bokashi composting - Page 4

Timbotide · April 10, 2012

How is everyone's Bokashi efforts progressing? I have made several batches of the Bokashi Bran and have not had a batch fail yet. I've been adding small amounts of the bran to my seedling mix and so far so good, no damping off this year.

Tim

Full Moon · April 11, 2012

This thread is a fascinating read. I got caught looking up the links, reading and watching videos for the last few hours.
At one point it got me thinking about using the spent grains from my husband's beer brewing. He brews ALOT!

I found a link where there is a recipe using the spent grains but it is either not clearly written or more probably because of my english reading skills but I don't understand how to do it.

Can someone please explain to me where/when in this recipe he uses the beer grains?

In the barn, Flannery begins the process of making his own “EM-bokashi” out of waste grains donated from a local brewery in Novato.

First, Flannery has concocted a 50-gallon mixture of “extended EM” which is combined with the brewery waste to make the bokashi.

This liquid “EM-EX” mixture is formed by mixing 1 gallon of EM-1 concentrate, 1 gallon of molasses (to activate the life forms), 2 tablespoons of EM-X (a highly concentrated form of EM), and two tablespoons of EM ceramic powder. The rest of the 50-gallon drum is filled with water, sealed, and left to ferment anaerobically for fourteen days.

After two weeks have passed, the next step is to ferment the bokashi in another 50-gallon drum by adding two parts wheat bran to one part rice bran, 1 tablespoon of molasses, one tablespoon of EM-1, and four gallons of the activated EM-EX solution. The solution is combined with the dried bran and fermented for eight days.

At this point, Flannery’s “beautiful blonde bokashi” is ready to use on the farm, but can be stored in the airtight containers for up to

a year’s time.

Thanks
Lyne

DiggingDogFarm · April 11, 2012

The bran is added after the innoculant is extended.
You basically add an innoculant, ferment without air and then dry.
The bran, or in your case, spent brewing grain, is just a carrier....the carrier can be almost anything organic. I used newspaper.
You also don't need those expensive buckets with a gate, a plain bucket will do, as long as it seals.

The following was from my website:

Making your own Bokashi Starter.
Getting started (Part One) Collecting wild lactobacillus.

Making your own bokashi starter culture in place of commercially available EM is incredibly easy.

My goal from the start was to produce bokashi compost without the use of expensive EM, bran or fancy buckets.

The most important component of the commercial EM in relation to bokashi is lactobacillus bacteria, the others are secondary (if at all necessary) and can be cultured in the bucket when conditions are favorable.

I culture my own lactobacillus serum starting with a rice wash water solution.

Making the serum is amazingly simple.

I mix one part rice thoroughly with two parts water (1/2 a cup to one cup). Mix thoroughly and vigorously. Drain. The resulting water should be cloudy.

Place the rice water in a container with 50-75% head space allowing plenty of air to circulate. Cover lightly (air should be able to move in and out of the container) and place in a cool dark spot for 5-8 days.

At the end of the wait the mixture should smell mildly sour.
Strain out any particles.

Getting started (Part Two) Purifying the lactobacillus.

Put the finished rice water solution in a bigger container and add 10 parts milk (I use skim). DO NOT seal tightly, the gases must be able to escape.
Allow 14 days for a complete ferment, most of the solids in the milk will float to the top revealing the yellowish serum.
Strain off the solids.

You now have purified lactobacillus serum.

Getting started (Part Three) Newspaper bokashi.

Instead of using expensive bran I ferment newspaper to use between the layers of compost in the bucket.

I take one part lactobacillus serum to one part molasses to six parts water. (label and freeze any extra serum)

I soak a bunch of newspapers thoroughly in the mixture and drain well.
I place the soaked newspapers in a 2 gallon zip lock baggie, remove all the air and seal.

Place in a cool dark spot and wait 10 days to 2 weeks to get a good fermentation.
After the fermentation process I separate and dry the newspaper. It’s now the carrier for the bacteria.

Yogurt whey as a starter culture.
If you don’t want to take the time to collect your own free indigenous lactobacillus starter culture (Parts One and Two), you can use live active yogurt whey, the yellowish liquid drained when making yogurt cheese.

Simply replace the one part of lacto serum in step three with the yogurt whey.

Starting a newspaper bokashi bucket.
After the bokashi newspaper has thoroughly dried, it’s now the carrier for the digestive lacto bacteria.

I bought inexpensive snap-top buckets from Wal-Mart for about $5.00 each, the lids snap on and off easily, especially with the addition of a little olive oil rubbed around the rim.

