Project Restart: Resupply

Bought myself a new bottle of EM-1. Though it doesn't say that on the label...

Back when I started playing with bokashi, I did the math and determined that buying the liquid inoculant plus molasses and bran was much cheaper than purchasing dried EM bokashi bran. It's even cheaper if you activate the EM-1, which can be used as is, skipping the bran altogether, or used to inoculate a dry carrier if that's the preference*.

That math is still correct, but there was no way this bottle was going to be as cheap as my first. My local bokashi product retailer doesn't currently offer it, and Whole Foods no longer carries EM-1 (grr!). I didn't feel up to even the minor hassle of having it ordered through Sun Harvest or trying to talk my local feed store into shelving a case, so I went ahead and ordered it online, painful shipping charges and all.

Before the fire, I'd been planning to buy one of the line extension products, and I was nearly finished with my second round of a test for posting, so I went ahead and purchased what I'd need to pick up where I'd left off: one bottle of EM-1, a bag of EM bokashi bran from the same source as the liquid inoculant, and the item I'd been planning to buy, “EM Plus,” which is a recipe variant--same ingredients as EM-1, but with more rhodobacters.

I'm very fond of those, and have been wondering what effect extras might have in a bucket and as a cleanser. (Think trash bins.) But my garden budget is pretty much always in the negative, and I try not to let the blog-project cost me more than I save in produce costs, so I'd been putting it off, hoping I'd see it locally--shipping liquids is expensive.

That was before the fire. After, I needed to replace my EM. Immediately. While I have had some success with a few of the homebrew recipes, I'm not confident enough in any of those to give up on my brand-name EM--added to which, all the homebrew recipes take a while to make. I needed a source of EM to keep my buckets going and to use for non-bucket applications (chiefly cleaning right now), so time for a little spending.

There are two retailers on the trial list just now, but only one of them offered EM Plus. Except that they've changed the label. Mighty Microbes now sells it as SCD ProBio Balance Plus (Previously Sold as SCD EM Plus). It's not the only change; my EM-1 is ProBio Balance Original (Previously Sold as SCD EM Original), and the EM bokashi bran is All Seasons Bokashi(TM) – Compost Starter, Soil Inoculant – with SCD Probiotics Inside.

With the new packaging, you have to search to find any reference to EM! There's no "EM" at all on the bokashi packaging--which refers to “ancient Japanese farmers” but doesn't mention Dr. Higa, who is pretty much universally credited as the creator of the EM formula; there's nothing at all EM or bokashi-related on the Plus package, which focuses on probiotics; and the Original, formerly known as EM-1, has only this small reference:

SCD Probiotics Mother Culture ™ is made using the principles of effective microorganism (EM) applied science.

I wondered, but all become clear with the last line on the label:

SCD Probiotics is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by EM Research Organization, Inc. or their affiliates.

Hmm. Part of me wonders at the backstory. Part of me worries if the next step after label-changes might not be product withdrawals. (I need my EM!) Most of me, however, is just happy to have my microbes back.

At least for now.

DSF





*I typically do a bit of each, buying retail EM bokashi bran only for experimental purposes, as gifts, or to keep in my hiking kit, as I find it drying it myself not worth the hassle.

What's worse than vacation pictures?

How about bad compost-ana shots? No, I don't mean failed compost--just bad photos. Since it seems I can't keep even a really good camera alive for more than two years, nor take a single good photo in that time, I went with the cheapest little keyfob camera I could find.

Hey, if I can't see Repulsive through the tiny little coke-glass viewfinder, maybe I won't wince. As much.






This is what my tower-made vermicompost typically looks like. Unfiltered, not wet, solid enough to cake but not heavy. No worms, as they've moved up to the next planter, but though I never see any cocoons, they must be there, since baby worms hatch in the bags if I package this stuff up.





This is vermi-mud. Those folks who water their wormeries are probably familiar with this; in my case, it's the result of heavy fall rains backing up a reservoir and then some. It's been drained and drying for nearly a week now...






This is what the BSFL folks have started to call "grub pudding." I tried to get a picture that shows the little craters and all the tiny grubs still sluggishly moving, but if I didn't succeed, I don't think I'll mourn long. That blur in the lower left corner is a grub squirming toward me! Yecch. (-G-)

Grub pudding may look a lot like soggy vermicompost, but they are not the same.

The pictured pudding is finished--the grubs still present will die if I don't do anything, as there isn't sufficient nourishment remaining for them to mature, and it's too warm and too wet in that container for them to go dormant. The grubs can't process this material any further. But that isn't to say this is a finished compost.

A general-purpose dictionary might; but in a gardener's lexicon, compost is safe to use in nearly all situations and beneficial ditto. Oh, there are exceptions, plants that need to be starved and so on, but say compost to the average gardener and the matching concept is of a homogeneous, stable, variably textured but typically humus-like material rich in plant-accessible nutrients, that can be applied as top- or side-dressing, used as mulch or mixed into the soil, with no safety concerns and few contraindications.

