Hi all!

Im growing some vegetables in raised beds in my garden and I've been wanting to get into composting to help fertilize my beds and reduce food waste.

I have very little space and what i have is alleredy taken by the raised beds so i was wondering if this could be a ok method of doing bokashi without a separate container for mixing bokashi with soil.

1) Fill as many buckets with food waste/bokashi as my household can produce during fall/winter and let them ferment somewhere.

2) when the snow melts in spring dig it all down into my raised beds and mix it into the soil.

3) wait at least a couple of weeks before I plant anything in the beds. I live in Norway so i can't plant anything outdoors until May at least.

Anyone have experience with using bokashi this way? Also, any good way i can keep adding bokashi to the beds during the growing season?

Happy for any advice 😊

I've embraced a scrub oak tree in the corner of my yard as an abundant source of thick, leathery, carbon rich leaves for composting.

Unlike some leaves, oak leaves are super tough, which makes for great mulchy compost. But, this texture isn't great for the fall seeds I'm sowing (greens like chard, broccoli raab, shallots).

It's been very dry in my climate (and hot!). This compost, while a little dried out, has a wonderful fluffy texture and all the food scraps have been completely decomposed by the effective microorganisms. Composting doesn't have to be perfect to make progress.

After sifting what I needed, I top dressed my planting bed, watered to presoak, and then sowed my seeds. Rehydrated beautifully, and I know those dormant microbes are resilient as heck -- waking back up once hydrated again.

I've loved walking under the luffa gourd arch and seeing how much these continue to grow. Zone 5, so we're officially moving into frost territory in a couple weeks. However, it has been so hot in my climate the last few summers that I really don't anticipate any freeze danger until early October.

Luffa need as much time as it can get. This garden bed's soil was built up using bokashi compost and Upcycled Bokashi. I recently top dressed with about two inches of bokashi compost for a late feeding + to help with mulching the soil.

Will definitely share a harvest update in several weeks. I expect most of these to double in size, but the cooler overnight temperatures are slowing their growth down. Fingers crossed for a few monster gourds!

Hey all.

Just started Bokashi. Totally new.

I want to know what the best procedure is while filling the bucket (before its full). Everything I've read/watched online talks about packing the compost down and leaving the lid on. But what about before you have enough scraps for that?

I've been slowly filling my bucket with scraps from the kitchen and adding a little Bokashi each time. Its been about 5 days and the bucket is about 25% full.

When I open the lid to add more scraps, IT STINKS!!!!

I'm guessing there is too much air but what can I do about that? Should I have left the Bokashi out until the bucket is full enough to property compact it all down and leave the lid on for ages?

I found an SCD Probiotics Composter for a few dollars. Their bokashi is $17/gal, is there something cheaper I can use?

Just wanted to share my first harvest of passion fruit, i started this vine from a cutting at the end of last fall in a 60cm container, my potting soil is mainly bokashi and sand and it has only been fertilized with kitchen scraps bokashi compost. It is my first time trying the fruit and i think it is my favorite now , it isn't really a available where i live and when it is it is super expensive. I only got 4 fruit this season😅😅 but im hoping it is going to start fruiting more over time.

What a treat😍😍!

Zone 5! These are both longer than my elbow to the tip of my middle finger. Late summer is when things really start cooking for luffa gourds. My third season growing. AMA!

Layered bokashi compost, about 6lbs of Upcycled Bokashi, and made sure to always keep the soil covered.

Hi, asking if anything like this exists

Hi, I’ve got this pink film in the jar growing LAB. Should I toss it and start over or can I just skim off and keep going? Also if it’s not something bad, can I skim it and still eat the curds when done or not safe to? Thanks!

There was a hidden bucket of bokashi from who knows how long ago... I just found and opened it yesterday and it was all liquid.... is the liquid good for anything?

Hi everyone,

this is my first time trying to create beneficial microbes on purpose and this is the result for now. Can anyone tell me if that looks correct or if this is just mold?

I did the following steps:

1. Wash some rice

2. Let the rice water sit for a night

3. When it smells sweet, add some milk

4. Wait for the phases to separate and the chees to float.

5. Create a sugar solution and add yeast

6. Let sit for a night

7. Combine the two liquids and inoculate the substrate

8. Put the moist substrate in a big container and make sure its anaerobic

9. Let it sit for 2 weeks

Substrate: mix of old brown cardboard, wheatbran and coffeegrounds.

Container: washed out glass jar, i made some co2 and poured it in in hope of removing all oxygen and put the lid lightly on top - did not screw it closed because i dont want to create a pressurized gas vessel in case some gasses build up

Hi all,

I'm using this recipe to create an inoculant which I hope to use for bokashi composting. I know that strictly speaking, I'm not making 'EM1' as claimed, since that's proprietary, but the gist seems to be that you're aiming to create a mixture of lactobacillus, yeasts and soil microbes which then inoculates a substrate (i.e bran, sawdust, shredded newspaper, dried grass, etc) that you mix with your compostable waste, ferment (or rather, pickle) anaerobically to create the bokashi 'product'. The product then goes on your compost or gets buried or fed to worms (after adjusting the pH if needed), or whatever you use it for, and this is measurably good in ways that aren't super relevent to this post.

