Tales from the Bucket: Dirt Nap

Dirt Nap

No, that's not the reason I've been silent (fortunately), but the current bokashi-bucket tweak.

Some disciplined container gardeners "rest" mixes between use in order to prevent pathogen transfer, discourage insects, and limit the spread of pot-weeds. I'm not often that disciplined--typically, if I have a container full of potting mix, there are three plants on hand I could put in it! But this hasn't been a typical year.

There's a depth factor for sun-sterilization, and I haven't bothered with anything like proper procedure, but something like fifty days of 100+ heat and sun, following after yet another season of drought, has left a bunch of pots filled with dry mixes but largely devoid of life. Plant, animal, insect, or, just possibly, microbe.

Obviously, can't have that. Not at the house of buckets. -G- The usual procedure for using bokashi in container mixes is simply to layer mature bokashi between inches of soil-based mix, but that assumes a mix that's damp enough to work with. I'm not planning on watering dirt weeks before planting-time! We're under watering restrictions.

Understand, we're talking dry, dry former soil, some of it baked into rocklike chunks and the rest all dust and flyaway clumps. I did try digging a hole, scooping some bokashi in, and filling it back up; but the dirt was so resistant to absorption that it was still all powdery when the crepuscular scavengers came by for dinner... The only saving grace was that it was easy to clean up; just took a broom.

So now I'm doing the initial bucket-fermentation stage with that dry-as-ashes dirt.

Call this an advanced technique, because I certainly wouldn't recommend it to a beginner! There's a decent chance it will fail according to one of my basic criteria: presence of insects, due to eggs or estivating critters. Or even, if you have a deep enough pot that some moisture remained in the bottom, worms. Verne and company are only really welcome outdoors; I can tolerate a closed wormery indoors in some circumstances, but would rather not. And they don't tolerate the pH in a working bucket, so they have to be carefully repotted once hatched or revived.

There's also a more-than-slight chance of starting a hot-composting reaction in the container, not necessarily a problem but certainly something to watch. (I'm mostly thinking about the paper towels soaked in bacon grease, or the glistening fast-food bags, and wondering just how thick the soil layer has to be to exclude the oxygen a fire would need.)

And if you're fermenting things generally not considered compostable in a home setting--that is to say, meats--there's always the need to ensure a quick and thorough fermentation, and that can be a bit more difficult with changing volumes of organics and inorganics. In practice, that means you may have to more actively manage the planter-bucket than you would a more standard bokashi bucket set-up. Not too much work, mainly a matter of juggling additions to be sure you have a few inches of fermentables all at once, with AEM. Still, one more thing to pay attention to, as opposed to the standard "dump, cover, forget" easier-than-trashing method.

But on the positive side, this entire bucket-to-garden technique uses no water beyond the cup or so to mix up sufficient AEM or bokashi bran for a single bucket/planter. There's no draining required (usually). And at the end, if you've been sufficiently generous with your ratios, you have a bucket full of just-moist-enough, oddly pickle-scented soil-and-fertilizer mix ready to be inoculated with worms or dumped into next season's raised beds or containers on top of a layer of leaves and poor soil, and covered to rest again until planting-time.

Only this resting time, the microbes are all awake and chomping. The fall tomato bed's starting to look really nice, and the first bed I constructed with this stuff is growing nice, bushy basil on only two quarts of greywater per plant per week (olla pots, naturally).

Basic procedure:

If you've got a deep container full of dirt, may as well use that. Bag the base in case of seepage or bugs.

*Partially empty or fill container so it's about half filled with dessicated soil.
*Apply EM as in a standard bucket.
*Add fermentables and EM as usual, at least a few inches worth.
*Add one inch dry soil.
*Repeat until out of soil or space.
*Lest rest until a nice thick acetobacter mat connects the whole.

Note that the top layer of soil should be moist at an inch down after about a day, from absorption. If it is not at least damp, add a small bit of moisture. Very small, and not too soon.

Don't forget to keep this covered! It may not look like a standard bokashi bucket, but it's still fermenting in there. I covered one working soil-bucket simply with a plastic bag, figuring the soil would work to exclude oxygen. Came home to an apartment permeated with Eau de Pickle Factory Explosion.

Really a better idea to do this outside, but 1) the heat outside my door would dry the fermentables before the microbes could do their thing, and 2) I'm too lazy to carry my kitchen waster across the threshhold even once a day. Easier to keep the bucket next to the garbage and recycling. Covered. Lesson learned.


So far, I haven't used the resulting white-threaded enriched soil for direct-planting, but I'm planning to; I'll simply stop fermenting with three or four inches of space left in my planter, let the concoction rest, then top with an olla pot and transplant in moistened unfermented potting mix.


This isn't exactly the all-in-one bucket I'm still dreaming of, and seeing as it requires horrible lifeless soil I'd rather not be in a position to ever use this technique again, but...did I mention toil-free basil in August? Hope for the fall garden even when all is dry and sere? And not having to rinse out bokashi buckets when it's 105 is also a plus, I think.

Hey, look: the garden's alive! And so is the blog.

Image from an article titled RIP: Recycle in Peace (Yes, that is an urn-planter!)

How many buckets would that fill?

From the text on the poster--details and a gallery can be found at GrowNYC--I'm assuming that little if any of this collected material is composted; clean dry and paired suggests reuse, not reclamation. And that's great! But what about filthy, torn, disreputable shreds of former garments?

Let them eat cake couture.