Grub pudding is not stable; adding it to plantings will usually result in nutrient sequestration, seldom (if ever!) a desired outcome. Nor is it likely to improve soil tilth, another of compost's benefits. Grub poo is too fine to hold air, though water it can do. Then there's the nourishment concern; ignoring the sequestration issue, there are some plant-accessible nutrients, but how many and of what sort can be difficult to determine. In large part, it depends on what you fed the grubs; also, on what non-food techniques you employ. And as if that's not discouraging enough, there may be undesirable bacteria in finished grub pudding, also depending on what you fed the grubs, and how large the colony*.






Speaking of feeding. This is worm-food waiting to be fed. UCG from a coffeeshop, dried leaves from a chem-free neighbor, and AIM. Poor photo even in context, I know, but the leaves are pale thanks to mycelial bloom, beginning to break down.






This is a bokashi bag that should have been planted about a month ago. Don't know how much you can tell from this picture, but the bag is still identifiably a bag, while the materials within are well on their way to homogeneous etc. And, unlike grub pudding, nutrient sequestration doesn't seem to be an issue--I'm guessing the bokashi juice supplies nourishment to the plant for that first span.






And finally, a recipe I'm going to have to try again: one part each bokashi, dried leaves, and coco coir, fed to worms. This isn't a finished vermicast product, but a lightweight potting mix with a lively microbial profile and incredible results in my just-barely-started seedling mix tests. Not quite ready to use, as there are still identifiable bits, but that's my determining factor. Takes about a month, comparable to hot-composting, but with at least some of the benefits of vermicompost, and not so rich it can't be used straight (which finished vermicompost cannot be, as a seeding medium). This batch looks about a week away from harvest-time.

And I just couldn't resist the image with one Verne-bit too stubborn to leave. Sun had largely set, anyway, so not much light to bother him, and I don't think worms are photo-phobic in the other sense.

There really was a reason for this post, but I forget. Maybe I need a vacation...

DSF



*I don't worry about undesirable microbes, since Repulsive receives generous doses of EM. Nor is that additional processing a problem. These days, my grubbery is the top of a tower, with a wormery planter just beneath; all I have to do is harvest now and then. It's not perfect--fewer adult BSF find the unit than are necessary for a really vigorous population. if the goal is just to dispose of food, it works, but I have an experiment I've been planning for winter, and I may resort to bait bags once before the weather turns, to ensure a large enough colony.

Eye of Newt?

image from Cartoonstock, and I want it on a T-shirt!

Been re-testing my IMO recipes lately—that's Indigenous Mico-Organisms, also known as Beneficial Indigenous Microbes or BIM, and searched for most often on this blog by folks searching for a wholly non-retail solution.

In other words, EM you don't have to buy every so often. Or ever.

Not all IMO is EM, but by definition, all EM is IMO; the formulation of retail EM differs by region or country. If you live in an area with glorious, gorgeous, healthy “plant a seed and stand back” soil, you probably have all the IMO you need for everyday purposes. Maybe a little extra dose of rhodobacter(s) if you wanted to process manures, or for indoor fermentation, but otherwise, at least for outdoor composting & gardening, you're set.

I do not live in such an area, and even if my part of Austin were as lush as virgin, unpolluted rainforest, my soil comes in bags from the store and spends its useful life in plastic planters, aka buckets, wholly divorced from the soilweb. So I need microbes. EM bokashi bran suits my situation well, and buying a bottle of EM-1 every year, plus molasses and wheat bran (and scrounging/buying assorted other possible carriers) is still cheaper than buying decent quality bagged compost from the garden center. I've even been known to spring for the packaged EM bokashi bran*, though it really doesn't take much longer to mix a baby batch of bran than to log on to an e-tailer site and place an order.

So if I'm happy with the retail model, why do I play with IMO? The same reason I'm still playing with this blog-project—there aren't enough answers out there yet! Bokashi is still relatively new, and it's the retailers who are driving such limited education as exists. Some of those retailers...well.

I've had several very positive interactions with bokashi-product-related retailers. I've also run across some who would have kept me from ever trying bokashi had I been unlucky enough to encounter them first. (Naming no names, I shall say only that “if you don't have a house, bokashi is not for you” is not a helpful message, and “composting equals polluting” isn't exactly the right approach, either.)

But worse than retailer-roulette is the idea of no retailers at all. My local Whole Foods used to carry EM-1 in the floral department; no longer. Austin has a local bokashi producer now, but the company's summer hiatus can be a problem—and what about all those places without a local source? Also, yes, okay, there's the fact that I could buy more seeds or starts with that EM $$.

So sometimes I play with IMO recipes. [I promise, those posts are coming.] Checking on one my tests at some impossibly early hour of the morning when the sun wasn't even up yet, I caught myself muttering to remind myself of what I was doing, and even to my ears it sounded a whole lot like some fairy tale witch's shopping list.

Piloncillo, kombucha, vermicompost, coir, lactobacillus serum, acetobacter, SCOBY and PNSB--these aren't words normal people toss around before the first cup of coffee!

But it's years too late to worry about what that longago president used to refer to as normalcy. I'll be happy with verdant--and yummy. And a short-term foliar application of my AIM** just successfully resurrected a drought-crisped potted herb, so verdant and yummy is very much the order of the day.

