Bokashi

I think in fall of 2006--it was shortly after I joined the Yahoo Edible Container List, at any rate, that I started to feel a little funny about the amount of stuff I was putting into the trash, and I quietly wished I had room to compost. I live on the second floor of a house--I rent, so setting up some big project in the yard was out of the question. It didn't occur to me that I COULD pull this off until the Bokashi system was mentioned on the Yahoo list.

This things works PERFECTLY in an apartment enviroment. It is meant for scraps and stuff, but I do put some of my garden waste in to it too. It uses a 5 gallon bucket that you dump your scraps in (and you can even put meat scraps into it, and paper towels, tea bags, all that sort of stuff) and then add a handful of wheat bran that is impregnanted with microbes. Once your bucket is full, you sprinkle in some more wheat bran and keep the bucket closed for 2 weeks (or longer.)

After 2 weeks you have scraps that are pickled. They don't smell GREAT--very vinegary--but its not horrible either. What you are supposed to do at this point is go dig a hole and bury the contents of the bucket, and then wait another 2 weeks and plant away. What I do is dump the bucket into a 55 gallon trash bin, and cover it with dirt from old pots, or bury some directly into the bigger containers I use or tomatoes. I can testify that in 2 weeks, stuff you bury in a trash bin will turn into nice compost. You do want to cut up stuff, because bigger chunks (corn cobs, avacado pits...ask me how I know) don't break down so quickly. Sometimes you get white fluffy mold in the bucket...that's OK.

While the bucket is initially composting, it makes a liquid you can use as plant food, or just dump down the drain. You're supposed to drain the liquid off every 48 hours...I don't do that so often.

You can probably make your own Bokashi buckets--or you can buy them. You can also buy the bran or if you're really hardcore and have space, you can make your own. Arbico Organics has the buckets and bran, but I will warn you, the bran can take WEEKS to arrive so don't wait until you're nearly out to order it. I have 2 buckets which works well for me--it takes me about a month to fill one. I'm emptying one this weekend, actually.

This is a really excellent explanation of how the system works My bucket lives under my kitchen sink, and you'd never know it was there. I use the liquid that come soff the bucket as plant food, as I mentioned--its about 240 ml (4 ounces) to 2 gallons of water. That stuff does smell a little, but it dissipates quickly.

So, the upshot-if you live in an apartment, you can still recycle your organic stuff pretty easily and in a way your landlord won't even know you're doing!