The power of Vraic

Cathy Le Feuvre meets a couple who are inspired by the mounds of seaweed washed up on our Jersey beaches

Walk along most Jersey beaches at low tide and you can’t fail to miss the mounds of seaweed, sometimes also known locally by its generic Jèrriais name – Vraic.

But while most of us just step around it, for Francesca Stammers and Loftur Loftsson it’s become their passion. Just two years ago the young entrepreneurs came up with an idea to turn vraic into liquid fertiliser and today the Jersey Fertiliser Co is a young but already thriving business which, most importantly for them, also harks back to a proud Jersey farming heritage. Vraic is still harvested and laid on some potato fields in Jersey, but Francesca and Loftur want more people to realise the power of seaweed. ‘Vraic gave Jersey Royals their distinctive taste. Back in the day, vraic was put on either raw or washed, sometimes it was burnt and turned into potash and used for the potassium in the seaweed, but in terms of fermenting it and making it into a liquid, that wasn’t done so much,’ Loftur said.

While developing the company, Loftur has intensely researched the science of seaweed, made contacts with and learnt from others, and investigated the market and it’s potential - it’s reckoned there are only a couple of other liquid seaweed fertiliser companies in the UK.

But it all, of course, starts on the beach, with Loftur and Francesca regularly collecting several types of seaweed - serrated wrack, egg wrack and oarweed.

‘On a basic level, seaweed has got everything that a compost essentially has - carbohydrates, macronutrients that plants need to grow and a whole variety of micronutrients as well. Artificial fertilisers are mostly nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous… seaweed contains those and more. Seaweed is also one of the fastest growing plants, especially the kelp or the oarweed that we get here. It has a lot of growth hormones in it which allow it grow quickly in the water and which transfer to plants and help them grow bigger,’ Loftur explained.

‘Seaweed also helps the soil structure, it really helps the roots grow stronger, bigger and deeper which gives the plants themselves better drought and wind resistance. That’s also why vegetables or potatoes, things that grow underground, do so well with seaweed because it’s really targeting the stuff underneath the earth.’ Life is very busy for the couple. Loftur, who came to Jersey with his family from Iceland aged just five, also runs an online e-learning business for the financial services sector. He and former wedding filmmaker Francesca welcomed their baby son Magnus in October 2020, but it was Francesca’s gardening loving grandfather who partly inspired the new business.

‘We were working out what we want to spend our lives doing and we thought of my grandad, who uses fertiliser. We realised we’ve got all this seaweed on the beach that’s just going to waste so why not make use of it? Seaweed is a difficult product. You have to go out and do all this work to get it onto your garden. So the idea is to make it as consumable as possible,’ Francesca said.

There is plenty of seaweed to go around, but if you want to harvest and use it, you best be aware of the local law.

‘We don’t cut it from the rocks because that damages the environment, that’s why there’s a licencing on that, to make sure that the impact isn’t too big,’ Loftur explained.

‘But tons and tons of vraic washes up every single day, and after a storm it’s nice and fresh… we’re only taking storm cast seaweed. That way we’re not making any impact and we’re only taking what we need.’ Producing the liquid seaweed fertiliser is ‘actually really simple’, according to Loftur.

They harvest a trailer load at any time and that fills two of their fermenting barrels, which are recycled 240litre JEP ink containers.

‘We get the seaweed, we shred it, wash it and add our special ingredients, bacteria and enzymes which help the seaweed break down. The seaweed is fermented for about 3 months, and then you get this great gooey, syrupy concentrate that you can dilute over 30 times,’ Loftur said.

The liquid fertiliser, which is produced at their home – a real cottage industry – is packaged in locally sourced recycled wine bottles. Diluted, one 750ml bottle produces 25litres of fertiliser.

‘It goes a long way, especially if you’re spraying it. It works for everything… houseplants, flowers, veg… we hope we’re helping people grow their own food or flowers!’

For more information and to purchase online, go to the website: www.seaweed.je

Jersey Fertiliser Co liquid fertiliser is also currently available at various local outlets including Scoop, Bonny’s Garden Centre and Samarès Manor