I don’t bother with a drain….I place 1 to 2 inches of dry absorbent material in the bottom of the bucket (peat, shredded newspaper, or clean sawdust) and pack well.

To start the bucket I place a piece of the bokashi newspaper on top of the absorbent material, just enough to cover….then I start adding waste (chopped up)…up to a 1/2 inch layer at a time…add a piece of newspaper between each and every layer until the bucket is full….packing each layer well helps ensure a good fermentation. (I use a potato masher.)

That’s about all there is to it.

Oh, I’ve been experimenting with adding a tablespoon of healthy garden soil to the bucket after it’s started well (4-5 days) to culture more of the naturally occurring anaerobic digestive microorganisms, but I’m convinced it’s not necessary. The bokashi compost with just the lacto decomposed quickly in the garden and in my worm bins.

Newspaper bokashi secrets.
Well, not really secrets, mostly common sense.

I’ve never had a failed newspaper bokashi bucket when following these simple rules.

1. Start the bucket with a 1 to 2 inch layer of absorbent materials. (shredded newspaper, peat, sawdust or something similar.) This layer will soak up any excess nutrient drainage. (There’s nothing wrong with faucet buckets, other than the expense. I just prefer to keep things as cheap and easy as possible.)

2. Start your newspaper bokashi bucket with a layer of high carbohydrate waste. This jump starts the fermentation process ensuring success.

3. Place a piece of newspaper between each layer of waste. Make the layers no more than 1/2 an inch think. This ensures that the beneficial bacteria will spread throughout the waste quickly.

4. Chop the waste into small pieces, if possible. This gives the bacteria a larger surface area to feed upon. It also leads to faster final decomposition or digestion when your bokashi is buried, added to worm bins or added to an aerobic compost pile.

5. Compress the layers of waste tightly. This helps exclude air and helps transfer beneficial bacteria throughout the waste rapidly. (I place a piece of bokashi newspaper on top of the waste and press with a potato masher, there’s no mess as with bran bokashi. )

6. Never add spoiled waste to a bokashi bucket. Rotten and moldy waste will introduce rogue organisms that can cause a bucket to fail.

7. Always close the lid lightly to exclude air.

8. Do not add excess amounts of fluids to your bokashi bucket.

9. Collect waste throughout the day and add to the bucket at the end of the day. This minimizes exposure to outside air.

10. Add waste at least once a day. It’s usually not a problem to skip a day or two occasionally, once the bucket is well established.

Good luck with your newspaper bokashi!!!!

~Martin

Full Moon · April 11, 2012

Martin, thank you so much!

I was about to order the EM ....hmmm....maybe I can buy more seeds with the money you saved me

I guess I would have to somehow dry the spent grains.

**mdvpc** · April 11, 2012

Martin

Good job! I do buy the commercial EM starter, but a quart lasts me 2-3 years. I bought two buckets from Home Depot, drilled holes in the. Bottom of one, put that bucket inside the other. That way, I capture the liquid run-off and use it as a foliar feed or soil drench.

DiggingDogFarm · April 11, 2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdvpc

I bought two buckets from Home Depot, drilled holes in the. Bottom of one, put that bucket inside the other. That way, I capture the liquid run-off and use it as a foliar feed or soil drench.

Yeah, lots of folks do that and it works great, it's just my nature to look for the cheapest way!! LOL

I'm thinking of restarting the website along with a little forum, but can't decide on the name.
I should never have given the old one up!!

~Martin

vermiit · April 11, 2012

Interesting! I had never heard of it before. I just started a Kombucha culture, and this is in the same vein. I have more research to do now...

janezee · April 11, 2012

Awesome, Martin!

Thanks so much for that information. It is sooooooo expensive to buy the activated bran here ($18/lb) that I've been reluctant to use it. I'll have to start saving my newspaper junk mail for this!

DiggingDogFarm · April 11, 2012

For what it's worth, I feed the bokashi to my compost worms, they love the stuff.
Here's how I got started with the whole deal several years ago.....

