Bokashi (fermented food/garden waste) Composting Discussion

. . . pretty excited today; I reverently placed my first 5-gall. bucket of fermented compost (Bokashi method) into my compost bin. Dug out a hole there so I could cover the bucket's contents with 8-12 inches of leaves, etc. Found a LOT of earthworms who had moved high up into my compost for the winter. Told them they were about to have a really nice series of meals. Yippee! I have more buckets coming along.
My question: should I be spraying a soil drench of EM into the compost as well (since it isn't frozen)? I'm not really sure about when to use my mother culture.
Eric, I'm really glad you stumbled into this thread.

If you're adding a lot of the fermented food waste, that is not necessary to add into the compost. If you are not pre-treating through the fermentation process, you should add some fresh inoculant.

Again, keep applying throughout the summer. Dig in between flowers and veggies. Veggies are the easiest because we tend to plant them in rows. You can dig trenches between the rows and back fill with the bokashi waste throughout the growing season. You will not fertilizer.

Thank you, Eric!

Hi...I JUST tuned in and find this thread an awesome treasure of information. I am really keen to start this process....and I am daunted by reading all of the threads... :>). i have read enough to really excite me.

Is there a thread/site/link I can send my DH to?...He won't read thru this thread....too long...and is interested. Something REALISTIC and NON commercial would be best.... please?

Thanks for your help!!!

Carol

If you go to www.emamerica.com it is a commercial site but they have videos and articles and lots of good explanations for the many uses of EM and their other products.

I'd suggest watching a couple of the videos. I've read a lot of their stuff over and over, partly to get the terminology straight and because there are so many different ways to ues this - ii's a lot to grasp.

EMEric works there so if you have any questions you can email him there.

katiebear

I have my Boskahi bucket working. Lord I love the way this stuff smells. LOL The EM1 came in last weekend, and I was finally able to find molasses at the local feed store. I had a time with that. This area has been come far more urban than I realized...sigh. He can get me more if I need it. He also got the web site from me, after we chatted about the Boskahi method and what we were doing. He's a beginning garden, so of course I gave Dave's site as well. Hope he decides to follow thur on both. ;)

doccat5,
You can always find molasses at the grocery store. It will be in the backing section with all the sweeteners. This molasses is a bit more expensive, but until you get into larger sizes, it may be the easiest source.

Are you making activated EM1? Is this why you wanted the molasses? Or, are you making the bokashi?

I find myself talking a lot about Dave's to all kinds of people. This place is great.

Doing both and I went to every grocery store in this town. Nobody had molasses........sigh. I'm going to make some activated EM1 with it. I need to find the sprayer first. I suppose I could use a water can, but I have a fair piece to cover, LOL

Really??? I am surprised the grocery stores aren't carrying it. Most natural food stores have it because it is considered an alternative sweetener. Most carry the Barbados or the one from Wholesome Sweeteners. I remember finding a gallon at a restaurant supply store (one that sells in bulk). I have even seen gallon jugs at Wal-Mart.

Did you get the white mold on the bokashi? That is a good mold. Remember, white good, black bad. (green/blue molds aren't good either). You usually get these molds because there is either too much moisture (it was too wet when you made it) or the container you make it in wasn't airtight enough. I prefer to make bokashi in garbage bags.

Yes, it smells great!

If you do juicing or eat lots of fruit, you should try to have a bucket with just one type of fruit. Clean the bucket before you do this. The fruit rinds will ferment and pull the juices out. The juice will smell...and taste great. I had a customer do this by accident once and they started doing it on purpose thereafter. We have a lot of raw food customers out in Tucson since the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center is about an hour away.

My bokashi still in the baby stages, so no mold as yet. That's good information. I'm really excited about trying this, so I can hardly wait till the first bucket finishes "cooking". LOL

Doccat5,
Do you actually have bokashi (already made)? Or, are you adding EM1 and molasses to the bucket direct? Both methods work. Either way, make sure you keep the lid sealed tightly when you are not adding new material.

Eric, I have both! Right now the bokashi is in the bucket doing it's thing. And I "burp" the lid, just like tupperware. We want to do the activated EM1 once we get a sprayer and this weather breaks a bit. I want to use the bokashi in my compost and spray the EM1 directly on my veggies beds to start. I plan to take pictures and record the changes. We have good soil, we've worked at it for over 25years, but I think this will improve it even more. It's all organic, I don't use any type of pesticide nor insecticide, period. Had a little problem with the previous neighbor using herbicides next to my veggie beds, but he's moved, thank God. I was willing to help him pack, the slime.