Verne et cie happily munched their way through the post-season potato bags, not quite waiting until the season was over before starting; Repulsive's nearly through the denim I decided was too worn to save for next year's insulation, and it's only been a couple of months; there are still bits of terrycloth in the slow-compost after nearly a year, but only bits, sufficient to add a bit of structure but nothing more. And the fabric bokashi bag (filled with matured ferment and buried at planting time) was only root-tangled threads when I repotted that particular item.

It's hardly news that natural fabrics are compostable in a home setting; the trouble is that so few of us think to do it! So, I'm trying. Dishtowels and cleaning cloths, old clothing and shopping bags, bits of fabric too small to make decent patches...into the mix they shall go.

Cleaned if needed (though I'm not much for chemicals) and tossed in after fermentation, I think. Unless I'm feeling experimental. 'cause, you know, that happens sometimes.

Been reading about the soil industry lately, picked up a new-to-me-term: low value soil-like materials. Paper waste and sand and things. Bulking and structural items, to me, since for nutrients I have bokashi. Seems strange to think of silk or linen as "low value" in any way, but a stained or torn shirt is trash, so, okay.

If we each saved one shirt from the landfill...that'd be a lot of space we didn't use. But I'm selfish, I want a personal benefit. So: if one shirt could replace one gallon of soil in a planter... Yeah, that'd work for me. Soil's expensive, relatively speaking.

Anyone need help cleaning out their closets? -G-

Grubbing Around

Image from Hooks & Lattice, with which company I have no affiliation--but there's an anniversary coming up... (hint, hint)

Weird week here in Bucketville. Among other things, I had multiple requests for BSFL! Not all this week's requests were for grubberies, some folks just wanted grubs: To try out as feed for a particularly fussy pet reptile, for a fishing trip, and to replenish an industrial-sized retail unit from which I'm guessing there's been some over-enthusiastic harvesting, plus a pet waste disposal unit and a bird-feed "farm" (that's two separate things, at different locations, even).

So I spent Saturday morning playing chauffer to Repulsive's offspring, after a session of harvesting the disgusting things. Seemed like a good time to retire the various and sundry experiments, since 1) I've settled on a permanent design, and 2) it's a lot easier to secure a single unit against raccoon and possum incursions. Since the standard adapted bokashi-bucket design works, though it's no longer my preferred model, I just handed that one over to the folks who wanted a bird-feeder hatchery. The coir-liner test works very well, too, but I used scrounged materials for the first model, and the result was far too large for my space or needs. Rather than deal with the nightmare of separating hatchlings and feeding grubs from the exploded coir mat, I passed that on, plus such harvested grubs as I had left once all the other requests were filled, to the folks with the Bio-Pod. Hey, they asked for grubs, they didn't specify mode of delivery!

But I liked the results of the coir so much that I actually went out and (gasp!) spent money buying a smaller coir basket liner for the grubbery's permanent installation. Not just a mat to go on the bottom, a natural alternative to the synthetic mesh I've seen in Bio-Pods, but a large enough single piece of matting to cover the bottom and sides, all the way up to the single row of small holes I've had to admit are necessary for practicality.

Apparently, laziness beats squeamishness in the end--I used to set out bait bags for the layers because I couldn't handle the thought of grubs using air- or laying-holes to escape a feeding unit; but bait bags have to be emptied and refilled, not to mention protected from the cursed four-foots, and I got tired of it. Other grubbery models have pipes to let layers into the bucket, but that was way too much for me. So I watched the adults awhile, to see where they preferred to lay. Which seems to be into tiny holes with free space behind them and damp protected space just below, plus the food source, naturally. Explains why I never had much luck with cardboard laying disks: I left them too accessible. Sigh.

The only problem with the coir liner--unless one has a sudden need to harvest immature grubs in significant quantity--is that the material expands more than you might expect, reducing the bucket's effective volume. But I'd rather have a slightly larger container with no escapees than a smaller one that requires warning labels. And this is about as close to hands-free as I'm likely to get; the necessary maintenance during a working season has been reduced to feeding the grubbery, and exchanging a full catchment bottle for an empty one and hanging the birdfeeder. No draining reservoirs, no grubbing about with eggs or feeding populations, no need to remediate for moisture or carbon levels. Assuming the occasional addition of EM in some form, there's no off-odors. And almost no chance of grubs on the lid when you open it, though I can't say no risk ever of seeing the things. (Drat! And it was so close to perfect. -G-)

Probably ought to buy a new camera so I can post pictures of things. Ah, well. Repulsive's permanent home consists of:

1) A small lidded bucket with holes in the bottom and around the bottom inch of the sides, plus a single row of small holes beneath the rim.
2) A coir bucket liner reaching up to the row of holes.
3) A collection ramp, in this case half-inch tubing and threading to fasten into a soda bottle, with the part of the tube inside the bucket cut in half to create a U shaped ramp the maturing grubs can climb.
4) A largish planter filled with cheap dirt or soil-based potting mix (at least as much soil as the bucket would hold, though in a large enough planter you could mix some carbon after that requirement is met), into which the bucket is set at least three inches deep and as far down as desired so long as there's no chance of the upper row of holes being buried or completely blocked.
5) Optional but recommended, a two-inch layer of good potting mix and some plants. It looks better, but more importantly, it helps keep the predators away. Between the grubs and the worms that will move in even if you don't add any, it's a protein-rich feast--and birds, raccoons, possums, toads, and lizards have all found Repulsive in some of his less-protected iterations.

Considering what I choose to feed Repulsive, I'm going with decoratives rather than edible plants around his tower. It's not my usual preference, but I do have a few, gifts or volunteers or flowers to keep the landfolks happy, and some of those should be tolerant enough of salts and acidity to work here. (Salts from the foods; acidity more from the EM I add than anything.) If I were less squeamish, I suppose some edibles might be possible. Red orache springs to mind, but it's certainly not the only likely crop. Guess maybe I could try it. There's no requirement that I actually eat what I grow, right? Well, maybe.