Again, from and old website post:

I’m a big fan of coupling bokashi with worm composting.
Worms can take much more acidity then some folks think.
I learned a long time ago that low temperature composting is the way to compost when maximum available nutrients are the goal.
I got started with vermiculture a long time ago, vermiculture ALWAYS produces compost far superior to high heat methods.
Bokashi compliments vermiculture.
I noticed at a neighbors farm a few years ago that compost worms were thriving in corn silage that had spilled down around the outside of the silo, I had always read that acidity was bad for worms and that they wouldn’t do well in low PH, turns out that was a lie, not only were they thriving they were converting the fermented silage into castings at a rapid rate (the silage was acidic enough so that I could feel a slight burning sensation on the scratches on my hand).
It wasn’t long after that that I stumbled upon the bokashi thing while searching composting videos on youtube.
I immediately said to myself, all this is is ensiling, it was then that I started experimenting.
So, not only is the bokashi broken down fairly rapidly by the worms, the waste is also stabilized for long periods of time so I can ration it out to the worms. I wouldn’t attempt to adjust the ph of the bokashi unless it’s extremely acid, but I’m not sure that even that is a necessity.

I only wish I had more worms to work with.

~Martin

**mdvpc** · April 11, 2012

I bought a 50 lb sack of bran from a feed store for about $15.00 and am using that. I mix that with the EM1, mollasses, sea salt and let it work for 2 weeks, then dry it.

Timbotide · April 11, 2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdvpc

I bought a 50 lb sack of bran from a feed store for about $15.00 and am using that. I mix that with the EM1, mollasses, sea salt and let it work for 2 weeks, then dry it.

Do you dry your bran in direct sunlight or in the shade? I have wanted to dry mine in direct sunlight but some say that the UV light will kill off the beneficial organisms.

Tim

spacetogrow · April 11, 2012

A friend of mine mentioned that he gets plastic buckets with lids, in various sizes, free from the bakery staff of his grocery store. I tried it at mine and was given several.

I'm still on my first small bucket of bokashi. Made my own with rice and newspaper. So far, it's working fine, except that I don't have much kitchen waste to put in it this time of year, and am getting a little impatient to see how it turns out. Suppose I could stop at half full if I wanted to...

I did want to tweak one thing, though. This winter, I had to dry the newspapers inside the house. Even though they didn't smell spoiled at all, I found that I just didn't care for the smell of fermented molasses as the newspapers dried. I have a bunch of honey that I could use in the next batch. Has anyone heard about using honey? Anything that I should think about before I use it?

DiggingDogFarm · April 11, 2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by spacetogrow

I have a bunch of honey that I could use in the next batch. Has anyone heard about using honey? Anything that I should think about before I use it?

Honey is fine to use.
Use the same amount as the molasses.

~Martin

**mdvpc** · April 12, 2012

Tim

I have mine drying in the greenhouse, they get sun. No problem.

Crandrew · April 18, 2012

so if you had to select one method of composting which would you chose?
-Vermicompst
-BokashiCompost

Im trying to decide which path to take. thanks everyone.

