What is bokashi bran pre-composting?
Bokashi is Japanese and has been translated to mean ‘Fermented Organic Matter’. The process itself is anaerobic, which means without oxygen. What you are doing is creating a pre-compost material, in an airtight container, that doesn’t smell horrible and breaks down in two to four weeks, once buried in your garden.
The Bokashi bran is inoculated with EM that breakdown your food. These particular microbes thrive in an anaerobic environment, meaning without oxygen. They will die when added to your healthy compost pile or garden, which have aerobic environments. However, their dead bodies are full of plant ready nutrients.
Why use a bokashi bucket?
SMELL! Yes, that’s actually our number one reason for using a Bokashi bucket to collect food scraps! It smells more like you're brewing something instead of rotting food. It's not a pleasant smell but it's not putrid either. It's also nice with the airtight lid that there are no buzzing flies around the bucket. Plus, by using this system you’re able to collect even more types of food scraps, including dairy, pasta and meat. You can add anything but large bones or already rotting food.
We still have our traditional compost pile here at Green Mountain Greenhouse as the Bokashi bucket isn't actually composting, it's fermented pre-composted food. The food waste is getting a kick start at decomposition and offers some tasty food to your garden's or compost's other living microorganisms. So, don't expect the food to look like it's all decomposed after it's two weeks in the bucket.
We are also no longer drawing in bears and other critters as they are not used to or looking for Bokashi fermenting foods.
How does it work?
You have a bucket system and the better the bucket setup you have, the easier it is to have this food waste system. We offer a 5 gallon bucket and a 3.5 gallon bucket, with an internal grate and an Airscape ® lid. What you do is, pull the lid out, add your food scrapes, sprinkle a layer of Bokashi bran on top (2-3 tablespoons) and replace the lid. After a few days, liquid will start to gather at the bottom. This is why our bucket has the interior grate, to help separate the food waste from the liquid for better drainage. Drain the liquid at least once a week. Repeat process until the bucket is full, then let is set for two weeks. It's that simple.
Next, you may add the contents to your compost pile, bury it in your garden or even add it to the bottom of soon to be potted plants. We like to add it right to our garden in between the rows during the spring, summer and fall and during the winter we add it to our traditional compost pile. You do want to give the fermented organic matter two weeks in the soil before you plant anything directly on top. The pre-compost is not quite ready for a plants when added directly to soil, give it a minimum of two weeks and up to four before planting directly over. For example, in the spring we add the pre-compost all over the garden about two weeks before planting anything new.
To go back to the liquid you need to keep drained off, there is conflicting information about the benefits of this liquid and if it's worth it when adding it to your plants. After doing our own side by side comparison on some tomato plants, we have found no advantage of using the waste liquid from the Bokashi pre-compost process. Therefore, we just dump the liquid over the side of the porch three seasons a year and during the winter it gets drained down the sink.
We keep our bucket on the porch during spring, summer and fall. Once the temperatures start dropping we bring our bucket inside to our mudroom. Because there really is no smell, it's no big deal to keep it right in your kitchen for easy use. We have several clients who, have told us, they keep their 3.5 gallon bucket under their sink all year long.
The last note is, you'll likely want two buckets and that's why there are starter packages below that include two buckets. Once you have a bucket full, it needs to sit for two weeks to finish the fermenting process. During this time, you'll need a second bucket to start filling with all your food scraps.
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