And maybe there's another experiment to try: coir liner on the sides but not the bottom of the bucket. Which would allow the worms greater access to what the soldier fly folks have taken to calling "grub pudding," while still giving the mama layers their preferred egg-despoting space.

Just what I needed, more grubbing around. They do sell coir by the roll...

DSF

Mucking about

Repulsive's waking (I was quite surprised to find active grubs in the dormant-grub boxes this weekend), so it's time to do something about his grubberies. Yes, that's plural--he had two last year, though not simultaneously. Unlike Verne, he is not allowed to colonize at his pleasure! I changed buckets early in the fall, as it was that or deal with the horror of emptying the "proto-compost" from an active grubbery, but while the stated intent was to let the stuff cure, and the actual intent to let any remaining grubs mature and move away, I think at this point it's just taking up space.

About three gallons of space. It's not all finished grub poo, as I use the grubberies for bone, which shouldn't yet be wholly decomposed, but the total bone volume can't be so much as a full gallon. All the rest is...not soil, but something not too unrelated to use for making mud-pies, assuming you were far less squeamish than I, or didn't know where it came from, maybe.

So if I have two-thirds of a bucket of aged soil-like material, why haven't I used it up yet? Two reasons. The first is half superstition: I'm afraid of the lure of the happy-grub pheromone! BSFL excreta is supposed to be prime worm-food, but I'm worried that if I add it to the towers, grubs will follow. A singular grub in the wormery isn't an issue, but I don't want Repulsive to feel welcome in the worm-homes. It's not so much of a concern as all that, considering that the towers are fed largely on dried leaves and there's a fair bit of soil in there, too, so BSFL wouldn't thrive, but I haven't the courage to risk it. The second reason it's still sitting around is consistency: the stuff Repulsive (ahem) leaves behind is more finely textured than espresso grounds. Far too finely textured to be of much use to me as a soil amendment, with my containers and reservoirs, though in-ground gardeners might well benefit from it.

What am I to do with it? I've used some in starter-packs, but can't make any more of those just now--the dormant grubs have awakened and left their boxes to roam uncontained! [Yecch.] Could just dump it, I suppose, use it to fill a ditch or pothole or something. It'd break down in time, but before that, might attract worms to the area. Perhaps I could dump it one of the area's unofficial dog parks, where a few BSFL would be helpful! Or, rather than carry it offsite, I could start a bog garden in a bucket or planter with rather more surface area than the grubbery, an idea I have to admit holds some appeal.

But I'm lazy, and there are so many different experiments running already! This time, I think I'll add a scoop of Verne and what happens.

DSF


today's image is from National Geographic; that's Arizona Slot Canyon mud, and I'm pretty sure there's no way to make BSFL produce anything that looks like that.

There’s a hole in my bucket wallet

Blew the garden budget again, though not by so much as you might suppose; aside from a pack of tomato seedlings I couldn’t resist, all this year’s new stuff has been or will be started from seed, much of it bought locally. Or produced and collected here on-site, like the shepherd’s purse, hyacinth vine, and amaranth. New purchases included a few different sorts of tomatoes—not that I expect them all to thrive, but so I can be sure of having any, and to try the different leaves—a couple of edible curiosities (eggplants shaped like miniature pumpkins? I couldn’t resist!), and a bunch of things the standard American grocery-shopper has never heard of, plus one or two sometimes considered weeds.

Sadly, I don’t think this is the year I’ll be growing enough produce to skip the greengrocers entirely (small spaces=smallish yields, though bokashi’s helping), so I’ve chosen as usual to focus on things I can’t get there or that I can’t afford to get there.

A few durable goods went into the virtual shopping cart, including a pressure sprayer to make bokashi juice application easier. Plus, I bought a few more bags of dirt—given the quality, I don’t think it merits the label soil—though not for immediate use. I am planning to refill the planter tower and let the feral worm colony play awhile, and to set up a test in temporary vermicomposting if I can talk a particular friend into loaning me the space. Also picked up, from the same retailer and brand as the dirt, some “humus” (those quotes denoting doubt) for a few different tests.

Can’t quite bring myself to admit the total here; more than I meant to spend, but less than the season cost of a single share in a CSA in this area. And unlike with the CSA, there’s no risk I’ll end up with a box full of things I don’t eat.

It could have been much worse. High-quality chem-free compost typically makes up a fair percentage of my total cost; so far this year, I’ve bought not so much as a single quart. Between bokashi and Verne (and George), there’s been no need—though that may change once the raised beds are in. Too, I usually end up buying eighty or so quarts of potting soil every spring, to replace the worst of the potted stuff and top off the permanent planters, and until this year have always bought the best I can afford, since I know how important it is. But thanks to last fall’s cheap-as-dirt test, that hasn’t been necessary either.

So wherefore the post-shopping-spree regret? Well, there were a lot of seeds. And though the local drought is officially over, that’s more likely a temporary condition than not, so I’m determined to fit out all my containers with some form of irrigation, preferably primary though I’ll take supplementary if that’s all I can get. Which in many cases equals additional cost, for clay pots to plant with the transplants, or hoses to connect to an external reservoir, or more nested-bucket sets and wicks and hollow pipes and things to make SIPs.

On the other side of the balance sheet, Verne has more than proved himself worth the one-time investment. I don’t think I’ll ever bother with an indoor wormery again, and neither are worms my choice for a primary landfill-diversion scenario, but outdoors, he’s doing his part to maintain soil health in the towers and planters, keeping me from having to replace soil as often (or at all? Too soon to say), and since he’s enthusiastic about his business, there’s no need for me to buy any vermicompost or vermicompost tea this season, either. Or, obviously, worms.