Happy brewing!

DSF

*someone remind me to buy a second bag of the bran that got recalled, so I can finally post those results. Kthnx

**light mist, all over the plant's crisy-toasty leaves (hey, to all appearances they were dead anyhow), let sit about fifteen minutes and followed with a slightly heavier mist of water. And a camera wouldn't have helped this time, since it would never have occurred to me to take a picture of a dead herb, but I might have to stage a recreation, just for the before-and-after WOW!

A hole above the ground

Necessity is the mother of…Repulsive 2010 beta.


My usual spigots can’t handle grubbery leachate; it's pretty nearly sludge, thinner if the filter hasn't been dislodged yet but always muddy and with fine-silt particles that clog the tap. I can’t lift a full inner bucket right now to get at the lower one to empty it (wrist injury’s healing, but not yet fixed). And letting the reservoir back up into the unit is not an option. So I set the inner bucket on top of a soil-filled planter that had once been fitted out as a wormery--which means that it had ventilation holes on the sides and bottom, plus a drip-tray beneath. Also, since Verne has no concept of personal space or respect for ancestral colony gravebins, some worms.

This largish unit has about the same volume of soil beneath as potential food-and-grub volume above, and I’m not sure I’d try much less than that; eight inches of soil minimum, if my admittedly sketchy math is correct.

So far, it’s working quite well. A few grubs have no doubt squirmed into the soil, but most of them stay near the top, that being where food comes in. (I decided not to worry about it unless or until I saw a grub using the wormery part to escape; so far, no grubs have been sighted emerging from the soil layer or hatching in the soil-packed vent holes, and the mamas don't tend to bother probing them.) It's quite possible there are worms in the grubbery's inner bucket, but that's not a problem either, and the holes are there should any aggregate bit decide to move. Leachate seeps out of the grubbery into the soil, where it serves to keep the worms fed and moistened, and since soil regulates temperature and pH, there’s no need to worry about Verne no matter what the grubbery gets up to. Too, between the weight of the soil and the nesting of base and rim, plus the inevitable-here-in-Bucketville weight on top, the grubbery’s as nearly secure as I can make it. No human-perceptible odor escapes except when it's very wet--as in, after our recent storm-cycle--and then it smells like fertile wet soil, no trouble at all. Judging by the adults flying around, happy-BSFL pheromones are being produced and food-scent is perceptible to them, since despite crawl-off there's no population shortage on the horizon, but so long as my neighbors and I can't smell it, it's a success.

I'm kind of excited: a moisture-regulating grubbery means one less chore, and one less chance I might accidentally spot one of the aggregate bits that earned Repulsive his name. Well worth the temporary reallocation of a bucket of cheap dirt! Have to say, I’m not sure how well it’d work without worms in the soil layer and/or EM in the foodstuffs. Or, ideally, both. But since I do have both, this is a workable model for me.

At some point, of course, I’ll have to do something with the unit, but with any luck at all, that won't be until fall. Lure the last layers to an alternate location, let the grubs in the unit mature and crawl off or go dormant, let the worms work the bucket over the winter, and in spring and harvest a bucket or so of rich vermidirt and worms. From stuff I wasn't willing to feed my bokashi buckets.

The obvious next step is to test this as an urban pet waste disposal; I've had some success with temporary in-ground units, but that only works where you have a hole in the ground away and downslope from your garden! Too, that was to get rid of the leavings from the neighbors' dogs. The household feline's box is a very different matter. EM, obviously, but what then? I'd thought about BSFL before, but they don't like clay, and there remained the question of what to do about the remains in the bucket once they'd done their part.

Worms were also a possibility, of course, but they can't handle fresh liquid wastes. Grubs + worms seemed reasonable, except for everyone saying how difficult it is to maintain them together.

We shall, as ever, see.


Glad to be back,
DSF


Photo courtesy of USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service , where some very odd photo categories can be found!

Tales from the Bucket: Dark-Roast EM

I’ve been playing with used coffee grounds (UCG) in place of bran. Not the stuff I generate--I do drink a fair amount of coffee, but not that much, I don’t think--but coffeehouses hand the stuff out if you ask, and I frequent any number of the joints.

The last batch of caffeinated EM bokashi bran I made was, by my standards, very large: 40 cups of UCG, plus AEM and molasses and a pint or so of water. As UCG is damp-to-wet upon receipt, you need less water than in the basic recipe; other than that, and fishing out any filters (or teabags, depending on the coffeehouse), no changes need be made to the fermentation. This does require very fresh UCG, however; undesirable microbes will spoil the grounds in short order.

Takes about the same length of time to ferment UCG as wheat bran, completion judged by presence of mycelia, scent, and pH. It's tempting to dry some for use as a mulch--it looks right!--but that test shall wait until early spring, when heating the soil layer might not be altogether a bad thing. As with any EM source, it encourages hot-composting reactions when added to high-carbon (brown) materials. In contact with the scattered leaves atop my soil, and bits of same mixed in, I imagine it might burn roots in more than one sense, and my plants are already hot enough, thanks.

