Hi Fearns....If you cover the seaweed with some soil it should rot down nicely. Give the seaweed a rinse in fresh water before you put it on, to wash off the salt. You don't want that in your bed.

Agree - wash it thoroughly first, then dig it in. It might not rot down much over winter, but you can still plant next spring.

Collected from the highest part of the shore and as dried material there is no need to wash it, any salt will have been washed away by the rain. We even used unwashed fresh green and brown stuff from the Bristol Channel in my parent's garden without any problems caused by salt.

I would suggest chopping it up so it will rot down faster and turn everything over every 2 weeks. I just put 30 large garbage bags of used coffee grounds into a section I am trying to improve, and will spend the rest of the winter keeping in worked in. This has worked very well in the past.

Wylieinthea - what sort of soil do you have originally? I have access to coffee grounds, which I put round the hostas etc to protect them from the slugs.

Now I am thinking I could dig them into my heavy clay! what do you think?

They will work in the heavy clay Rachelsmum....I have heavy clay and I use coffee grounds all the time.

Coffee grounds are organic and I am helping to recuse them from landfills. My soil is part sand (left over from construction) and a lot of volcanic grit. The fact that slugs and snails avoid coffee is a bonus since I don't like using anything dangerous where my cats frequent.

Thanks both - I am on the case! :0))