Kelp Extract....Seaweed Extract...need help from the experts

[Lonesomedave]

ever since I have been vegetable gardening...and that has been more years than I care to remember...I have used kelp extract on my plants, with great success....I wouldn't be without it

well, yesterday I saw some bags of what they called "Kelp Meal" for sale

I have always used the liquid form...it was called seaweed extract back when I was in college and now is called kelp extract, but it is the same product

the price was good, so I bought some of the kelp meal...now, I realize, I have a question

what is the difference between the meal and the liquid extract... is the meal just more concentrated...do they use the meal in making the liquid extract......

if it is essentially the same thing, I definitely want to go with the meal since it is much cheaper

any thoughts on the relationship between the meal and the liquid extract appreciated.

[grrlgeek]

Hey Dave,

I'm far from an expert, but I do know the answer. Kelp meal is the whole plant, dried and chopped and bagged. Kelp extract goes through a process to, you guessed it, extract the goodness from the kelp. There are a couple of ways that can be accomplished, but the mainstream products will use solvents, either potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide. Use of the solvent is permitted under NOP rules, so the products derived from this process can still be certified organic.

There are other means to create an extract, such as mechanical - sort of like the way olive oil is cold pressed, or it can be fermented or just mashed and pureed. The more-natural processes like these are found in some high-end commercial products sold in bulk.

Since most extracts use a solvent to create them, and probably lose something in the translation, whereas meal is just dried up kelp with all the goodness intact, my preference when I studied these options was to go with the meal. I follow directions on the box for whatever I'm using it for, so I don't really know if it's stronger. I would say "it would depend" on the concentration of the particular extract you're comparing it to. All the claimed nutrients should be printed on the packages.

Hope that helps,

[Lonesomedave]

dang right it helps!....

I have always used the extract, but I got 25 pounds of kelp meal and I'm gonna try it...if it works, I will switch over...a quart of extract costs about 12.00 at home depot, whereas I got 25 pounds of meal, with free shipping, for about 50.00 on ebay.....we'll see