You know, it would be cool if you send some pictures in your posts of what you're doing... this goes for everyone. I am not sure if I can send links to videos or which pictures I can send.

No, I am not saying to do with garbage. I am saying you can do this will something like watermelons since the rinds aren't bitter. I wouldn't do it with citrus. It doesn't work with all fruits obviously.
It is fine too since you can drink the EM1. It is a great probiotic, probably the best one on the market.

Mine would be still pictures, as I do not have a video camera, but I can give it a try. A project for later this afternoon, I need DH's help or block the dogs off. They like the smell too and are wanting to assist.........LOL

You may have to bury the stuff deeper in the soil so the dogs can't smell it. When I lived back East, I would cover stuff with about 12 inches of soil to prevent skunks and raccoons from digging the food waste up.

I have pictures of my garden back East, but none of them are digital. There are many of me making compost, bokashi heaps, and spraying EM1...not to mention all the varieties of flowers.

I used to work in a restaurant where many of the customers were avid gardeners. By the time I moved, I had nearly 45 varieties of day lilies and 8 varieties of lilacs. It was my favorite thing to do and I usually had most of the day to do it since I worked nights. I miss that. Honestly, gardening the desert is no fun.

I have buried chicken bones 4' under 50' rocks...my labs still find them...AND dig them out.... Forget hiding things from animals...they can rescue people in snowbanks...

Eric don't you have a scanner hooked up to your computer so you can scan and put the pictures on the computer then post them for us to see????? LOL hint hint *S*

No, I don't have a scanner. I will check in on it.
Eric

Well, golie, those labs have GOOD noses! They sound like my Boston sooner hound. Sooner eat than do anything else. LOL

I mixed up some of my own Bokashi bran today and wanted to let you all know how it went. If I could find my camera I would've taken photo's.
I copied the recipe from above and halved it, thinking smaller would be easier. I mixed up 1/2C of molasses and 1/2C of EM1 in a gallon of warm water. I used a sterilised gallon milk bottle for this. The full recipe calls for 3-5 gallons of water, so I planned on using about 2 gallons of liquid total.
I headed out to the garage and poured half of my sack of rice bran into a large cement mixing tray. At this point I realised that my sack of rice bran was only 40lbs not 50, so I "guestimated" another 5lbs or so. I poured on the gallon of warm water, EM1 and molasses mix plus a good splash of plain cold water from a watering can and started mixing. It was like mixing bread; warm and fragrant and very pleasant. Not too messy either. But the mix was too wet, so I added more rice bran, and then more rice bran and then the rest of the rice bran. The full 40lbs. Mixed it up some more, trying to make sure there were no really wet lumps. It was a lot like making a crumble topping. Once it was as combined as I could get it I poured it all into a rubbermaid bin, pressed on a large trash bag and put the bin lid on.

I'm a bit concerned about the ratios I used and I hope that it will ferment properly. The weather here today is very, very wet and I'm sure that the humidity levels affected the volume of water required, a bit like in bread making. The final recipe was:
1/2C Molasses
1/2C EM1
1 1/2 G Water
40lbs Rice Bran

Any thoughts?

The recipe sounds right. Do you have a warm place for it. I was able to leave mine in a sunny spot, again similar to what you would want for rising bread.

katiebear

The light for my seedlings will be going on this weekend so I was planning on tucking it under the racks that hold them until it warms up a bit.

It sounds good. It is a good thing that you didn't make it too wet.
A rule of thumb is to squeeze some in your hand. If the bokashi holds form for a few seconds and excess liquid does not squeeze out, you have the correct moisture.

Is there anything to use instead of rice bran?? And where would one get that? Feed Store? Health food store?

I used sawdust. Not highly recommended as it has fewer nutrients than others, but I can get it here. The www.emamerica.com site has the instructions for making it and they list some alternatives. Eric said coffee grounds work if you have access to large amounts of them. I don't or I'd make coffee grounds bokashi for my fish scraps! !!!! The imagination boggles.

katiebear

Brewery waste, dried leaves, wheat bran, coconut husks, wood chips, dried grass... during a project in Egypt, the EMRO researchers actually made bokashi out of sand! They were making bokashi balls to test the cleaning of sediment in the Nile. Some places use mud to make bokashi balls. You really just need any high carbon material to dry the microbes on.

I have been conversing with a woman in Hawaii for some time about using brewery waste. She set up a project in Honolulu with school kids and they made bokashi with it. Brewery waste is pretty wet, so you either have to let it dry out a bit before using it, or add some more carbon material to dry it out. The goal is to reach 30-35% moisture before fermenting.