April 11, 2012	#48
DiggingDogFarm Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: New York State Posts: 286	The bran is added after the innoculant is extended. You basically add an innoculant, ferment without air and then dry. The bran, or in your case, spent brewing grain, is just a carrier....the carrier can be almost anything organic. I used newspaper. You also don't need those expensive buckets with a gate, a plain bucket will do, as long as it seals. The following was from my website: Making your own Bokashi Starter. Getting started (Part One) Collecting wild lactobacillus. Making your own bokashi starter culture in place of commercially available EM is incredibly easy. My goal from the start was to produce bokashi compost without the use of expensive EM, bran or fancy buckets. The most important component of the commercial EM in relation to bokashi is lactobacillus bacteria, the others are secondary (if at all necessary) and can be cultured in the bucket when conditions are favorable. I culture my own lactobacillus serum starting with a rice wash water solution. Making the serum is amazingly simple. I mix one part rice thoroughly with two parts water (1/2 a cup to one cup). Mix thoroughly and vigorously. Drain. The resulting water should be cloudy. Place the rice water in a container with 50-75% head space allowing plenty of air to circulate. Cover lightly (air should be able to move in and out of the container) and place in a cool dark spot for 5-8 days. At the end of the wait the mixture should smell mildly sour. Strain out any particles. Getting started (Part Two) Purifying the lactobacillus. Put the finished rice water solution in a bigger container and add 10 parts milk (I use skim). DO NOT seal tightly, the gases must be able to escape. Allow 14 days for a complete ferment, most of the solids in the milk will float to the top revealing the yellowish serum. Strain off the solids. You now have purified lactobacillus serum. Getting started (Part Three) Newspaper bokashi. Instead of using expensive bran I ferment newspaper to use between the layers of compost in the bucket. I take one part lactobacillus serum to one part molasses to six parts water. (label and freeze any extra serum) I soak a bunch of newspapers thoroughly in the mixture and drain well. I place the soaked newspapers in a 2 gallon zip lock baggie, remove all the air and seal. Place in a cool dark spot and wait 10 days to 2 weeks to get a good fermentation. After the fermentation process I separate and dry the newspaper. It’s now the carrier for the bacteria. Yogurt whey as a starter culture. If you don’t want to take the time to collect your own free indigenous lactobacillus starter culture (Parts One and Two), you can use live active yogurt whey, the yellowish liquid drained when making yogurt cheese. Simply replace the one part of lacto serum in step three with the yogurt whey. Starting a newspaper bokashi bucket. After the bokashi newspaper has thoroughly dried, it’s now the carrier for the digestive lacto bacteria. I bought inexpensive snap-top buckets from Wal-Mart for about $5.00 each, the lids snap on and off easily, especially with the addition of a little olive oil rubbed around the rim. I don’t bother with a drain….I place 1 to 2 inches of dry absorbent material in the bottom of the bucket (peat, shredded newspaper, or clean sawdust) and pack well. To start the bucket I place a piece of the bokashi newspaper on top of the absorbent material, just enough to cover….then I start adding waste (chopped up)…up to a 1/2 inch layer at a time…add a piece of newspaper between each and every layer until the bucket is full….packing each layer well helps ensure a good fermentation. (I use a potato masher.) That’s about all there is to it. Oh, I’ve been experimenting with adding a tablespoon of healthy garden soil to the bucket after it’s started well (4-5 days) to culture more of the naturally occurring anaerobic digestive microorganisms, but I’m convinced it’s not necessary. The bokashi compost with just the lacto decomposed quickly in the garden and in my worm bins. Newspaper bokashi secrets. Well, not really secrets, mostly common sense. I’ve never had a failed newspaper bokashi bucket when following these simple rules. 1. Start the bucket with a 1 to 2 inch layer of absorbent materials. (shredded newspaper, peat, sawdust or something similar.) This layer will soak up any excess nutrient drainage. (There’s nothing wrong with faucet buckets, other than the expense. I just prefer to keep things as cheap and easy as possible.) 2. Start your newspaper bokashi bucket with a layer of high carbohydrate waste. This jump starts the fermentation process ensuring success. 3. Place a piece of newspaper between each layer of waste. Make the layers no more than 1/2 an inch think. This ensures that the beneficial bacteria will spread throughout the waste quickly. 4. Chop the waste into small pieces, if possible. This gives the bacteria a larger surface area to feed upon. It also leads to faster final decomposition or digestion when your bokashi is buried, added to worm bins or added to an aerobic compost pile. 5. Compress the layers of waste tightly. This helps exclude air and helps transfer beneficial bacteria throughout the waste rapidly. (I place a piece of bokashi newspaper on top of the waste and press with a potato masher, there’s no mess as with bran bokashi. ) 6. Never add spoiled waste to a bokashi bucket. Rotten and moldy waste will introduce rogue organisms that can cause a bucket to fail. 7. Always close the lid lightly to exclude air. 8. Do not add excess amounts of fluids to your bokashi bucket. 9. Collect waste throughout the day and add to the bucket at the end of the day. This minimizes exposure to outside air. 10. Add waste at least once a day. It’s usually not a problem to skip a day or two occasionally, once the bucket is well established. Good luck with your newspaper bokashi!!!! ~Martin __________________ "The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can shoot and trap out of it!" Last edited by DiggingDogFarm; April 11, 2012 at 04:42 PM.

April 11, 2012	#50
mdvpc Tomatoville® Moderator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: San Antonio, Texas Posts: 4,386	Martin Good job! I do buy the commercial EM starter, but a quart lasts me 2-3 years. I bought two buckets from Home Depot, drilled holes in the. Bottom of one, put that bucket inside the other. That way, I capture the liquid run-off and use it as a foliar feed or soil drench. __________________ Michael

