Mayo gardeners seeing the value of seaweed for summer gardens

COUNTRYFILE

WHEN I went as far as the ocean it was to find what had previously been a long strand of golden sands nothing more than a thick, stinking mess of washed up seaweed.

There was so much of it, and so advanced was the state of decomposition, it was impossible to walk more than a few yards before being cut off.

Close to where I had left the car, a young couple were filling black bin bags with the putrid material.

I asked them what they planned to do with it. “It's great for the potatoes,” said She, before He interjected: “It's great for the whole garden. There's nothing that grows that won't grow better with a layer of seaweed.”

That may be so. In fact, I'm sure it is, for a score and more years ago that might have been me out there gleaning, helping myself to that green-brown sludge, that gift from the sea.

Now here's a thought. The water off the west coast is as clean as any seawater in the world. It is warm(ish), and thanks to our profligate lifestyle it is more full of nutrients than is properly good.

It does grow seaweed, and grows it well, as is evidenced by the state of our beaches after every bit of a storm.

As we know, all seaweed is edible. It might not all be tasty, or appetising, or flavoursome, but it is perfectly digestible. Mind you, I wouldn't want to be reliant on it for more than a few days.

Most certainly it must be cooked, and only living plants shoud be harvested for the table. Anything washed up might have been dead for days, and is likely to introduce all who indulge to a small dose of dysentry, or similar.

But among the thongweed, the bladderwrack and other delightfully named items, we find old favourites such as dillisk and sea lettuce. I recall a rather one-way conversation with an elderly gentleman who was tucking into a bale of dillisk like a half-starved horse eating hay.

So enthusiastic was he about his mid-morning snack he could hardly get a word out, but had to be content with nodding in agreement to everything I wanted to know.

As far as I could tell, that brown and blotchy, salt-encrusted leafy material was merely cut from rock pools at low tide and allowed to dry out a little. It required no special treatment and could be eaten raw.

There are two types of seaweed which I have actually eaten, and only one of them was cooked. The other was the sea lettuce already mentioned. In texture it resembled wet leather, and it tasted, rather unsurprisingly, like the sea.

The other had the offputting name Ulva intestinalis, or gutweed. This common algae (all seaweeds are algae) takes its name from the appearance of its green fronds, which very much resemble green intestines.

In some places (where people like to confuse themselves) it is also called sea lettuce, but as we must differentiate between the two, we shall go with gutweed.

Picked straight from the rocks and eaten raw, it strongly resembles weak string.

To get the best out of it, take it home, wash it under the tap to get some of the salt out (and to give the little creatures that live within the fronds their freedom), give it a good shake to get rid of excess water and drop it into the deep-fryer.

The result is a revelation. It is crisp. It tastes a bit like shrimp – proper wild shrimp that you'd like to catch yourself and cook on a skewer over an open fire. It is delicious.

And the sea is full of the stuff. Nobody else wants it. Apart from one young couple who'd put it on the potato patch, rather than on a plate. Bon appetit!