Bokashi: In the Garden!

Thought I would pop in with a bit of an update on the garden, seeing as I haven't posted since I started this blog... and the reason is that I haven't done anything more to the garden!  I simply haven't had time!

 

The only thing I have done is added one of my bokashi buckets to it.  Now, for those of you who don't know much about it, I thought I would give you a little run down of what it is an how it works.

 

Simply put, it is AWESOME!

One of our bokashi buckets

 

The easiest way to explain it, is that it is basically a kitchen composter. Whatever food scraps you have, you put it in the bucket, this includes meat, citrus and any processed foods.  In ours, I put in any of our peelings from prepping meals (unless the worms need a feed, then I give it to them), any leftovers from dinner and anything else that generally can be eaten (including stuff from cleaning out the pantry). 

 

Food that was in our bokashi bucket

 

You also need to add some EM bran or spray (I like the spray) and seal it up tight, after each food scrap addition.  The reason is that the Bokashi bucket works on fermentation not the decomposition of food. The decomposing part comes later... The EM are basically little microbes, and after running the buckets for a few months now, they really do work.  The food doesn't go mouldy (green mould = bad, white mould = good), it simply stays the same as it was when you put it in.

 

When the bucket is full, you seal it back up, pop it aside for 10-14 days (use a second bucket in the mean time) to finish the fermentation process and then after that you can add it to your compost (make sure you add more brown material... I didn't and it was a fail!! lol) or add it straight to your soil in your garden.  Be careful not to put it to close to the existing plants as it's quite acidic until it has broken down... which is where the decomposing part comes in.

 

Since we have had our buckets, we have cut down on our food scraps going to landfill considerably!  While we are still getting ourselves into a routine in our new home, the Bokashi buckets will be used more and more.

 

This brings me to my garden... Last Wednesday I put the contents of one of our buckets into the garden, which was the first time I had done that.  It worked really well!! Only a week later and all of the contents are gone!!  I was expecting to find some remnants as I have read it can take 2 weeks, but there is nothing... not even a bit of left over sausage!! I am so incredibly impressed! Must have been all of the worms in there and the rain to help them!

 

I bet they are nice and fat now!!!

 

I have another bucket fermenting at the moment.  In another week it will be ready to be added to the garden.  When it's time, I will take some pics to show you all, so that you will be able to see how it breaks down, and a little more on how it works.