In a bucket, the EM+UCG encourages fermentation. Just like the bran-based stuff. I’m generous with my microbes, but no more generous with coffee-based than otherwise, and it works just as well in most situations, better in some (though not, I imagine, in a litter box or cage!).

As for the smell, any undried EM bokashi bran has a characteristic aroma. The coffee’s is stronger than the wheat bran’s, but my bokashi buckets have fair quantities of coffee grounds in them regardless, so there’s no real difference after the initial bucket-seeding. And if the smell of used coffee grounds were going to bother me, it likely would have long before now.

The only place I run into problems with UCG-based EM bokashi bran is while drying--solar drying seems so practical here in Austin, but Repulsive’s adult offspring are drawn to the scent of EM anyway, and they adore UCG, and have been known to penetrate my solar dryer to reach the stuff. Yecch! Some folks use their cars as enclosed solar dryers, but I have the same problem with that as I do with oven drying: I’m averse to filling my kitchen with odd odors, so oven-drying sweet-pickled coffee’s just not happening.

Oven-drying wheat-bran-based EM bokashi bran I’ve done, and it smells more like bran muffins than otherwise, so I can handle that. (Fairly strong undertone of kombucha during the first minutes, but not intolerable when the weather allows for open windows.) For the most part, I make my EM bokashi bran in small enough batches to use fresh, which is one less step and takes far less space, but that may not be practical for all people in all situations. In this case, I walked into a Starbucks and, on seeing their Grounds for the Garden basket empty, asked if they had any UCG. They gave me more than a bucket’s worth, double-bagged and so heavy I wished it had wheels. So I figured I might as well make a large batch. For one particular use, it wouldn’t matter if Repulsive got into it while drying--

But that’s another post, I think.

UCG as a carrier may not be the single greenest or most frugal choice, depending on your situation (transportation miles, unknown source of mixed beans, the temptation to wallet and waistline engendered by entering a coffeeshop in the first place...) But while wheat bran is cheap, free is often better, and UCG is a waste item anyway, having already served its purpose. So I thought it was worth trying.

Anyone know if songbirds are sensitive to caffeine? I know they can get drunk, at which point they fly into windows and lampposts and things. Do I have to make decaf coffee bran?

DSF

-G-

Tales from the bucket: the aquarium bucket

Actually, it's neither an aquarium nor a bucket, but half a globe terrarium I co-opted for a frugal experiment in low-tech aquaponics. My winter hydroponics experiments didn't go far enough--next time, I'm setting up a timer for the lights!-- but the lettuce grown on miniature rafts amused me. Easier than sprouts, even: mix the nutrient solution, add the sprouted seeds in their nests, wait, harvest. Repeat.

As for the lights...well, outside, there's no need to remember about switches and bulbs or anything. Of course, in Austin, still water is an invitation to disease-carrying and otherwise pestiferous mosquitos. Enter the goldfish, which will eat their eggs and/or larvae, and any gravid female flyer foolish enough to linger. And, hey! No need for nutrient solution, as the fish will take care of that.

Haven't found the precisely perfect balance of EM (for water conditioning) and vegetation for the unaerated four-gallon miniature pond, but the fish is alive despite my casual feeding and water-replenishing, and the only outdoor Texas summer lettuce I've ever grown was yummy, both heads of it. -G- I'm really surprised the fish is still alive, unboiled and undevoured after more than a month; had it lived long enough for me to harvest a single leaf of lettuce, I'd have called the test a nominal success, so my cautious two-head harvest certainly counts, and I'm now working on a more ambitious mixed-vegetation crop. Total cost: $0.60 for the fish, really. Everything else I either had or would have bought anyway. Not bad for two heads of chemical-free fresh locally grown lettuce! Still less if I can harvest a bit of Vietnamese coriander and maybe some other leafy greens...

The reduction in mosquito trouble may be my imagination, but even imaginary itch-relief is better than nothing. So the fish remains. Not a pet, just an earth-friendly pest control technique and fertilizer factory. There's no chance it'll be joined by any finny friends, as I simply haven't the space, and it probably won't last the winter if it gets to that point, but until then, or until the household feline or a neighborhood raider finds it, the microherd has yet another macro member.

And I have yet another bucket.

Help?

Cleaning House

I've been offline a lot lately, what with one thing and another. Fortunately, bokashi'ing and gardening have been among those things, so I have things to post about! But first a topic I keep forgetting to put up: using EM for cleaning.


If you buy your EM bokashi bran pre-mixed, you may be missing out. I began this ever-growing project with a bottle of liquid EM inoculant (cheaper and available locally, so there was no need to wait for delivery). Having the liquid EM around, of course I had to try some of the beyond-the-garden uses for the stuff!


Folks, you wouldn't believe some of the things people do with their EM. It's mixed into ceramic donuts and balls that are then added to pools and ponds to help clarify and purify the water. Used as a foliar feed for plants, mixed into drinking water for pets and livestock as well as a supplement to chicken feed, added to household cleansers, used as a cleanser itself, and even mixed into toothpastes and mouthwash.


