Bokashi hacks

Bokashi composting is an anaerobic process that converts food wastes into an amazing soil amendment.
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John Amy
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu 31-Mar-2022, 12:10

Maybe crazy, maybe won't work, but Andrew loves experiments, so in his honour here's what we're up to. We've just got our first full bucket of bokashi. We're learning. As so many have noted on this forum, keeping the bokashi process going requires us to move it from its first bin to another in order to keep up with all the kitchen scraps we're producing. We're working with raised beds and we'll do the trench method when the bokashi is ready.

So here's an idea we're trying out. Got a second and third 5 gallon pale along with regular lids. We bought an extra lid and cut it to fit close to the bottom of the pale and drilled some holes in it. This was quite easy to do and it allows for a little more draining if it needs it. Moved the first batch of bokashi to this new bin, saved the tea for the garden, put the regular lid on and put the full pale aside for another couple of weeks of 'cooking'. Note: I don't think we're adding quite enough inoculant so we're increasing until we get a better feel for what works.

Question: it seems that if the bokashi isn't fully cooked then the leachate isn't either? When saving it after transferring the bokashi to the next bucket, is it still viable but just less so, and do we still need to dilute it 100-1 ?

I woke up thinking about biochar. We have charcoal but have yet to create a way to inoculate it to make biochar. I was wondering if if could work to put charcoal in the bottom of the bokashi leachate bucket so it just soaks there as the leachate collects. Would it end up being too something? Any thoughts?
jack oostenbrink
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John Amy wrote: Mon 23-May-2022, 11:31 Maybe crazy, maybe won't work, but Andrew loves experiments, so in his honour here's what we're up to. We've just got our first full bucket of bokashi. We're learning. As so many have noted on this forum, keeping the bokashi process going requires us to move it from its first bin to another in order to keep up with all the kitchen scraps we're producing. We're working with raised beds and we'll do the trench method when the bokashi is ready.

So here's an idea we're trying out. Got a second and third 5 gallon pale along with regular lids. We bought an extra lid and cut it to fit close to the bottom of the pale and drilled some holes in it. This was quite easy to do and it allows for a little more draining if it needs it. Moved the first batch of bokashi to this new bin, saved the tea for the garden, put the regular lid on and put the full pale aside for another couple of weeks of 'cooking'. Note: I don't think we're adding quite enough inoculant so we're increasing until we get a better feel for what works.

Hey, that is exactly what I did last winter...and it worked well for me!
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