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Bokashi for beginners: what is it, and what can it do for me?

O

organicterra

Member
Ok I'm getting ready to make a new batch of bran and wanted to throw this recipe out there for opinions.
40lb wheat bran
3/4 cup AEM
3/4 cup molasses
4 gallons water

also:
1 cup fish meal
1 cup fish bone meal
1 cup glacial rock dust
1/4 cup sea salt

Whaddya think?
 
C

CC_2U

organicterra said:
Ok I'm getting ready to make a new batch of bran and wanted to throw this recipe out there for opinions.
40lb wheat bran
3/4 cup AEM
3/4 cup molasses
4 gallons water

also:
1 cup fish meal
1 cup fish bone meal
1 cup glacial rock dust
1/4 cup sea salt

Whaddya think?
Click to expand...

Looks good to me! If you wanted to use this as a soil amendment you could go much higher on your meals and rock dust. A batch that I did was (by volume) 50% rice bran and 50% a mix of neem, fish meal, fish bone meal and alfalfa) with 5 lbs. of glacial rock dust.

There's a link towards the beginning of this thread with a link to a community project from India using EM-1 - check out the amounts of fish and such in that project.

If you're wanting to 'bokashi' some fruits, vegetables, et al. it is not necessary to go through the process of making 'bokashi bran' first - not at all. Depends on your situation........

CC
 
johnnybsmokin

johnnybsmokin

Active member
Hey all
Picked up a 30 kilo bag of bran the other day for $17 so it's time to make some bokashi bran with my Em-1. This amount should last me for ever..lol.

On another note my first bin has been full now for about 2 weeks, lots of white fluff growing on top and juice out of the bottom. It seem that my DIY buckets are working well, now to give it another week or so to ferment and then out it goes into the garden and compost and worm bins.

Also, has any body made use of the juice as a fert.??, so far been using it down the drain holes and also into the compost piles but am a little unsure of it as a fert regime. Any one care to give there 2 cents worth??

Cheers Johnny
 
C

CascadeFarmer

So in the last 6 weeks I've made 6 5 gallon buckets of bokashi. I've got 3 5 gallon bucket sets. It seems I get two kinds of liquid discharges. For the most part I get a very thin slightly red/purple liquid and less often I've gotten a thicker yellow/brown liquid.

I usually try and make sure no rotten material gets into the buckets. Don't know why I'm seeing the difference. I get most of my stuff from the local health food store so pretty consistent input to my buckets.

Maybe some strain of anaerobic bacteria takes over instead of the lactobaccilus? I dunno about that cause I overload on the bokashi bran in my mix. My last bucket was thin red/purple discharge and the bucket I just started is thicker yellow/brown.
 
mad librettist

mad librettist

Active member
Veteran
heya cascade, don't worry too much about the quality of the discharge. Instead, aim for no discharge at all!

The best fermentation will occur when there is enough water in the material, but not too much extra. The drain is to help you get to that point.
 
C

CascadeFarmer

mad librettist said:
heya cascade, don't worry too much about the quality of the discharge. Instead, aim for no discharge at all!

The best fermentation will occur when there is enough water in the material, but not too much extra. The drain is to help you get to that point.
Click to expand...
Thing I have access to is a lot of veggie and fruit scraps. Hard not to have any discharge.

Oh yeah...the reddish buckets smell like strong sauerkraut and the last yellowish bucket smells like shit...literally.
 
mad librettist

mad librettist

Active member
Veteran
shit not so good, sauerkraut good.

you can chop things up small and set them out to dry before adding to the bucket, or use way more bran.

you could even cut your bokashi bran with regular bran. fermented sprinkled on, then a thick layer of straight bran.


I wonder if bokashi can catch a virus like yogurt can?
 
C

CascadeFarmer

I tore those buckets apart and threw them in a trench in a small bin I built to house my outdoor weed/herb composting project and once I cracked the seal on the plastic bag covering things and broke it apart was definitely sweeter smelling. When you cracked the bucket seal or smelled the liquid discharge it was like...yikes!

I'm building 2 more 5 gallon buckets this week and we'll see what happens.

Here's the bucket I got going. I filled it, let it settle 2 days, then filled it again. I found it like this in the morning so drained the liquid and just checked it after about 6 hours and it's filled again. First bucket to do anything like this. It's just bubbling away!

One thing I was wondering is why can't you just inoculate a new bucket with discharge from an in-process bucket?
 
C

CascadeFarmer

I think I made bokashi soup this time. It's bubbling like crazy. Smells good though. The bucket is not draining well and may have to tear it apart, rebuild and make 2 buckets out of it. If it would just drain better I'd be happy.
 
C

CascadeFarmer

mad librettist said:
i made bokashi soup when I followed good advice poorly.

the advice was to use a bag of water as a weight on top.
Click to expand...
I used a plastic bag to seal the top, a dinner plate to cover/encompass the top and then put a weight on the plate. What's the difference? I've used the same method since the beginning and for whatever reason this batch is like quicksand. A big mushy mess...lol. I should probably keep some general records of what's going in the buckets I build. I mean like fruit and veggie scraps I chop up and mix with bokashi bran and that's pretty much it.

Anyway...bokashi soup this time :)
 
C

CascadeFarmer

My bokashi soup turned out excellent! Eventually it started to drain well. Dumped all of the juice into an outdoor compost bin I got going and buried the bokashi in my outdoor growing bin.

Thx for the thread Mad...learned a lot and added a new tool to my organic growing setup.
 
Scrappy4

Scrappy4

senior member
Veteran
Forgive me if this has been covered already, but has anyone made bakashi with lacto B instead of EM1? Scrappy
 
H

Harry Hoosier

Greetings! Allow me to explain my situation and then a question or two if I may?

I have almost unlimited availability of fresh produce. I could easily bring home 2 five gallon buckets daily and may do exactly that.

I have my LaB serum made but see no reason to introduce it to a carrier such as bran.

Can I just spray the diluted serum directly into a bucket full of produce and seal it and let the fermenting begin?

Thanks, Harry
 
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