I’m filling this vacation week with activities that feel productive to me and entertaining enough for my kids — spring break logistics, working-mom arithmetic.

A midweek trip to H Mart with the specific goal of buying dog bones was already a stretch, but I was quietly hoping for something better: samples. Saturday at H-mart is a full sensory experience — crowded, chaotic, and full of unfamiliar foods offered up with confidence. You don’t need to know what something is or how to cook it. You just need to taste it.

That spirit carried me into the gardening aisle, where I impulse-bought a five-pound bag labeled simply: Sesame Dregs Fertilizer. Nitrogen-rich. $2.50. Sold.

This is exactly the kind of thing I can’t ignore. “Dregs” and “fertilizer” in the same sentence is practically a dare.

Back home, I expected the internet to tell me everything. Instead, it told me almost nothing.

I found two references worth noting. One was a grower (Winterdoon) in Tasmania using sesame dregs to build soil organically for vegetable production, complete with surprisingly strong NPK numbers. The other appeared in a discussion of Korean Natural Farming Methods, where sesame dregs were used as part of a compost tea.

And that was it.

So now I have a mysterious bag of nitrogen-rich sesame byproduct sitting in Massachusetts, with very little guidance and a lot of curiosity. Which, honestly, is how many good garden experiments begin.

If you’ve used sesame dregs — or know more about how they’re traditionally applied — I’d love to hear it. Otherwise, I suspect this will turn into a series of small, cautious trials. Field notes to follow