I thought I would pop in and update anyone who is interested about my bokashi adventures.
 |
| The bokashi bucket, all ready to go |
We have had our bokashi bucket for about 2 weeks now and it's almost full and time to seal up! Initially I was curious as to how it would all go, would we find it helpful or a hindrance?
B has mostly been away while we have had it, and we have basically already decided that this is my thing lol... trying to explain to him how it works, while simple, it's really not something that he wanted to worry about.
But, it really doesn't take up any time at all! It's fantastic! At the end of each day, I take our food scraps, and pop them into this bin, give it a few sprays of the bokashi EM spray and seal it all back up again!
I try to only do this once a day as it does work on an anaerobic (no oxygen) basis. I usually keep our scraps in a container or plate until night time. I also go through the fridge and see what needs to be thrown away and add that in too.
 |
| Where the bucket is located in our little kitchen |
What I love about the bucket is that anything we would usually eat can go in there! In fact, when I went to take the bins out for collection on Sunday night, I put our one and only rubbish bag for the week in there... along with a full recycling bin! How fantastic is that!! For a family of 3, we only had one bag of rubbish as we had either recycled or composted the rest! There wasn't a single food scrap that went into the rubbish bin!
Our bin does have a lot of processed foods in it, as admittedly our life seems to be one of convenience atm, but even so, it still has a lot of fresh foods in there too. A quick list of things that are in there atm are:
- pizza
- bread
- egg shells
- yoghurt
- shallots
- carrots
- capsicum
- chicken
- paper towels
- tomato
- avocado
- mandarins (peel and all)
- banana (peel and all)
- pasta
- fish
- chips
- coffee grounds
That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but you can see that it has a bit of everything in it!
 |
| Just to give you a look inside... |
The process is actually quite simple. Once you have the bin set up, you place your food scraps in (cut up smaller if possible, although I have been a little slack in doing this), push it down with the little tool they give you. This helps to push the air out of it. Then you give it a couple of sprays of the EM spray and seal the container back up, making sure that the seal is tight so that no air can get in.
There is also a fantastic liquid that comes out of it, that is excellent for the garden (it does need to be diluted), or you can pour it down the drain to clean them out!! Now, I actually haven't had any liquid from mine in 2 weeks, but after a little research I have found out that you won't get much liquid if there are a lot of processed foods in there as the fresh foods will release more liquid (makes sense). On further thought, I also think it could be because I lined the bottom of the bucket with pizza, which I think would probably soak it all up.
 |
| See how full it is? |
I am ok with this as there is no smell coming from the container... which is something that I was worried about... everyone says it shouldn't smell bad, but have a faint "pickling" smell... if it smells bad then something has gone wrong. I am very happy to say that mine has that pickling smell and nothing is mouldy or gross in there!!
Speaking of mould, once the bucket is full, it needs to be sealed for at least 10 days, 2 weeks preferably. During this time it will ferment and will grow white mould. if it grows green mould then it has had too much air in the bucket. The white mould is good and it's the microbes at work.
Once it has fermented the food scraps can be placed into the composter or straight into the garden bed. It is acidic at this point, but needs the soil to be able to decompose. The food scraps also won't decompose in the bucket, so if you open it up and nothing is happening... this is a good thing!
 |
| Our Composter |
One of the main reasons why I decided to give this a go was actually that I had realised that my soil was really depleted of nutrients from when I was gardening. The soil wasn't retaining any water and through research I found that it's because I wasn't putting any organic matter back into it. I was going to just get a composter (which I did, see pics), but while I was researching I realised that I could only put certain foods in there... whereas with the bokashi I could put any food scraps in there and then put it into the composter. This way I can make sure I will have enough organic matter (bokashi, composter and worm farm) to be able to build up a great veggie patch and garden.
 |
| The first scraps added to the composter |
I thought I would also post up a couple of videos by the CompostJunkie that I came across as I really like his videos the most from when I was researching (and he's not bad looking either! haha!)
I also came across another great site called Greening of Gavin - he is an Aussie who after watching An Inconvenient Truth (btw - love this movie) set about changing is and his family's lifestyle to be able to improve their carbon footprint! Amazing!!! I first read about it in the "Your Veggie Patch" magazine.
Anyway... this post turned into a bit more of a novel than I was expecting... but can I just say that I love my bokashi bucket!