The bokashi’s worth the cost, too. Naturally –G–. Though EM-1 and molasses (and bran, for the standard recipe) are repeated costs, it’s cheaper to buy them than finished composts, fertilizers, and “instant” plant foods. Not to mention the non-monetary benefits.

One of these seasons, I’ll stick to my budget. Really. Maybe if I just start with a higher number…? Oh, that sounds like a bad idea!

DSF

[image from Botanical Interests, which is the right company, though mine were purchased from a local retailer]

just because

Nothing to do with bokashi, but somehow, it still seems to fit.

Bucket Vision

I have become one of them. The vermimad. The composting compulsives. Those folks who whimper when they see **perfectly good organics** being tossed away. Not just the old "people are starving, don't throw away that food" mindset, but its logical (oh so extreme) extreme: viewing all not-in-current-use organics as potential nutrients for future foods. Or maybe just food for the soil.

Which would be bad enough, but it gets worse. Like the apocryphal man with a hammer, to whom every problem is a nail, I had a tunnel-vision reaction to a problem for which there really isn't One Perfect Solution For All.

Shame on me!

See, I was asked last week if it'd be possible to feed bokashi to BSFL. And I could not for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to. Waste all that lovely ferment? Guess it's better it be fed to grubs than be landfilled, but... Yep, a fanatic. Bucket-mad, that's me.

There is at least one perfectly reasonable situation wherein one might elect to feed bokashi to BSFL: where bokashi is used to divert organics from the trash-stream without increasing the frequency of trash pick-ups (whether by the municipality or some alternate entity), and no appropriate composting facility has been established to receive that ferment. BSFL don't require a whole lot of infrastructure nor space.

They might also be a way around some restrictive regulations, depending on the area--as feeding larvae could legitimately be seen as raising bait or animal feed rather than running a composting or waste disposal facility.

And bokashi + grubs could answer the Green Seal for restaurant question in urban areas, too! The requirement there is that suitable organics be sent to "a farm," but as distance between city and farmland increases, that becomes less practical--food can rot prior to or during transport, becoming unviable even as animal feed. Mixed-material bokashi is not, so far as I know, considered an acceptable animal feed. But BSFL are. Use bokashi to stabilize the food waste until pickup, then feed it to the larvae at a nearby urban location, and transport only the mature grubs to feed the farm animals.

So, once I got my sight out of the bucket, it didn't take too much for me to admit there are some situations, some times, where it might make sense to feed bokashi to BSFL. But, man, it bothers me. Somewhere in the back of my head, there's this mourning keen for all that fermented matter just waiting to be mixed with dried leaves. Or layered with landfill to rehabilitate the dirt into soil. Or spread out on the grass on the site of a future lasagna garden, topped with newspaper and a tarp and weighted down*.. Or...

Excuse me, I need to go found a twelve-bucket program. Step one: admitting there is a problem.

DSF

*Haven't done this yet, people being unreasonably fond of their lawns and unwilling to let me kill them even in a good cause. Sigh. Some day!

Tales from the Bucket: Stirred but not shaken

After dividing up a bucket of cured bokashi into planters for worm-food, I had a bit left over; homeless bokashi. And it wasn't long before that I'd first read the post about direct-to-bucket composting, so an impromptu test commenced: I tossed a couple of inches of dirt on top of the remaining cured bokashi and stuck the lid on.

Then opened it a couple of days longer and stirred. And again a few days after that.

This stirring in no way disturbed the BSFL that appeared as if by magic to devour the ferment despite its earthen blanket. While a heavy soil layer is supposed to control BSFL populations, it does so by preventing sufficient crawl-off for further generations. The ever-hungry youth don't seem bothered at all, and are apparently happy enough to give off whatever chemical signature encourages egg-layers to seek entrance.

While this bucket had been full of curing bokashi, I'd kept a weight on the lid expressly to prevent such entrance, but since the original post suggested leaving the bucket open as needed, I didn't weight this one. Should I repeat this test, I think I will--as it is, while the matter is certainly disappearing and the soil is visibly refreshed, I can't say if there's any actual composting going on at all. Eating and digesting, check.

Appropriately enough for bokashi, this particular bucket started life as a container for pickles. If I needed another BSFL colony, I think I'd name him Martin. -G-


DSF

Direct-to-Bucket Soil-Based Composting?

Another entry into the balcony compost sweepstakes. (Sorry, no monetary prize, just all the compost you can produce. -G-)

I haven’t tried this yet. Between the site name and the mention of BSFs, I’m assuming the writer lives and practices this odd form of composting someplace warm. And it might well be feasible someplace sufficiently warm and dry, though I imagine there’s a fair risk of spoilage even with frequent turning. Vegetarian-only, naturally.

I have tried to compost bokashi in soil without bottom drainage, and the result was not appealing, but I didn’t try weekly turning. Hmm...

Worms eat my bokashi!

Trey’s still doing well. This outdoor planter-topped flowthrough wormery is the first of my experiments in feeding worms cured bokashi, though others (including Bentley, naturally) have done it successfully. I knew from reading about those other folks that material heating would be a concern--and it’s one I haven’t yet solved for indoor use! But outside, so far, allowing the heating process to take place in a shelf below the soil layer and above the one where worms are currently eating seems to be working.

