Lazy Point Farms And Local Kelp Growers Mark A First Harvest Season

Lazy Point Farms, a Long Island organization, has been working with local businesses to grow and harvest sugar kelp in local waters.

In 2021, Lazy Point Farms began working with the New York Sea Grant and its Seaweed Processing and Marketing Task Force, which has connected Lazy Point Farms with resources to bring the seaweed industry to Long Island.

“We are working with Cornell Cooperative Extension to look at growth rates and cultivation issues that have come up over the season, and now we are kind of in harvest season,” said Wendy Moore, executive director of Lazy Point Farms.

The focus of the project by Lazy Point Farms and the collaboration is to encourage East End oyster farmers to add sugar kelp to their farms to create a polyculture. This past season, Lazy Point Farms worked with 15 growers, including oyster farmers, universities, the New York Sea Grant and Cornell Cooperative Extension in this effort.

Lazy Point Farms has worked to provide growers with spools of kelp spores and support to help with the growth of this polyculture initiative. With the season ending, the sugar kelp is being harvested and will then be dried at Route 27 Hemp Yard, then ground to be used as food and fertilizer.

Ryan Andoos, co-owner of Route 27 Hemp Yard, leases his drying facility, called a hop kiln, to Lazy Point Farms and also uses kelp as a fertilizer on some of his crops.

“I use it more as a biostimulant — the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium numbers are pretty low in kelp,” said Andoos. “A biostimulant is something that helps with the overall soil biome health, and also helps with the mycorrhizae, disease resistance, drought tolerance.

“It just makes the plant more robust — it’s almost like, for us, taking supplements. That’s what the kelp does for plants,” Andoos added.

Dried ground kelp is also considered a good alternative to fertilizer, because many synthetic fertilizers are not naturally made on Long Island, so locally grown kelp fertilizer offers a local option that is safer for the environment.

Lazy Point Farms is also working toward being able to provide local businesses with free kelp to inspire the cultivation of sugar kelp in local waters.

In 2021, Lazy Point Farms collaborated with the Montauk Seaweed Supply Company, allowing for the 2022 harvest to be their most successful.

“New York is very late to the scene,” said Sean Barrett, co-founder of Montauk Seaweed Supply Company. Barrett said other states, like Maine, have been growing kelp for years.

“What’s different about New York than almost any other area of the world is that we are doing shallow water kelp farming,” Barrett said. “Most kelp farming is done in much greater depths, farther offshore than what we are doing here.”

Barrett added that though Long Island waters often have an excess of nitrogen, this helps the kelp grow faster.