Extreme Bokashi - make your own innoculant

[biigblueyes]

My new gardening Partner In Crime is very much into organics and trying new things, and has even experimented with biochar. He managed an organic community garden for years, and there's so little that he hasn't tried yet. It may be time for me to whip up a batch of bokashi to dazzle him and give the new gardens we'll be planting a jump start.

[dapjwy]

Originally Posted by rcwarship

Give it a try when you get a chance, worst that can happen is you don't do it again!

Good point.

Someday.

[rcwarship]

Originally Posted by biigblueyes

Are you going to add molasses too, to feed your microbe livestock herd?

Excellent suggestion, that's a very interesting idea - giving the heard a little something extra to munch on. I think I'll give it a shot, divide my remains in half, add molasses to one part & nothing for the other. It won't e very scientific, since all I'll have is the sniff test to see if there's a difference. But if something goes waaaaaaaaay wrong, the sniff test should suffice.
Thanks biigblueyes!!!
Best Regards To All,
Jon

[biigblueyes]

Originally Posted by rcwarship

But if something goes waaaaaaaaay wrong, the sniff test should suffice.

Hahaha - you have a point there!

[CincyGarden]

Originally Posted by Qjedi

I'm actually considering doing a cut-off bokashi barrel, in ground, and seeing what I can get out of it all. I know some folks have had good results from doing smaller buckets in a large flowerpot, and similar projects, but I just get a kick out of this stuff, and would LOVE to see how it works with a 55 gallon drum.
I'll probably start smaller, but I see a lot of potential going with a larger (or better yet, longer) container than a 5 gallon bucket. Like a big piece of wide-bore PVC, or maybe a long piece of plastic rolled into a cylinder, or... or... umm...

Well, we do have a bunch of big drums we bought to help us set up our water harvesting system; I might move up to that point if it gets really working.

We have tried to do this with much larger "buckets" but it faces 2 issues when doing it with "household" quantities: 1) amount of material and 2) gravity. Personally, I think bokashi could work in any quantity, but our household had trouble with finishing off in larger batches.

We have a giant trash can (just like this only brown in color). During the dead of winter we gathered several 5 gallons worth of bokashi kitchen scraps and, because the ground was still frozen, put them in there. We put some plastic over the top of the material, and also to seal the lid.

It still got invaded by soldier flies, which isn't bad, but was markedly different than other buckets. I think the issue was that the heat dried out the uppermost portions. I think that if we had covered it with dirt, instead of plastic, and left the lid open, instead of baking it with the lid closed, we would have of had a more complete cycle before the bugs turned up.

As it was, it was infested by grubs pretty soon after the weather changed. No big deal, really, just not ideal. It still didn't smell (and, honestly, that's my major reason for finding this method). Soldier flies are normally a composting companion, but you don't expect to see them in bokashi composting.

I try to trench my bokashi in the off season and bury around trees after it cools off in season. You can trench and put in seeds above it, too, without cooling off (3" or so of soil on top).

If I were to try bokashi composting in large amounts (i.e. more than 5 gallons) again, I would use a cylinder rather than a square, and use soil rather than an air-tight membrane to cover it.

0.02 cents deposited. Have fun.

[soundsgood]

Good spring, y'all!

Glad this thread's returned with the longer days, and that the experiments continue.

Allow me to add my progress to the collected Bokashi wisdom here.

Placed the full top half of a 5-gallon Bokashi bucket on top of a large pot that had about 4" of last year's used dirt in it and let it sit there lidded for 2 weeks. Chopped in some more used dirt and topped with a few inches of the last of the commercial potting soil and immediately planted some mint. Two weeks in, and good! My concern was that the full-strength juice accumulated in the bottommost dirt might be too concentrated and do damage. Time will tell.

The dirt now used in all the rest 5-gallon planters that constitute the fire escape garden is derived from 2011-purchased potting soil that's been cycled through the indoor dirt machine troughs with Bokashi composted organic waste.

The plants all seem healthy and happy. I like the clam shells that have found their way to the top and dubbed them decorative elements.

Decided to try to fill the indoor plantspace with flowers rather than light-starved herbs or vegetables and in an effort to speed that planting process, and having re-watched some of Bryan's videos (Videos - Bokashi Bran by ProKashi) on the subject, experiment with resting finished buckets for only a week and similarly resting buried waste the same or not at all.

In further not-plant-related EM news, tried a 2T./5 gallon dilution of the stabilized EM/water to mop the unsealed wooden floors. I've been here 10 years and in that time have used Murphy's Oil Soap, vinegar, baking soda, and vinegar/baking soda on these machine-oil-soaked floors and nothing cleaned the old oil up and away like the EM's. I was in happy shock.

Now look for a non-chemical, easily applied seal for this wonderful old oak...

That success in hand, tried the EM dilution in a spray bottle for the windows. My goodness, the dirt just melted away, and my place is naturally dusty/dirty since the building is old and rather falling apart.

This weekend used it to clean an old crock and wooden stomping device toward this forthcoming week's adventure in sauerkraut making. Lots of elbow grease required for the crock, but by golly, it's a wonderful thing for cleaning.

XOXOX to all.

[soundsgood]

By the way, the most recent 5-gallon batch of Beerkashi made from 3 years old molasses-stabilized EM's is working based on the smell test.

Yippee!

[biigblueyes]

Soundsgood - You can use it for cleaning?!?!?! If yours is molasses- stabilized, that would mean it's dark in color before adding water to the spray bottle, is that correct?

[soundsgood]

Correct. The resulting water is brown tinged.