In fact, Trey’s going through the bokashi faster than I’d expected. This is a very good thing, as I’m always looking for more finished material, and particularly for some way to convert cured bokashi into matter I can use for top-dressing container plants. Unfortunately, Trey is too small a unit to handle additions of more than about a gallon of well-cured bokashi at a time (plus dried leaves); no finished calculations yet on bucket-to-worm bin volumes, but...I’ve got to get that second tower wormery assembled this week.

The new tower will be taller; I need more layers than Trey has, and a taller tower will get more sun on top--the urban-gardener thing again, I’m trying to use spaces that get only such sun as can angle between buildings. Shaded lower layers should help with the heat issue, too. The weather-folk say it may hit 90 degrees today, thus beginning our ramp-up to summer; heat is a concern even without thermophilic reactions.

After our recent and much-needed rain, Trey developed an outbreak of gnats, but they’re already fading with the heat; the Spanish moss I’m using for mulch and wadding is more discouragement than prevention, and not even that when wet. Which is fine for an outdoor wormery, but not at all acceptable inside! So an indoor tower will have to be constructed with no least gaps at all between layers. That’s fine; I’d prefer a unit that didn’t allow the worms too many chances to go wandering.

(Just now, there’s a lightweight drawstring bag over Verne, to allow airflow through the ventilation holes while, hopefully, containing any kamikaze worm. Not that I’ve got any of those--Verne seems willing enough to remain beneath the newspaper cover layer--but in case. I really don’t like having to trust worms’ free will to keep the worms inside the bin. Not in my kitchen!)

Next on the agenda for Verne et familae? A few different “recipes.” I know how much food a wormery can be expected to handle at optimum: half the worm-weight per day. But Trey’s food is made up of cured bokashi and dried leaves, which means that the food is composting to some degree even without the aid of the worms. What’s the ideal ratio of leaves to bokashi for happy worms? Will shredded household paper get bokashi past the heating stage as successfully, break down as quickly, sustain the worms? Would old bills and fast-food wrappers plus bokashi heat and cool without producing the dreaded off odors? And what about those worm-verboten items?

Yes, it has come to this: I’m a personal chef for worms. Not too surprising, I suppose, after months of feeding buckets, and somehow, I can’t bring myself to be upset by it; all the gorgeous produce I’ve been harvesting must be mellowing my mood. And the promise of more...

DSF

Trey is topped with a little-cultivated plant called Shepherd’s Purse, as in the photo above

Repulsive Lives!

I was in the garden Saturday (naturally), and what did I see but the first Black Soldier Fly of the year. By location, it could have been one of my overwintered dormant grubs all grown up, or a returnee from the wild, or new; whichever, it was a welcome sight.

Yes, I admit it: Repulsive is now a welcome, if unasthetic, resident of the bucket garden. This year, he's getting at least two containers, one in which he can churn through dried leaves and gorge on organic matter until harvesting-time, and a very separate one to handle the neighbors' even less aesthetic contribution to the landscape (via their pets).

Haven't yet found a chicken owner interested in trading grubs for ranch eggs, so for now the landfolks' chickens will reap the benefits of the auto-harvest. Haven't yet cobbled the perfect urban digester, either--I want something as convenient as a trash bin, and free of visible insect activity barring the very occasional adult BSF, with a discreet but accessible harvesting unit and an opening that won't show the grubs. Something decorative enough to put in a public area. Elegant, even.

For now, I opened the winter box in case any BSF should decide to do the salmon-thing, and set out cardboard and paper near fresh bokashi and unfermented food scraps. By this afternoon, there were half a dozen adults flying around, so I expect to have grubs soon.

...still can't believe I think that's a good thing!

The Hundred Dollar Bucket

Well, it's not the Sixty-Four Dollar Tomato, but The Bokashi Experiment has now cost me $100 out of pocket. At least it has if you count the wormeries. (Yes, that's plural now.) Took me about six months, and I'm not really sure how to calculate the return on my investment--from a purely monetary standpoint? Environmental impact? Presumed nutritional benefits, maybe?

Hey, I learned a new way to bore folks at cocktail parties! Though I don't think I'd have spent $100 on that.

I can at least estimate the quantities of compost produced and put a price on that, but how should I count plant-food applied to the landscaping, when I neither measured it nor substituted it for some retail product? Certainly it improved the area's appearance, but what value do I put on improved soil and non-food plant quality (in land I inhabit and tend but do not own)? For that matter, what about possible improvements to crops? Since I don't analyze the nutrients in my lettuce, there's no real way to quantify the difference between the heads I harvested in past years and this, though I have been growing more lately, since it's been doing well...

Bokashi in its various forms certainly hasn't saved me any money this spring: the garden's going so well, I couldn't resist the chance to expand. So I bought more plants, more pots, mulch, and even a bit of retail compost, after using all the composts and improved soils I had on hand. Had I not had all that lovely bokashi'd material, I'd have remained within my usual spring budget, instead of exceeding it by nearly 100%! I suppose it's possible the garden will produce so much I'll have no need to buy produce all summer, but that's never happened yet.

But, while the gardening budget is inarguably broken, the bokashi experiment's outlay is a little more questionable--not much of that money was really spent on bokashi per se. As far as EM goes, I'm still working on that original purchase. That $100 mark includes one liter bottle of EM-1, 25 lbs of wheat bran, and a bottle of molasses, which is what I started with. There have been multiple small purchases of hardware: spigots and potato mashers to make bokashi bucket kits, sieves and screens and mesh to line buckets for Repulsive and Verne. And worms, that I'm testing for a possible wholly indoor complete composting solution, plus a low-maintenance high-reward planter-topped flowthrough wormery. Everything else--buckets, plastic wrap, plant pots, bottles, bags, etc.--has been recycled, scrounged, repurposed, borrowed or improvised, without cash outlay.