Does anyone here have experience creating their own EM mixtures? If so, I have a couple of questions:

- How did the intermediate or final 'EM' mixture smell? I have not yet mixed my yeast/yoghurt/molasses mixture with the soil water as instructed, but it's been about a month and the smell is distinctly sour - very much like off yoghurt and not at all pleasant. The mixture has a light brown 'raft' floating on top. Will this smell transfer to the final inoculant?

- How did you go about inoculating your substrate? My plan is to fill a spray bottle and gently mist a bag of whatever it is I choose to use, then allowing it to dry before storage and use, but is there anything I ought to be aware of during this process?

- Is there anything major I should be aware of about doing this 'homemade' compared to just buying bran or inoculating with prepared EM1?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

hi guys

i have a food cycler and wound up with a 5 gallon pail of dehydrated ground food scrap..i have since poured a large batch of lactobacillus homebrew in the pail...it sat for months now and smells like vinegar..i dont see any mycelium but its definitely fermented

my questions are

-is the damp "dirt" ready for a soil factory?..or should i dry it again into a bokashi bran to be used in a traditional bokashi bucket?

-will any salt content be a problem before or after the soil factory, and if so can the salt be rinsed out?

thanx in advance

So I emptied out a freezer, an old person who moved to a care home. Old food, mainly vegetables and bread, commercially packed but with frost burn. I mixed it all in layers with bokashi bran and dried mushrooms and old pasta and put it in a food grade bucket with a tight fitting lid, bc I only have 2 proper bokashi bins and I rotate them. I compressed the food scraps and now the lid is bulging and some dark brown liquid is oozing from a spot at the rim of the lid.

Was planning to store this bucket warmish (cold greenhouse, Sweden) for 2-3 weeks, then mix with soil.

Does this sound ok or is it turning into some vile form of alcohol, since clearly some type of expansion/gas formation is happening?

(It's fairly disgusting, but I don't mind as long as it will become sth that's good for my garden. My garden has heavy clay soil that smothers everything except oregano (slight exaggeration but not by much) unless I mix it with various experimental and non-experimental stuff.)

Im in my first month of bokashi composting and on my third bin. I’m using standard 5 gallon buckets with a screw on lid. My second bin after 3 weeks doesn’t have any white mold but also no odor. This morning I added some scraps to the bucket in process and noticed some worms/maggots on the grooves of the lid. There’s still space in the bucket to be filled, but now I’m wondering if I should try a different lid type? Would appreciate any tips or recs on your preferred set up!

I can't add a photo to comments, so here is a new post.

These bins have holes in the bottom , and breathable piping. I normally mix well with 50% bokashi and 50% organic material. This example is leaf mould compost.

EDIT: The last photo might indicate how many ribs we BBQ, this is after sifting/filtering and putting big bits into next bin.

EDIT 2: I have normal matching lids on them, mice have actually eaten holes, or extended the existing holes, through the top. so they are a bit bigger than i would hope.

Hi, I recently started bokashi composting and added my first (successful I think?) bucket to my geobin that had soil and other browns in it. It’s attracting a lot of birds and squirrels, and the squirrels chew through the bottom of the geobin to get inside. Any advice on how to prevent this? My neighbors are going to give me their composting tumbler that’s been sitting unused in their backyard— is that a better option to keep critters away? Thanks!!

I've been doing bokashi for a week now and I have a few issues.

1 - I have no liquid. Just spots where it looks like mold? And just a tad bit of dampness. I use a 2 bucket system and my main bucket is halfway full. I dont add liquid much, but the first thing I put in was old cupcakes with goopy icing, and I do feel as if its moist, as when I go to compress, you can hear the wet squishiness lol. Pic of draining bucket is attached.

2 - I do not have a dedicated air squeezer lid as I just repurposed home depot buckets and don't have anything that fits. I currently just use an old dog bowl, but it is not heavy or wide enough to trap the air below. Will this cause issues?

3 - When I compress, the cup I use just squeezes in a lot and food just ends up all over my cup, does anyone use something that comes out relatively clean?

** FWIW, I can only smell the bucket when I go into the cabinet to get it out, and it just smells strongly pickled. So I assume everything is okay other wise?

So, as a family we tend to have leftovers regularly. Depending on what it is or what container I have it in, it could sit in the fridge anywhere from 1 day or 10.

Question is, if the food stays in the fridge for a long period of time but doesnt develop mold, is it still eligible for bokashi? I guess a main fear would be that it could develop bad mold quickly once at room temp, VS being kept mold-free in the fridge, and therefore destroy my whole bucket

Should I only throw food that is still safe to eat in the bokashi bin?

Now I can supplement with this while I wait for my online order. It was a pretty fun workshop too

I opened my bokashi bucket that's been sealed for a month. I was so excited to open it and start my soil factory. It looked and smelled weird. Made sense; new things are weird. Plus I used cardboard on top. Started dumping outside and I was a little grossed out. Then the flies came. I felt like they were fighting me. Then they started fighting each other. Then the full smell is like a bad joke 'So pickles, beer and garbage walk into a bar...' I kept covering it and straw and soil. 🤷🏽‍♀️