April 11, 2012	#54
DiggingDogFarm Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: New York State Posts: 286	For what it's worth, I feed the bokashi to my compost worms, they love the stuff. Here's how I got started with the whole deal several years ago..... Again, from and old website post: I’m a big fan of coupling bokashi with worm composting. Worms can take much more acidity then some folks think. I learned a long time ago that low temperature composting is the way to compost when maximum available nutrients are the goal. I got started with vermiculture a long time ago, vermiculture ALWAYS produces compost far superior to high heat methods. Bokashi compliments vermiculture. I noticed at a neighbors farm a few years ago that compost worms were thriving in corn silage that had spilled down around the outside of the silo, I had always read that acidity was bad for worms and that they wouldn’t do well in low PH, turns out that was a lie, not only were they thriving they were converting the fermented silage into castings at a rapid rate (the silage was acidic enough so that I could feel a slight burning sensation on the scratches on my hand). It wasn’t long after that that I stumbled upon the bokashi thing while searching composting videos on youtube. I immediately said to myself, all this is is ensiling, it was then that I started experimenting. So, not only is the bokashi broken down fairly rapidly by the worms, the waste is also stabilized for long periods of time so I can ration it out to the worms. I wouldn’t attempt to adjust the ph of the bokashi unless it’s extremely acid, but I’m not sure that even that is a necessity. I only wish I had more worms to work with. ~Martin __________________ "The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can shoot and trap out of it!"

April 11, 2012	#55
mdvpc Tomatoville® Moderator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: San Antonio, Texas Posts: 4,386	I bought a 50 lb sack of bran from a feed store for about $15.00 and am using that. I mix that with the EM1, mollasses, sea salt and let it work for 2 weeks, then dry it. __________________ Michael

April 12, 2012	#59
mdvpc Tomatoville® Moderator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: San Antonio, Texas Posts: 4,386	Tim I have mine drying in the greenhouse, they get sun. No problem. __________________ Michael

April 10, 2012	#46
Timbotide Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Northport Alabama Posts: 304	How is everyone's Bokashi efforts progressing? I have made several batches of the Bokashi Bran and have not had a batch fail yet. I've been adding small amounts of the bran to my seedling mix and so far so good, no damping off this year. Tim

April 11, 2012	#47
Full Moon Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Montréal, Canada Posts: 347	This thread is a fascinating read. I got caught looking up the links, reading and watching videos for the last few hours. At one point it got me thinking about using the spent grains from my husband's beer brewing. He brews ALOT! I found a link where there is a recipe using the spent grains but it is either not clearly written or more probably because of my english reading skills but I don't understand how to do it. Can someone please explain to me where/when in this recipe he uses the beer grains? In the barn, Flannery begins the process of making his own “EM-bokashi” out of waste grains donated from a local brewery in Novato. First, Flannery has concocted a 50-gallon mixture of “extended EM” which is combined with the brewery waste to make the bokashi. This liquid “EM-EX” mixture is formed by mixing 1 gallon of EM-1 concentrate, 1 gallon of molasses (to activate the life forms), 2 tablespoons of EM-X (a highly concentrated form of EM), and two tablespoons of EM ceramic powder. The rest of the 50-gallon drum is filled with water, sealed, and left to ferment anaerobically for fourteen days. After two weeks have passed, the next step is to ferment the bokashi in another 50-gallon drum by adding two parts wheat bran to one part rice bran, 1 tablespoon of molasses, one tablespoon of EM-1, and four gallons of the activated EM-EX solution. The solution is combined with the dried bran and fermented for eight days. At this point, Flannery’s “beautiful blonde bokashi” is ready to use on the farm, but can be stored in the airtight containers for up to a year’s time. Thanks Lyne

April 11, 2012	#52
vermiit Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: z 14, California Posts: 137	Interesting! I had never heard of it before. I just started a Kombucha culture, and this is in the same vein. I have more research to do now...

April 11, 2012	#53
janezee Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Whidbey Island, WA Zone 7, Sunset 5 Posts: 931	Awesome, Martin! Thanks so much for that information. It is sooooooo expensive to buy the activated bran here ($18/lb) that I've been reluctant to use it. I'll have to start saving my newspaper junk mail for this!

April 11, 2012	#57
spacetogrow Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: MN zone 4 Posts: 359	A friend of mine mentioned that he gets plastic buckets with lids, in various sizes, free from the bakery staff of his grocery store. I tried it at mine and was given several. I'm still on my first small bucket of bokashi. Made my own with rice and newspaper. So far, it's working fine, except that I don't have much kitchen waste to put in it this time of year, and am getting a little impatient to see how it turns out. Suppose I could stop at half full if I wanted to... I did want to tweak one thing, though. This winter, I had to dry the newspapers inside the house. Even though they didn't smell spoiled at all, I found that I just didn't care for the smell of fermented molasses as the newspapers dried. I have a bunch of honey that I could use in the next batch. Has anyone heard about using honey? Anything that I should think about before I use it?

April 18, 2012	#60
Crandrew Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: asdf Posts: 1,202	so if you had to select one method of composting which would you chose? -Vermicompst -BokashiCompost Im trying to decide which path to take. thanks everyone.