Have I made $100 worth of compost? Probably not yet. And as this apartment doesn't have a separate trash-hauling fee, I certainly haven't saved $100 in pay-as-you-throw charges! The landfolks' chickens didn't eat $100 worth of BSFL, either, before Repulsive's temporary end...

I don't regret a single penny so far; I've certainly had more than $100 worth of entertainment from this! More compost and better soil means I do more, and more productive, gardening--good exercise, stress-relief, and healthy food. Who can put a price on that?

Oh, and no trash-stink if I forget to take out the bag? Definitely worth something!

Tales from the Bucket: Verne

There’s a new bucket in the bucket garden. I’ve decided to call it Verne.

Hey, it was that or George. -G-

While I don’t find worms in any way repellent, I’m also unlikely to spend much time gazing fondly at any specific resident of this new bucket, so I’ll be referring to the colony, colony-plus-container, and to each resident in the same singular-pronoun fashion I use with Repulsive (who is only temporarily dead). Verne arrived Friday, by priority mail from a Texas worm farm.

There are a number of retail wormeries on the market, but in keeping with my cheap frugal approach to this whole experiment in bokashi, composting, and waste disposal, I chose a less expensive option: a nested bokashi bucket with spigot and mesh layer. Not quite so polished-looking as the image above, but the same idea.

Urbanite that I am, I actually bought this first pound of worms. Though I do in fact know a few people with horses, and presumably then with access to horse manure and the wrigglers it attracts in nature, I don’t know them well enough to ask if they have worms and if so, can I get some. There are a few vermicomposters among my acquaintance, but most of them are busily building new bins to increase their operations. So while I didn’t go the retail route for the container, I did for the “active ingredient,” so to speak.

Total cost for Verne:

1 nested bokashi bucket with spigot–N/A
1 piece fine-sieve hardware cloth—N/A (purchased to refit a nested bucket set-up for Repulsive)
corrogated cardboard—N/A, as I liberated it from the recycling bin and shredded it myself
shredded paper—N/A
1 lb. composting worms: $25. including shipping

Which makes my start-up cost for vermicomposting about the same as my start-up cost for doing EM bokashi.*

Now that I have experienced the convenience of being able to compost everything, I wouldn’t want to go back to worrying about dairies and meats, far less citrus and onion skins. But while worms might not be the one perfect answer to my particular kitchen waste disposal needs, they might well be the other half of the answer to my container composting/container gardening issues:

EM bokashi and vermicompost, in different forms, should serve for all my fertilizing, hydroponic plant food and soil amendment needs! And if, as some sources say, worms can thrive on a diet made up of wastepaper, waste cardboard, and cured bokashi including materials they wouldn’t eat otherwise, I’ll have a completely indoor solution, too.

So you can imagine I’m doing everything I can to make Verne feel welcome.

I’ll post progress as it occurs!

DSF

*The techniques I call “silage composting,” that use primarily lactic acid without the specific mix of microbes that make up EM, can be much cheaper, of course, or even free.

Tales from the bucket: RIP (?) Repulsive

The bucket is empty. Of grubs, I mean; there is a fair quantity of halfway-to-humus matter left in there, but no designer-maggots remain. Not ONE so far as I could see.

This emptiness is not a permanent condition--I do have a couple of overwintering dormant grubs left in another mini-bucket, and BSF are common in the area; I could always set out bait to attract them once laying season returns. For that matter, there may still be some grubs in one test-container not yet checked. But Repulsive’s primary colony is no more. After I went to the effort of protecting it against the occasional winter freeze, and fed (and fed, and fed!) the thing, sadly or not, Repulsive is dead.

Of undeniably natural causes: My grandmother always told me “raccoons wear bandits’ masks for a reason.”

It’s my own fault, really; I glanced out at the bucket collection after the windstorm, but didn’t actually check to see that all the lids were secure. Apparently they weren’t. Teethmarks and clawed furrows tell the tale...

So the next colony home should have some sort of latch or lock for the lid. And I’m going to have to revisit my self-harvester design, I think, to see what I can do about coon-proofing it.

Granted, this isn’t exactly the typical urbanite problem, or at least not one the folks on televised dramas ever face -G-, but raccoons are among my pushier environmental conditions, and must be considered in any composting/waste disposal scenario. As must possums and squirrels and the neighborhood dogs.

And the human neighbors, who aren’t any more tolerant than I of the infamous “off odors.” Repulsive’s bucket never produced any cause for complaint (though I imagine that would not have been the case had anyone actually seen the BSLF). So I think I’m calling that particular experiment-set an only slightly qualified success--

BSFL for waste disposal: recommended, though unaesthetic
BSFL as leaf-degraders: recommended for some situations, though removal of matter can be messy
BSFL as true composters: not feasible
BSFL as chicken feed: recommended up to 25% of total
BSFL as fish food: recommended by literature, not personally tested
BSFL waste as worm food: not yet tested
BSFL as coon treats: recommended--by the raccoons

RIP (for now) Repulsive, 2008-2009.

DSF

The redworms are coming!

I must confess: I am a mass vermicide.

The Great Parboiling some years ago ended my one and only experiment in vermicomposting, but it hadn't been going all that well even before the not-quite-seasonable heat wave. At that point in my life I wasn't doing enough gardening to need large quantities of vermicast, so the worms were primarily supposed to be disposing of my vegetarian food wastes. But while the idea of an indoor composting solution appealed, no allium and no citrus made them a less than satisfactory choice for me.