Oh, did I forget the drinks? There are whole teahouse-like establishments devoted to EM products in Asia, and bottled drinks increasingly for sale in the West. As well as several sites where one can find recipes for brewing one's own from that same bottle of EM-1 used to make "magic bran."


While I have, out of curiosity, tasted freshly made AEM, I haven't yet gone so far as to make a beverage out of it. But I have used the spray as a deodorizer for the apartment trash bins, and upon seeing how very successful that was, experimented a bit with some of the other cleaning uses. While I don't find that it's a viable substitute for a proper cleanser on its own (maybe my floors and shower are excessively dirty?), it does seem to discourage the reappearance of mildew--no small feat!--and keep things clean longer than the cleansers alone.


It even works in the laundry. The usual retailer advice is not to use EM on dark fabrics, and judging by what happens to kitchen sponges, I'd say it's unwise to challenge that. But EM works very well to get kitchen towels clean, as well as the kitchen sink; even without hot water, there's no musty smell nor stains. And a strong dilution of AEM is far and away the best fridge-cleaner I have ever found! Safe for use on food, too, which is one less cause for concern when attempting to clean up a minor fridge spill.


One of these days, I really am going to have try an EM-X drink. At this stage in my life, I can't imagine that ingesting a few more soil-borne bacteria could hurt me!

Baby Batches of Bokashi Bran

Making EM bokashi bran a quart at a time

The EM America recipe for EM bokashi bran produces vast heaping quantities of the stuff, and requires fifty pounds of wheat bran!!! Even the smaller retailer-provided instructions begin with eight or ten pounds of bran. Bran takes up a fair amount of space for its weight: At seven plus cups per pound of bran, ten pounds is something like five gallons—which is a larger volume than my trash can, apartment-dweller that I am. And that’s before you consider mixing space or the way bran expands as it absorbs fluid.

It is, however, perfectly possible to make EM bokashi bran without first clearing enough space to raise a barn. (Or even a garden shed. -G-)

My wheat bran, I think I mentioned, came from the bulk section at Sun Harvest. $0.69/lb. list price. That’s a much better deal than the small packages in the cereal aisle, at $2.19/10 oz., and even if you’re only fermenting occasional small buckets, you might as well make at least a pound of EM bokashi bran at a time.

Why? This is why I write about “practical minimum volumes” instead of simply minimums: sometimes, while smaller is possible, it doesn’t make much sense. You could make EM bokashi bran a pint at a time, but why bother? It takes the same amount of time and effort. Cost? Bran is cheap! And bokashi bucket fermentation is far more likely to be successful if you’re generous, even profligate, with your EM bokashi bran.

My current bucket is 3.5 gallons. It’s just about half full, and there’s already more than a cup of EM bokashi bran in there—more than recommended, but not by much. If you only have a pint of EM bokashi bran on hand, you may be reluctant to add a scoop for luck. To toss in some more because those leftovers had cream sauce. To pre-apply in a holding bucket...

By all means, go ahead and ferment EM bokashi bran in smaller containers if you can’t spare a big bucket for the month or haven’t anywhere to put one; but you might as well mix up as large a batch as you’re likely to need. The make-at-home instructions include drying the post-ferment bran for storage; assuming you have the space for that, you could make enough EM bokashi bran for the year, all at once.

Me, I’m not so into the drying, and it’s not actually required if the EM bokashi bran will be used soon. Sources differ about just how long the undried product can be held without spoiling or losing effectiveness, and I’ll post about it if/when I manage to spoil some, but it won’t be a baby batch that happens to! One pound of EM bokashi bran at a time is right for my needs: it’s enough for at least two apartment-sized buckets, can be mixed up in the kitchen in a single container, without fuss or any need for odd utensils, and gets used quickly enough that there’s no need to worry about drying it.

To make one baby batch of EM bokashi bran:

Mix 1 tablespoon molasses into

1 cup warm water. When thoroughly blended, add

1 tablespoon EM-1 inoculant fluid.

Pour into 1 pound wheat bran or other inert carrier and mix well. Seal container and set aside three to four weeks before using; ready when coated with an even layer of white mycelium. DO NOT OPEN TO CHECK ON EM BOKASHI BRAN until at least two weeks have passed (warm season in zone 8b, add time for colder seasons/climes).

*Note: for my bulk bran, 1 pound = 7.2 cups dry. I’m not that precise, seven to seven and a quarter cups works just fine. Mix it in a container that looks about a third again too large for the dry bran, as it will expand as it absorbs water. (One of those plastic 34.5 oz coffee canisters is pretty much ideal.)

Thanks to Scott I, who, in the comment section of someone else’s blog-post on bokashi, was kind enough to post an apartment-sized recipe conversion.

"a hole in the ground your money goes in?"

...no, wait, that’s inground pools, not compost trenches. Sorry. Long post coming up, broken into sections, but it’s a topic that comes up a lot in the forums:

The Cost of Doing Business Bokashi

Buckets weren’t a problem. Food waste I had—that’s what got me started on this!—but in order to start bokashi fermentation, I first had to have a supply of EM. A one-liter bottle cost me $20 at Whole Foods Market.

