First of all be sure it is not illegal to remove seaweed from the beaches. In Texas it is because with the seaweed goes sand and it is illegal to remove sand from the beach. Secondly, huh? Seaweed tea? The benefit of seaweed is in the seaweed itself. It is food for microbes. What does soaking it in water do? Compost tea is made by bubbling air through water and (excellent finished) compost for 24 hours (no more). The purpose of making compost tea is to wash the compost microbes off of the compost particles and into the water. If you feed the microbes with sugar in the tea, then you can hope to multiply the population of microbes by as much as 1,000 times. I don't see that soaking seaweed in water will give you that same type of benefit. Is there another reason to soak seaweed? If I could get seaweed I would just compost it along with lots of dry tree leaves.

2009 Tomato Season Report The season started off with late frosts and leafhoppers delaying the tomato plant out. May was rainy and cold and by the time the plants were in the ground it was the second week of June. The Sweet 100 plant is the only exception as it was planted around May 15th. June was very wet with a record 8" of rain and no days above 80*. July was still wet and cool with only a handful of days over 85*. August was a little drier but still fairly cool. September was much drier and warmer which got a lot of the tomatoes to flower but it was to late for fruiting. October started off dry and cool but then turned wetter with temps dipping down to 31*. Most of the tomatoes got hit with disease and frost damage after the cold spell. The last part of the month was warmer with temps in the 50's and 60's but several inches of rain brought a bad tomato season to an end well almost anyway. The sweet 100 plant still has a couple more tomatoes ripening on the vine. I had no late blight in my garden a little bit of early blight and at the end of the season septoria leaf spot started showing up. Brandy boy: - potato leaf, medium about 5-ft, average disease tolerance. No ripe fruit but it did eventually flower and produce a couple of tiny green fruit. They both Had severe cracking issues. Crack size: all the way in to the middle of the tomato. The cracking was partly do to uneven moisture but this variety was still very crack prone. Brandywine Sudduth's strain: - potato leaf, medium/tall 5-6-ft, had a several disease problems especially later in the season. No flowers or fruit. Overall very disappointing. Cuostralee: - Regular leaf medium/tall 5-6-ft, Not great disease tolerance but it was able to grow out of the disease. No ripe fruit but it did flower. Japanese Black Trifele: - potato leaf, short 3-4-ft, top of the plant broke in a windstorm. good disease tolerance but not great. first ripe fruit october 30th after ripening indoors for two weeks, 1 ripe fruit. Taste: Gel is sweet with a slight tang to it. The meat is very mild and a little bit bland but it has a faint smoky flavor to it. No problems with cracking. I saved seeds. Marianna's peace: - Potato leaf medium/tall 5-6-ft, good disease tolerance until the end of the season when both plants yellowed. No ripe fruit. both plants flowered . Neves Azorean Red: - regular leaf, medium height 4-5-ft. It did get shaded by the brandywine plant next to it. Average disease tolerance but it would probably do better with more sun. No ripe fruit. the plant didn't even flower probably partly do to the weather and partly do to the shade. Sweet 100: - regular leaf, tall 7-8-ft , average disease tolerance first ripe fruit mid August, ~ 45 ripe fruit. Taste: Sweet with good "tomato" flavor. size small about an inch in diameter. Looks. perfect round bright red tomatoes in clusters of 5-10. Only cracks when ripe fruit are left on the vine during rain. Crack size : Just the skin cracks open not the whole tomato.

Only protects the thyroid. From the (limited) reading I've done on Chernobyl, the most common injury from radiation exposure of ordinary residents in the affected area after a nuclear plant accident is childhood thyroid cancer. But, you have to be really quite vulnerable and quite severely exposed (e.g. children drinking milk from cows feeding on grass contaminated by that huge accident) to be significantly injured. Most of the 5 million residents of the areas of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine that were most contaminated have not suffered much, if any, measurable increase in cancer (solid or hematological), according to the World Health Organization's investigation. The greater injuries were psychological and economic/social (from trauma and mass displacement). For some of the on-site responders, who were very severely exposed, the story is different. As for the population of Western Europe, I've read that epidemiological studies suggest maybe 2,000 excess cases of cancer due to Chernobyl - which, in a 300 million population, is a very small number, I mean not to the few unlucky individuals but on an overall scale. Here is a readable summary: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594179_eng.pdf And the link has a much longer WHO report. Another long report is here http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/en/ Bottom-line, a few (relatively speaking) people in Japan may need KI now, some more may need it later, in the US we don't and probably won't. As I'm not completely sure, and I do have kids, and I like Japanese food, I now have konbu. Here is a link that might be useful: WHO report, 167 pg

Jealous about the Meet-Up! I used to live fifteen minutes from where Sushi lives now. We just missed each other! I just wanted to add that I think these star thing goes into neighborhoods. I just noticed one neighborhood on my daily commute that has several star houses. I think it might become a "keeping up with the Joneses" thing. One person does it, their neighbors see it and think it looks nice, so they do it, etc. I know there is one region of MI that I used to visit occasionally for work, and we joked that there must have been a "house initials" salesman with a beat there, because every other house had one it seemed.