Years later, I'm still looking for a completely indoor composting solution; bokashi is wonderful, and in many ways absolutely perfect for me, but composting it does still require an outdoor stage*. Or processing through a wormery? The Great Al of bokashi fame and Bentley the worm guy have reported success with feeding cured bokashi to worms...

So I've ordered some red wigglers. One set shall be fed only approved foods, others on those same foods after fermentation and curing, and still others on whatever happens to be in my standard cured buckets come worm-feeding time (likely to include citrus, allium, meat and dairy).

I'm sure that tiny high-pitched scream of vermy horror is purely my imagination. -G-


DSF

image: Paul Revere's ride from Wikimedia Commons

Vermin Composting

Generally, that post-heading is a typo, “vermicomposting” as rendered by software or Freudian fingers. Not today. I think it’s a great name for my particular use of Black Soldier Fly Larvae as cheap quickie leaf-degraders. Though not for the recommended practice of simply feeding your kitchen waste to the things.

Readers of this blog will have noticed that I seem to have reversed myself almost entirely as regards BSFL. Almost. When I first saw a BioPod listed in a gardening catalogue, my response was a mix of disgust and indignation. The disgust has faded to some degree, though I still think they look like some mad fashion designer’s take on the common maggot, and I’ve grown quite fond of their usefulness if not of them per se. But indignation remains--I growl every time I see them referred to as composters.

A composter, by definition, produces compost. Stable, planting-appropriate, soil-amending humus-y compost. BSFL are waste digesters. Like the retail units sold under the same name, BSFL make waste disappear. If you’re looking for a quick source of fertilizer or ready-to-use soil amendments, look elsewhere; if the point is to make your kitchen waste vanish, grubs will do that quite efficiently.

And if you don’t want to see them, a cover layer of dried leaves works well*. Scrape the leaves back to add food, smooth the leafy layer back in a hurry, and watch it heave as the larvae come to feed. Yikes! Or if, like me, you have a ton of dried leaves you’d like to speed along the path to composting, mix leaves and soft food together and let the BSFL work for their meal. The end result still isn’t compost (despite my post-heading) but will break down very quickly once mixed into soil, added to a compost bin, or however you deal with such things.

Once you get it out of the grub habitat, that is; the most efficient way seems to be to move the vermin: [Excuse me, the grubs, I mean. -G-] Place something yummy in the bucket in some sort of removable net or holey container, wait for them to swarm it, remove food and wriggling mass together. Have a new bucket prepped and waiting, or a temporary holding unit. Two or three bait-settings may be necessary, and there will likely still be the odd recalcitrant larva in the proto-compost. If that bothers you, just set the compost-to-be out in the sun to dry; between light and lack of moisture, any remaining BSFL will wriggle away.

So you might want to do that drying someplace out of doors, out of sight, and out of the way.


DSF

*the rate of self-harvesting may be a bit lower, not sure as I haven’t done a side-by-side. Nor do I really plan to. The less I have to see of the things, the happier I shall be. Repulsive lives up to his name, if you ask me.

[image from Court Miniatures]

Tales from the Bucket: Time!

The folks over at Wriggly Wigglers asked how long it takes people to achieve compost from cured bokashi. Before, I would have said about a month. Now...yeah, about a month in warm weather, bit more in cool.

I do have to mention that there is some insect activity here, for the most part of the unseen and untroubling variety, but that’s to be expected in any “cold” compost situation. There is no odor aside from the faint forest-after-rain scent that good soil exudes, the giant possum lumbers right past the buckets on its (his? her?) way to wherever, and the gnats the bucket sometimes develop after being rained on will go away as soon as the top layer is disturbed. Snails and geckos may be more of a problem, depending on your area and tolerance for same.

If you’ve read more than a single post here, you already know that I live in an apartment and have no ground in which to sink a bottomless bucket for the conversion of bokashi into compost. So I’ve been experimenting with bringing the soil to the bokashi, rather than the other way around. It’s not necessarily an ideal solution for me—my supplies of soil are limited, and I have things growing in most of it—but it works.

This takes equal parts cured bokashi and soil, and I tend to use soil that isn’t at its peak but will still support plant growth (because my better soil has plants in it). The reading I did before first trying this was...confusing, shall we say, with some writers insisting on a minimum of ten gallons of soil per bucket of bokashi—if you assume that’s a five-gallon bucket, then two to one—and others using numbers familiar to me from traditional aerobic composing, though I’d never before seen them in relation to bokashi fermentation: “At least a cubic metre of soil” That’s something like twenty gallons. For one bucket of bokashi!

Not only do I not have that much soil, I haven’t got that kind of space. (Yes, that’s only the size of a large trash can. Still.) The reason for that figure in trad composting is to generate and sustain the desired thermophilic reaction—so the pile will heat up, destroying weed seeds, diseases, and other undesirables.

Hot compost isn’t feasible in small volumes without some technological intervention. Tumblers and activators, say. But my first bokashi buckets were vegetarian, none of them contained any weed seeds or diseased matter, and I don’t have any objection to cold compost for the most part. So I decided to risk it and tried two-and-a-half gallons each of cured bokashi and soil. It took about a month that first time, with summer heat, though unfortunately I don’t have an exact number for that one or the two that followed it. The photo above is what I tipped out of my Wriggly-spurred time-test bucket, begun one month ago today. It’s not quite mature yet, and some of the leafy bits introduced with the old soil are still identifiable, but the bokashi’d kitchen waste has all been converted into plant-pleasing compost, conveniently mixed with the soil already. Call it a month in warm weather, five or six weeks in cooler.

To Make Compost in a Bucket

1. Select your bucket.

Not, mind, a bokashi bucket! This method uses a large planter. Many of mine are five-gallon buckets with holes drilled in the bottom and sometimes lower sides, but any large planter should work, as would a smallish barrel or what-have-you.