It might have been cheaper to purchase a small bottle online, but not by much after shipping, and besides, I didn’t want to wait. Whole Foods is just up the road from me, and since I shop there now and then, it didn’t even take an extra trip.

So I had the bottle in hand. What now? Directions for using bokashi buckets all begin with EM bokashi bran, not the liquid inoculant. But liquid EM is sometimes applied for large-scale composting... While it might not be cost-effective as a general practice, I saw no reason not to start my first bucket with EM inoculant straight from the bottle, plus a little dry matter to absorb the moisture.

It worked. (1) So the total cost of getting started was a bit of time to set up an airtight container with proper drainage (from materials I had around) plus that bottle. $20.

Much less than I’d expected to spend. A lot of the non-retail, consumer-generated text I’d read about bokashi mentioned the expense—repeated expense, lifetime expense, relatively high expense. That now-and-later expenditure seems to be the second greatest hurdle to acceptance in this country. Also, really contrary to the ideal of composting, all that consumism! A single $20 bottle is one thing, an initial investment as it were. But how often would it have to be repeated, or additional items purchased?

How much $$$ does it cost to bokashi?

That depends. Are you buying EM bokashi bran, or making your own from liquid EM inoculant?

If a two lb. bag of EM bokashi bran is sufficient to handle two to four five-gallon buckets worth of mixed kitchen waste and costs $25, (2) then the cost per five-gallon bucket is @ $6 - $12. (Of course, the end product of a bokashi bucket still requires handling in some form before it can be used, so those figures may yet increase depending on your post-bucket solution.) If you fill one bucket per month, which seems to be the average bokashi experience, and you’re generous enough with the EM bokashi bran to be certain even the leftover fast food will ferment successfully, it’d be $12/month.

Buying a bottle of EM inoculant and making EM bokashi bran is cheaper than purchasing it, but there are additional costs beyond the EM itself:

Organic blackstrap molasses or feed-grade molasses
Wheat bran or other inert carrier
(optional other ingredients)
(water)

[Pause for a necessary definition: AEM] AEM—Activated EM—is made by “feeding” EM inoculant with molasses and water, and optionally a few other things depending on the recipe and intended use. It should be used within a month, and can be used to make EM bokashi bran, possibly even with a shorter overall time-to-readiness than beginning with EM straight from the bottle. [We now return you to your regularly scheduled...]

Being an impatient sort, I started a gallon of AEM on the same day I started my first bucket of bokashi, using molasses I would have bought anyway, simply to have on hand—but for purposes of accounting, I paid $3.50 for that bottle, so $23.50 total. This AEM was intended to be the base for my home-made EM bokashi bran, as well as to give me some extra for various tests.

Since that first straight-EM bucket worked, I started the next with AEM, using about a tablespoon of liquid instead of the 15 mL bran recommended per inch or instance of waste added to a bucket, and tossing in the odd handful of shredded newspaper and dry leaves by way of moisture correction. So far, it’s been working fine, though it’s not something I’d really recommend in lieu of EM bokashi bran, which is simpler and can be dried for long-term storage.

Having said that, I suppose it could be done, if you had access to large quantities of cross-shredded newspaper or something similar, or you didn’t mind draining food wastes prior to bucketing. You’d need to buy a new bottle of EM-1 when it lost effectiveness, six months or so down the road, but until then: Total cost = recycled airtight containers, dry matter, water, and > $25.

Me, I’d be happier with EM bokashi bran; the simpler the process is, the more likely it is that I’ll keep up with it, make it a habit, and maybe even get other people started on it. “Toss a handful of magic dust on top” is simple. Easy. And easy’s worth at least a few cents to me. Not retail kit-prices, mind, nor even repeated bag o’ bran purchases, but a few cents beyond that bottle of EM inoculant.

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EM Bokashi Bran

The basic choices are:

a) buy commercial EM bokashi bran for immediate and continued use

In which case there’s no need for those liquid ingredients, but you’ll be placing orders from now until you decide to stop doing bokashi

b) buy commercial EM bokashi bran for immediate use, plus EM incolant and additional ingredients to make EM bokashi bran for continued use


Initially the most expensive option but perhaps the most reasonable, especially for the beginning bokashier. EM bokashi bran was designed for the purpose, and is the most reliably successful means of producing fermentation rather than putrefaction within the bucket.



c) buy EM inoculant fluid and additional ingredients to make EM bokashi bran. And use liquid in the interim: Begin by making AEM; use EM + dry matter only until AEM is ready, then make EM bokashi bran; and use AEM + dry matter while waiting for EM bokashi bran to ripen.


The cheapest bran option, and therefore my chosen solution. At least for now. -G-


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What does it cost to make EM bokashi bran at home?



Again, prices are dependent upon distributors, volumes, etc., and you might be able to acquire some materials for free. Sawdust is sometimes referenced as a substitute for wheat or rice bran, and though I have no ready source for that [curses!], the city does periodically give away free wood chips as mulch—perhaps they might be persuaded to toss in a few buckets of sawdust at the same time?


