We often get asked by our customers exactly what can and cannot be put into their kitchen Bokashi Bins. With a Bokashi Composter you can compost food and vegetable scraps in the kitchen, without the fear of smells by using EM’s – Effective Microrganisms!
Every time you have scraps to throw, be it meat fish or vegetable, just open the lid and drop them in the Bokashi Bucket along with a ‘sprinkling’ of the Bokashi Bran and re-seal the lid.
When the bucket is full, leave for two weeks with the lid sealed and then either dig the resultant Bokashi into the garden or add to your compost heap. As the Bokashi is ‘composting’ in the Bokashi bucket, a nutrient rich liquor is produced which is collected by using the tap on the bucket every couple of days.
Dilute the liquor with water at 1:100 and use as plant feed throughout the home and garden.
However in answer to the question, basically, you can add any food waste – but not liquids or wet foods!
Apart form veg scraps, meat and fish you can also add bread, however don’t add things that have already started to go moldy. Tea bags are also fine, but let them drain off surplus liquid before adding. The liquid ‘aspect’ is very important, because if the contents of the bokashi bucket becomes too wet, the EM microbes will suffer and the contents will start to rot.
When the bucket is working properly, you will might start to see white mold growing on the contents and will have a distinctive vinegary smell. When you have left the contents to ferment for the 2 weeks when full, they will look very similar to when they went in and not like traditional compost! See below.
Bokashi Compost
The scraps have been in this bucket for at least four months and as you can see, little has changed. It is this fact that confuses some first time users of the bokashi system. The contents have been preserved by the action of the lactic acid bacteria in the EM bran and at the same time they are being fermented by the other EMs. In other words, bokashi compost is completely different to traditional compost – it hasn’t heated up like a compost bin and so therefore no ‘energy’ has been lost to the atmosphere, meaning that it will all end up in the soil to be used by both the soil microbes and your plants.
When you dig it into the garden, it will disappear V rapidly, but do note, that as it is acidic, leave it for a few weeks before planting on top. You can also add it to a traditional compost bin, to boost it’s efficiency.
Hope that helps and a huge thank you to Simon for answering that very frequently asked question!
