Hello, I have the following fresh seeds: Red currant, musa acuminata banana, musa balbisiana banana, orange bird of paridise, traveler's palm, king palm, and passion fruit. I am interested in your tea seeds if they are pretty fresh. Please email me at djl278@psu.edu if you would like to trade. Thanks, Dave

I've been using alfalfa for years and reading this forum for years and I've never heard of triacontanol. I have read on occasion that there was a growth stimulator in alfalfa, but I would never use a material simply for that reason. The reason I use alfalfa (or corn meal, or corn gluten meal, or wheat flour, or coffee grounds, or soybean meal, or cottonseed meal) is that it feeds protein to the soil microbes. If you want to feed protein to your soil microbes indoors, I dilute milk in water and water with that. If you water a pure peat mix with milky water for three weeks, the soil will completely change as the soil fungi take off. The soil will even smell different (after the slightly sour milk smell dissipates). It will smell incredibly fresh and clean. I tried dusting the soil with coffee grounds to get the protein from them, but the milk worked 1000% better.

I'm sure everyone has their own way of recycling tea leaves, but around here, we add them to the compost pile. Mark tears open the tea bags and dumps the leaves into the compost "jar" that sits on the counter (with a tight lid) when he throws in the mornings coffee grounds. I do not want the bags in the mix. Some of them are made of a nylon type fabric and some are paper, but they don't break down very fast for us. Maybe it's the brands I drink. But it only takes a second to rip the wet bag open and dump the leaves, so that's what we do. I've never put coffee grounds directly around my plants, though I guess I could start. But we have always added them to the compost pile. Marcia

Hi Jim: thank you for the link to Charleston Tea Plantation ...I'll definitely order some for Christmas ... I love the taste of green tea. Hubby drinks coffee, but that doesn't appeal to me. A friend sent me a link to how tainted foods from China are, such as contaminated vinegar with anti-freeze (lethal poison). A grandmother in Vietnam was healthy until she turned 98 years old and drank wine tainted with rubbing alcohol ... she became blind & sick and died afterwards. http://www.wired.com/2011/08/china-food-risk/ Pets are also affected by tainted foods from China. From Wikipedia about the 2007 pet food recalls "By the end of March, veterinary organizations reported more than 100 pet deaths amongst nearly 500 cases of kidney failure,[1] with one online database self-reporting as many as 3,600 deaths as of 11 April.[2][3] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has received reports of several thousand cats and dogs who have died after eating contaminated food .... the actual death toll could potentially reach into the thousands.[6][7] Overall, several major companies have recalled more than 5300 pet food products, with most of the recalls coming from Menu Foods.[4] The contamination was caused by melamine in the affected foods. The Chinese company behind the contaminated wheat gluten has initially denied any involvement in the contamination. Reports of widespread and possibly intentional adulteration of Chinese animal feed with melamine have raised the issue of melamine contamination in the human food supply, both in China and abroad.[11] On 27 April, the U.S. FDA subjected all vegetable proteins imported from China, intended for human or animal consumption, to detention without physical examination, including: wheat gluten, rice gluten, rice protein, rice protein concentrate, corn gluten, corn gluten meal, corn byproducts, soy protein, soy gluten, proteins (includes amino acids and protein hydrosylates), and mung bean protein.[12] In a teleconference with reporters on 1 May, officials from the FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture said between 2.5 and 3 million people in the United States had consumed chickens that had consumed feed containing contaminated vegetable protein from China.[13] Current research has focused on the combination of melamine and cyanuric acid in causing renal failure. Reports that cyanuric acid may be an independently and potentially widely used adulterant in China have heightened concerns for both pet and human health.[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls Dr. Oz TV-show tested high arsenic levels in major-brands apple-juice, such as Mott and Minute Maid, with China as their supplier. http://www.doctoroz.com/article/dr-oz-investigates-arsenic-apple-juice The Wall Street Journal has a list of foods most imported from China, here's an excerpt from below link: "Chinese imports dominate some food categories to a striking extent. In a testimony before a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May (pdf), food safety expert Patty Lovera noted that China accounted for 80% of tilapia, 51% of cod, 49% of apple juice, 34% of processed mushrooms, 27% of garlic and 16% of frozen spinach consumed in the U.S. in 2011." Here is a link that might be useful: Wall Street Journal on foods imported from China