Are there other locally available alternatives I might use? Bran, rice hulls, all the options I’ve seen so far are dry, inert, consistently sized (naturally or after processing) and small enough not to hold air pockets in the bucket. High in carbon. Other requirements? Because right now, I’m thinking dry leaves run through a shredder! Or a food processor, seeing as I actually have one of those...and it’s not as if I’d need great quantities of the stuff. Hmm. Might check into that.



But for now, I’m using wheat bran, ordered through a local grocery store, since it seemed more efficient than scooping out pounds and pounds of the stuff from the bulk section. The listed price was $0.69/lb, and ten pounds of wheat bran, depending on particle size, will make something in the neighborhood of five large bags of EM bokashi bran—which is almost twice enough to get an average bokashi-ing household to the six month mark.



Why six months? Because that’s when the bottle of EM-1 would begin to lose efficiency, so no matter what option I chose, I’d be looking at a possible additional outlay at that point.



Ten pounds of bran brings my total EM investment just above $30. (Spigots, sieves, and stopcocks are all optional, hence a different category and a different post!) So call it $5.00/month –for enough supplies to ferment the kitchen waste of a four-person household, plus two starter-packs to give as-yet-unsuspecting victims friends and neighbors.



And landlords! Maybe I can get mine to underwrite my bucket costs—since the city’s about to raise its trash fees, this might be a good time to make the pitch. -G-



If I were making absurd-in-context quantities of EM bokashi bran, the per-unit price would, of course, be even lower. My numbers don’t take economies of scale into account because I’m focused on my own needs. I’m looking for the lowest-cost, highest-reward options suitable for my particular circumstances: urban Texas apartment-dweller, container gardener, limited access to living soil and limited space. Unlimited curiosity!



DSF




(1) Turns out that success was less assured than I’d assumed—where EM has been improperly treated during storage/shipping, it may not activate quickly enough to outrun putrefaction if used straight. Also, even properly handled liquid EM inoculant may be initially slower in its effects than desired. I now make AEM first, for all applications.



(2) Non-random figures, though not universally applicable. Price varies by distributor and location, but this is what a 2.2 lb. bag would have cost me, with tax and shipping. Averages from retail and customer-generated text. In-bucket usage depends on environment and type of matter bucketed among other variables.



(3) Yes, I’ll be testing smaller batches for practical minimum volumes again. The giant economy size isn’t a good option if you have to rent it a storage locker!

What makes some microbes “Effective” anyway?

...and what is it they’re doing so effectively?

Since the EM technology we use for EM bokashi was created by Professor Teruo Higa, I’ll just quote him on the subject. (The full text of the presentation is available at FutureTech, if you’re interested.)

...EM is developed using three principal organisms, namely Phototrophic
bacteria, Lactic acid bacteria and Yeasts. These three types are indispensable
for EM and even if other species were not included, these would develop
coexisting forms with other beneficial organisms in the environment. This
happens, as EM is not made under sterile conditions, but using simple technology
in many difficult environments. Thus, the EM of today consists of these three
principal types, which is subsequently enriched naturally by other species such
as filamentous fungi and Actinomycetes. The fundamental principle is that the
three principal species must be abundant in EM and the pH of the solution must
be below 3.5. This is the technology and if this combination is found, that
solution, made anywhere will develop the beneficial effects of EM.

...The technology of EM is based on holding the three principal species together at
a very low pH, when most species of microbes die.

...EM is now made in all continents from the three species I mentioned earlier,
which are isolated from the respective environments.

...This microbial solution can convert all wastes into very good fertilizers in a
short time.

There’s a lot more, of course, in various presentations, interviews, articles, and his An Earth Saving Revolution I & II, but the short answer is: EM is a combination of Phototrophic bacteria, Lactic acid bacteria and Yeasts grown in a low pH solution, used to speed the breakdown of organic matter.

EM is the core of the bokashi process, but not all EM is destined for a bucket. It’s used as a cleanser, in animal feed*, to reclaim radiation- and chemical-contaminated land...generally speaking, to correct imbalance in the natural environment on a microbial level. Or to create a desired one. As in a bucket full of kitchen waste.

Which is likely more than you needed to know. EM is the stuff you need to make bokashi bucket fermenation work—without it, you just get rot.

DSF

*And in non-US countries, as people-feed, too.

Bokashi Quick-start

For bokashi, you need three things: an airtight container (preferably a lidded bucket with seive and spigot), bokashi, and kitchen or garden waste.


Kit


The fastest way to get started with bokashi is to buy a kit. (I have no affiliation with the company, BTW, just like the price compared to the others I saw.) Kits always contain at least one bokashi bucket—a plastic bucket with spigot and tight-fitting lid, typically with a removable seive—and many offer a second bucket and a starter bag of EM bokashi bran, marketed simply as bokashi, the bran-and-EM product that starts the fermentation process. (1) Several retailers also provide an instructional pamphlet, and at least one kit has a “mashing tool” as well, to aid in expelling excess air and fluids from waste.


