Farmers unwind seed string directly onto a growline during outplanting
Lesson 2
How Is Kelp Farmed?
Back to: Kelp Farming 101
Farm Process
On the farm, the seed string is carefully unwound from the PVC pipe onto the horizontal growline in the water, a process called outplanting. As the kelp grows, the holdfasts will eventually grow and morph to attach directly to the growline.
Outplanting
Over the winter months the kelp is monitored routinely, and in a matter of months, there will be a dense heavy crop ready to harvest.
There are multiple ways to harvest kelp from the farm, and every farmer goes about this process slightly differently, depending on the layout of their boat, the requests of their buyer, and what they plan to do with the kelp. In general, harvest happens by retrieving the growline from the water and cutting off the kelp blade just above the holdfast.
Harvest Innovations
Some farmers have streamlined this process down to an art. This video shows the harvest innovations of Alf Pryor, a farmer in Kodiak, Alaska, who made some adaptations to a setnet skiff typically used for harvesting salmon to be optimized for harvesting kelp. Learn more about Alf’s setup in GreenWave’s farmer newsletter, Holdfast, here.