lindsaybanks

I’ve been doing Bokashi composting since January of 2011.  I keep two buckets: one that is actively accepting compost foods, and one that is sitting and pickling.  When the active bucket is full, I bury the pickled one and set aside the recently filled one.  I rinse out the bucket that is now empty, and start a new active bucket.  

I’ve had to dig a small pit and bury the bucket waste 3 times in 8 months.  I only have a small patch of the garden where I can bury it, so I always put it in the same spot.  The last time I buried a batch of the pickled bokashi mush was about 2 weeks ago.  So today, out of curiosity, I decided to check on the progress of the rotting waste.  I dug it up and found it teeming with insects and earthworms.  This is AMAZING to me because this was the first time I have ever seen earthworms in my garden plot…in three years.  The only recognizable items were a compostable plastic cup and some eggshell pieces.  Everything else was soil and bugs.  I’m very impressed.

As for the downsides of Bokashi…

1. It is stinky.  It’s rotting food, what did I expect?  Well, lots of blogs will say that Bokashi doesn’t smell bad.  They’ll say it “smells sweet,” “like pickled food,” “like making wine.”  It’s a bit worse than what these blogs say.  Some blogs will say that “if it smells bad, you’re doing something wrong.”  I’ve got the white mold (good sign!), it smells sweet-ish, and I’m pretty confident it’s working just fine.  I personally don’t mind it.  But my fiancee, Drew, wants to be far from the yard when I am burying it.  And when I pour the bokashi liquids down the shower drain (it’s like hippie draino, the bacteria eat pipe build-up), Drew will complain for days.     
2. Burying it is a little bit of a pain, but it only takes about half an hour from start to finish.  I consider myself to be mildly lazy, and I can handle this.
3. Winter in Chicago.  What to do?  I have two options.  Let it freeze in batches over the winter, or put it into giant rubbermaid containers with soil on top.  With my first batch of bokashi, it was still winter and I decided to bury it in a rubbermaid bin under soil that had lots of earthworms.  The acid in the bokashi makes it a bit harsh for earthworms, but it seems to neutralize relatively quickly.  It broke down, was kept inside a classroom, and didn’t smell bad to me.  I think I will put it into my giant flowerpot / compost pile on the balcony and let it freeze this winter and see what happens.  
4. Getting / making the bokashi bran with Effective Microorganisms.  I bought the bins that came as a package, with the bran.  After I ran out, I borrowed a car and went to a feed store in Summit, IL to buy wheat bran, bought some EM online, and made my own.  This was easy, but now I have a 100 lb bag of bran in my closet and barely made a dent in it with 3 batches.  I live in a small apartment with little storage and this is annoying.

So that’s all I’ve got for complaints.  

Now the benefits of bokashi composting:

1. It’s super easy.  We keep a compost pail on the counter, fill it with eggshells, coffee grounds, and veggie trimmings.  When that’s full (about once a week), I open the active Bokashi bin, pour in the slop, mash it down with a potato masher, sprinkle a thick coating of the bokashi bran, press it down, and seal it up. If we have meat or dairy while I have it open, I will throw in small pieces, but don’t keep those in the compost pail.  Then I clean out the compost pail and start over.
2. You don’t have to worry about over-feeding it like you do with worms.  This was why I couldn’t keep worms.  That, and I didn’t like the whole separating the poop part.  My worms all died.  Sorry, little guys.
3. It’s so fast!  That bin I buried in the ground turned (mostly) into soil in 2 weeks.  Amazing.

Works for me.