I’ve been deep in my garden fermenting corner lately—and I have to share this one because it feels like the absolute best thing I’ve done all summer.

 The Seaweed Rescue

My daughter brought me a tiny haul of kelp/seaweed—and I was so thrilled! I soaked it first, and the water got super slimy. But the seaweed bounced back almost instantly! It wasn’t like trying to revive wilted lettuce; it was like bringing it back to life.

The Slime-Sugar Base

I didn’t throw away the soak water either; I put it on my front flower bed.

Then I chopped up the seaweed carefully.  I cut those little floats—the ones that grow right on the kelp and keep it on top—into two or three pieces each.

This water and cut-up seaweed made my base. I had six cups of that mix, so I needed six cups of sugar to combine with it. I was really surprised how interesting the whole mixture became with the sugar. It was almost like making a candy—that sort of slimy texture from the seaweed mixed with the sugar created this stretchy, liquid slime.

 The Critter Defense & Future Plan

It sounds disgusting, but it was a lot of fun! I put everything in a crock, labeled it, and put it in my fermentation cabinet. It’s summer, and ants are a big problem! So I put this whole thing in a bowl with about a 2-inch clearance on all sides. This way the ants have a moat that hopefully they won’t cross. The smell was… wild! I thought it would be like fish and bad sewer. But it wasn’t! It smelled like the ocean but in a good, slightly sweet and syrupy way!