Hmmmmm. Coconuts husks? Coir? Won't the salt affect the chemistry? I used to use it in my nursery, but even washed of salt it became an attractant to the salts in the fertilizer and was a mess.... I suppose with the rain here (almost 150" a year) that wouldn't become a big problem....?

A mixture of dried leaves and stuff? or does it have to be uniform...i reckon that is a sill question but am asking anyway.

Carol

Carol - Have you seen the You Tube video called "The Greening of the Dessert"? There is some fascinating information about salts in the soil in it. They found that the salts became inert with what they did - it was stilll there but intert. He tought it was because of the fungi which came about as a result of what they did and had not been in the soil before. I was very interested because we have a lot of salt in the soil here so there are some things I can't grow - like avacados.

Check out the video. Just go to YouTube.com and do a search for the title. It pops right up. I had my friend Tony watch it the other day as it is something we can try here fairly easily (Once we get Tony's brother-in-law Pepe, a walking back hoe, to come and dig some swales.

Don't mean to hijack the thread.


katiebear

Ah salts... EM1 applications will neutralize the charge (at least this is how I have heard it explained) of salts. This way, the salt (or element) is still in the soil, but is not going to cause harm. The minerals (which salts are) are bio-available for plants and the fruits grown in these soils will have higher mineral counts....resulting in better taste and nutrients.

There was a research paper done back in 2000-2002 (I can't remember when exactly) of a sodic soil where nothing could grow. After six months of EM1 applications, the farmers were able to grow a wide variety of vegetables in that soil.

Now, since I do not work for EM Hawaii, I think it should be fine for me to post this link.
http://emhawaii.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=81

This is a link to the Teacher's Manual for Bokashi Food Waste Recycling. In 1997, EM Technology Network received a grant from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality for their food waste recycling program in schools using EM Bokashi. There is a video that accompanies the booklet that is not currently available online for free (I don't know if it ever will be since it was done through a non-profit with state grant money). The video is geared for teaching elementary school children on the bokashi method. It covers the EM1 technology, the microbes, the making and purpose of bokashi (with wheat bran), the use of bokashi buckets, burying the food waste, and growing plants in the material.

Katie...thanks a bunch. Will go there.

I have called the Big Island rep....an individual - sometimes more eager to help than companies!!!! out to rake up a whole bunch of leaves!!!

Say....what if one has a pile of non-functioning compost sitting about rotting...can that be added (to get rid of it)...

Carol

Yup. You can easily add some AEM1 (Activated EM1) to the pile. You add in about 1 gallon and half of activated product per cubic yard of material....and enough water to reach desired moisture content..
There is a microbial inoculant thread in Dave's.

Someone from Organic Gardening sent me here with my question:

Well, my well-meaning man bought me some kombucha organic beverages. Ummm, I didn't care for the taste. However, I hate to waste them.
Can some form of hole composting/pail composting similar to bokashi be done with the ingredients? They are still fermenting away in my fridge at the moment.

Thanks, and I hope this isn't a doofus question.

Kombucha tea? doe sit taste like fermented apple cider vinegar?
it is made with tea, vinegar water and sugar and the kombucha culture (or a mushroom as some call it)
the spa restaurant I used to work at made it on a weekly basis...I would add it to my compost pile to help it cook not sure about using it like bokashi though

Not quite like bokashi, but more like an inoculant. I would throw it in the compost pile. I am not partial to the taste either...although it is really good for you.

well that is another topic I suppose .....the good for you is a maybe maybe not thing if you do some research on it ..it is an acquired taste for sure.

Well, I finallly made it to the end of this thread!lol Thanks for telling me about this Eric. But I still have a question. Since I am focused right now on composting sawdust only, and I have a tremendous amount of the stuff. Can I substitute beer mash (if I can get it) for the rice bran stuff and then just spray with EM1? I plan on using a 35 gallon trash can with the bottom cut off. I can partially bury it in the ground so the worms can start working on it whenever it's ready.

Also I tried to find EM1. I called Whole Foods in San Antonio, Tx and they didn't know what I was talking about. Do you know when they are supposed to start selling it? Is there anywhere else to buy it except online?

Thanks much,
Mary Lee

Hi Mary Lee,

I made bokashi with sawdust as the base. It worked fine. I then used the bokashi to ferment garbage and dog poop which was then buried in the garden.

If you want to make compost, I'd suggest you spray your compst ingredients with activated EM1. Are you using any green in your compost? Sawdust alone is probably going to take a long time to break down though the EM1 should speed up the process.

I'm sure Eric will be along to clarify if I'm wrong.

katiebear