Sugar Kelp Grown In Town Of Huntington: 'Resounding Success'

HUNTINGTON, NY — The Town of Huntington's sugar kelp program has borne algae.

The town in fall 2022 launched a pilot program to grow sugar kelp, a seaweed native to Long Island that requires little to no effort to grow in bays and harbors.

Sugar kelp helps improve water quality by removing the harmful nitrogen that causes algae blooms and also serves as natural fertilizer.

The Town of Huntington Maritime Department coordinated the program with a two-fold plan:

• Reduce harmful nitrogen in waterways and provide a healthier alternative for fortifying the town’s landscapes.
• Reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers at the town's parks and golf courses by applying the homegrown kelp.

"The Town’s results were truly amazing!" the town wrote in a news release.

With help from Captain Mitch Kramer from TowBoatUS and the donation of the 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 Town of Huntington was now officially kelp farmers!" the town wrote. "The sugar kelp growth timeline was not only encouraging, it was amazing to watch."

It took just over a month for small seedlings to emerge along the kelp lines. On the second visit, the kelp was growing healthily from the lines. Each visit offered increasingly larger results until heaping bundles of kelp, stretching as much as five feet below the lines, were visible.

Sugar kelp stops growing once the water temperature reaches 55 degrees, so the first harvest took place on April 25 — before boating season. The town harvested 250 pounds of wet kelp from only two 100-foot lines.

Once dried, the sugar kelp was processed into powder, bagged, and shared with resident gardeners, excited to try the new fertilizer out on their own plants. Groundskeepers at several town parks and the two town golf courses will use the remaining kelp as ground fertilizer.

"The Sugar Kelp project was a resounding success," Huntington Town Supervisor Ed Smyth said. "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."

Kelp is well-known for its value as a soil amendment. It has the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash of conventional fertilizers but in healthier concentrations. As an organic fertilizer, it releases those nutrients and a suite of micronutrients slowly into the soil, according to the town.

Sugar Kelp is known to increase soil moisture retention and stimulate root growth for a variety of plants. Kelp use could help reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers.