I’m filling this vacation week with activities that I can simultaneously call productive (for me) and entertaining for my little people (it is spring break, we are home, and I’m doing the working mom juggle). A visit to H-mart on a Wednesday afternoon with the specific purpose buying dog bones is a stretch, I know — but I was optimistic that Wednesday at H-mart, might be like Saturday at H-mart – a wonderland of exotic asian grocery store samples of things we would never dream of trying – mostly because the labels on the package are in utterly foreign logograms and we have nowhere to begin on the journey of preparing this stuff or the foggiest idea what is inside. But the samples, they let you know what is not only good, but you can also watch how they make it. If you have an H-Mart nearby, go there on a Saturday if you can – it will be crowded and insane – but it is an excellent adventure.
I wish they had some sort of sample demo thing going on for the bag of Sesame Dregs that I bought on impulse (yes, I am the type of person that will buy something foreign because it combines the words ‘dregs’ and ‘fertilizer’ together and I just can’t ignore my curiousity. – plus it was something like $2.50 for a 5 lb bag). There aren’t a lot of words in English on this bag – ‘Sesame Dregs Fertilizer’, and ‘Nitrogen Rich’ round out the selection. I thought for sure google would hold a wealth of answers when I returned home with my prize. But no.
I have found precisely two references to this product —
There is apparently a place called Winterdoon in Tasmania who uses it to organically build up their Tasmainian soil for vegetable growing. They list some impressive NPK #’s (by comparison to other organic materials).
And then there is this post about Korean Natural Farming Methods which uses them in a version of Compost Tea.
So there it is — the sum total of information about my treasure. It is exotic and remote and I am a little unsure what to do with this bag here in Massachusetts. I see experiments in my future….
But surely there must be more — who knows anything about Sesame Dregs?
Hello!
My husband does service calls near an H-Mart in Little Ferry, NJ and always goes in to see what “exotic” items are to be had. We’ve shopped there for the best/authentic soy sauce and other veges like bok choy which can’t be readily had in markets in our area. He saw this fertilizer and mentioned it, and promised to buy some the next time he visited the area. Today, he bought 2 bags of it, yes it was 80 oz for some incredibly low price! I grow all kinds of things in my backyard, in raised beds & greenhouse, in the middle of a “loud” city. LOL! I plan on trying it to see what how it works — yes, I too am one of those people who will try things, UNLESS they contain items I don’t prefer, shellfish & pork — so the Asian market is a “limited” experiment for me – as far as cooked for is concerned. I did discover quail eggs there and I absolutely LOVE them! So yes, its an adventure. Did you try the fertilizer yet?
Genus– I love that you are trying out the fertilizer too. I bought it because it is just something I haven’t seen before…and am always interested in an experiment….I haven’t quite figured out what do with them yet though… would love to hear your results once you have tried them out….come back and tell how it went?
Hi there:
I think I’m going to make some compost tea out of it and try it on my kale thats been struggling. All of my stuff is in containers or in my greenhouse in containers so I can at least isolate it and make a comparison. Stay tuned . . .
I just bought this mysterious bag of fertilizer from my local Korean market. I bought something very much like it last year except it was labeled Sesame seed hulls and indeed there were empty sesame seed hulls in the bag. This is labeled dregs there may be some hulls I can’t tell. Well, I am new a gardening and last year expanded my gardening to include some unique vegetables like cabbage etc. I put this stuff in the soil, Shortly I had the biggest cabbage, beets, Brussel sprouts and everything else. I attributed it to this magic fertilizer. I check all over the Internet and found nothing. No one in the store knew what I was talking about or they didn’t know English they just kept saying fertilizer. I heard the soil needs nitrogen this stuff must be loaded with it.
I sure hope this years bag of dregs is anything like the bag of hulls last year. You can take my word for it vegetables love it and I loved the vegetables.
Hi Joan!
Just saw your post. I did try the sesame dregs compost tea in my kale and it survived winter in the greenhouse and thrived quite nicely! It appears that its high in nitrogen which explains why my tomatoes had so many leaves but not that many blooms.
I have a new Asian market I visit, and neglected to ask the Korean grocer how to use the extra bag I have. I will do so this week when I go to buy salmon belly (yum!) http://chopinandmysaucepan.com/pan-seared-salmon-belly