DIY Bucket


But bokashi kits aren’t exactly cheap. If you happened to have a bucket with a tight-fitting lid and a spigot at the bottom, you could rig your own sieve with an overturned (non-metal) colander or something and use that. Hey, if you’re a homebrewer, you might just hit the local brew supply shop...


Austin Homebrew Supply has a nice spigot; just drill a one-inch hole and attach
this, available for $3.49 plus tax. (nut and washer included) Bet they’d have screens, too.


Note: If you’re not sure your bucket is airtight—remember, bokashi is an anaerobic process, so air is not desired—cover bokashi with a plastic sheet before fastening lid. This is also a good idea if you don’t have a whole lot of organic matter to add at the start, I’m told.


Bokashi


Even if you already have a lidded, spigoted bucket and seiving materials, there’s still one expense that can’t easily (2) be gotten around: the EM bokashi bran. But that’s not too terribly expensive, and again, there’s a trade-off between $$ and time spent. A 2-lb. container of EM bokashi bran runs between $10 and $20 US, depending on where you’re buying and what sort. (3) That’s enough for at least one bucket, quite likely two or three.


Or EM bokashi bran can be made at home from liquid EM inoculant plus molasses, bran, water, and optional other ingredients, and a single bottle can be used to make more EM bokashi bran than you really want to think about storing until use! One small bottle costs a bit less than twice as much as a single container of commercially packaged EM bokashi bran, plus the cost of carrier (bran, rice hulls, etc.), molasses, and any desired additional ingredients. And time.


For a beginner, commercially packaged EM bokashi bran is the better option—who wants to wait a month before starting to compost?—but I expect many converts will decide to make their own. Even at a rate of one container per month, the cost may not be prohibitive, but it does seem a tad wasteful to go buying small containers of anything!


EM America’s “recipe” gets criticized on some blogs, mostly for taking much longer to mix than it says it will, but it’s simple. Wheat bran and molasses can be purchased in bulk from grocery or feed stores.


Waste


Once you have your bucket and bokashi, you:


*Add a scoop of EM bokashi bran.


*Add kitchen waste (smaller pieces turn faster). Compress to expel air/water. Add a scoop of EM bokashi bran after each inch of waste.


*Drain bokashi juice at least twice a week and more as needed, beginning after two or three days.


*Repeat until bucket is full. Add an extra scoop of EM bokashi bran and set bucket aside to cure for ten days to two weeks. Drain as before.


*Decant into compost or curing location.


Having two buckets would be simpler. For my household and others that don’t generate a whole lot of food waste, it should be possible to just keep scraps in the fridge or freezer awhile. And I think I’m going to do that, so that I can measure how much food waste I actually produce.

Because I’d really like to know.

In a ferment,

DSF

(1) I get confused when people use the same word for product, process, and result, so on this blog, I’ll be using the term “EM bokashi bran” for the inoculant + inert carrier blend.

(2) A sometime brewer, I am suspicious of the idea that any microbial starter must be repurchased rather than maintained. But I don’t yet know enough about EM to say it isn’t so. And it may well be technically possible but so labor-intensive as to be impractical. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, the easiest obvious solution is to hit up your progressive-composting friends for a cup of inoculant.

(3) There are a number of different EM formulations and bases out there. More on that in another post.

What the *$#%& is bokashi?

Bokashi is:

A) A Japanese term meaning “fermented” or “fermented organic matter”

B) The commercial name for EM (effective microbes) in a carrier, typically wheat or rice bran

C) Non-methane-producing waste disposal solution

D) All of the above.

Sometimes called indoor composting—though technically it isn’t—bokashi ferments kitchen waste, essentially pickling waste produce, meat scraps, etc. This anaerobic process requires no light or airflow, has no effective minimum volume, and creates little odor. So it’s quite possible to do indoors, say, in a cabinet under the sink.

Or right next to the kitchen wastebasket, for those of us who need reminding. -G-

The end result is not compost, but a lowered-volume fermented product that can be composted quickly from that point. As a bonus, the probiotic liquid produced, affectionately called “bokashi juice,” can be used as a soil conditioner, plant food, and (supposedly) in a hundred other household, agricultural and commercial applications.

Okay, fine, pour the juice down the drain and call it septic system maintenance. But that still leaves the solids; something will have to be done with that bucket full of fermented waste. What about the apartment-dweller without a compost pile?

Here’s what sold me on the concept: cured bokashi can be finished by composting in small batches, or even added to planters, there to finish breaking down into slow-release fertilizer during the growing process. The bokashi composter may need to find an out-of-the-way corner for a second bucket to cure while one is being fed, and a bit of earth to compost any bokashi not being planter-filler, but not necessarily so much space as a traditional compost pile, nor for so long a time.

Hey, by the time my landlord saw it, it might be ready to sift onto his precious rose-bed!

Sounds like the right solution for my circumstances. If you, too, are interested, check out the links and resources (a growing list, naturally) and check back from time to time. I’ll be trying a few different things with my bokashi, from different EM products and buckets to maybe even harvesting some indigenous microorganisms of my own. And, of course, various ways to finish the pickled waste.

Fermentingly,

DSF