This time, I didn’t add any drainage materials to the bottom; sometimes I do. Not sure if that affects the time (I’ll try to remember to test that someday). Drain holes are required!


2. Acquire a volume of soil equal to the amount of cured bokashi.

Cured here being defined as

a. at least seven days after the last addition of fresh waste, and
b. no longer producing more than a few drops of bokashi juice daily.

3. Put an inch of soil in the planter.

If you have mixed-quality soil, the worst of it goes here. Fill dirt is fine; a soilless potting mix is not.

4. Add bokashi and soil, mixed or layered an inch at a time, until within four inches of the top of the planter.

This is what will compost, so you’re looking for healthy soil microbes. If you have better-quality, fresh-from-the-garden soil, it goes here, not in the bottom. Compost breaks down faster the smaller the pieces, so smushing/chopping large pickled bits might not be a bad idea. Adding a bit of mature compost, unsterilized, should produce an even richer mix, and could substitute for most (if not quite all) of the dirt here though not in the outer layers, although I can’t yet confirm this from personal experience. (Another test!) It should also be possible to use less soil for this middle section and still produce compost, so long as soil microbes are adequately distributed, but again, no personal experience hereabouts for that. Equal parts, I can attest to.

5. Top with three inches of soil*.

6. Cover loosely, but do not seal, and

7. Set the bucket someplace out of doors, out of direct sunlight, and out of the way for at least one month (more in cooler climes). Near an existing, healthy garden would be ideal, but on a wood patio or shaded cement parking space works.

This produces an amount of compost-amended soil not quite equal in volume to the original ingredients, though the reduction isn’t dramatic. But though this is a great way to refresh tired soil, it’s not ideal for me, requiring as it does that I divert relatively large quantities of soil from my immediate gardening. So I’m still playing.

Back to the buckets!

DSF

*Two inches of soil and two of dried leaves would probably work, but I haven’t tested that yet. Two inches of leaves or soil alone does not create enough of an odor barrier to keep the raccoons and possums from sniffing it out.

[Edited Dec 01 to correct typo and clarify a phrase.]

Tales from the Bucket: Silo Buckets!

Testing Lisa’s Solution

This is the first of two (or more) reports on my Lisa’s Solution tests. I can’t yet talk about it as a composting technique, as I haven’t yet completed that stage; I can, however, talk about how it does in the bucket.

Compared to EM bokashi, Lisa’s Solution uses far less volume of inoculant-in-carrier; if you were even more crunched for space than I, or ordering product by mail, that might be something to keep in mind. Lisa’s Solution is not EM bokashi, and there are differences in performance. But that might not be a bad thing, depending on your needs. The big differences—for me, in one standard-bucket and a couple of mini-bucket tests, not necessarily generally—are:

1)No “bokashi juice”

I haven’t yet done a proper side-by-side, matching-additions test; it’s an apartment, not a lab. But very little fluid separated out in the Lisa’s Solution buckets compared with what I’m used to seeing. Which means that you could, if you wanted to, skip the whole spigot-and-sieve thing, and just use a standard-issue bucket with a bunch of absorbent material at the bottom. (In fact, Lisa suggests doing just that. It might not work well with EM bokashi bran, but with this powder, it’s feasible.)

Of course, that also means you’d forgo harvesting bokashi juice to feed your plants and pipes.

2)No cidery scent.

Lisa’s Solution has no aroma worth mentioning in its dry state. A successful bucket has a faint alcohol-to-vinegar smell, actually less perceptible than the equivalent EM bokashi cider-vinegar scent, but with some character of the more heavily scented matter still sniffable when the bucket is opened. With a bunch of cilantro stems, this is not a problem. If you’re attempting to treat the leftovers after a clambake...

In the bucket with masher—that is, with matter compressed upon addition but without a weight continually pressing down on the waste matter—odor was a recurring issue until sufficient volume of waste had been added to act as its own weight. This isn’t an insoluble problem, it only requires a shift in technique, and in fact this happens with EM bokashi bran as well, to a lesser degree. It’s just much more of a problem with Lisa’s Solution. Bluntly, if the stuff isn’t working quickly, the bucket stinks. Not just that “transient off odor” I’m so concerned with avoiding, but eau de trash-can. If you generate waste regularly, and/or choose a proper container to handle your waste volume, deep enough and not too wide, you should be able to avoid this.

One small test, the “coffee cart” mini-bucket (plastic coffee canister with lid, an inch of shredded newspaper in the bottom, used coffee grounds with filters and used tea bags plus a few lemon slices), worked better with Lisa’s Solution than it has with EM bokashi bran—that difference in moisture again—but then, I like the smell of coffee, which neither the powder nor the bran completely supresses.

Too soon for conclusions, but I’ve concluded that I need another term. EM bokashi is, more or less, a branded name—but there are a lot of people out there fermenting things in buckets. Many of them using one- or two-thirds of the EM major microbial triad.

Ensiling, in agriculture, is a preservation technique for animal feeds, anaerobic fermentation to prevent rotting/putrefaction. Akin to pickling. And, yes, the inoculant of choice is often one of our favorite li’l lactobacilli (yeasts can be assumed to be present in the fodder). All ensilage begins to heat up/break down upon exposure to air—in farm country, it’s not uncommon to hear about silo fires, when ensiled grains heat too quickly—which makes ensiled products great activators for compost piles...

Does this begin to sound familiar?

So from this post forward, any bucket-based kitchen-waste treatment other than EM bokashi may be tagged “ensilage,” or maybe ensiled bucketing. To differentiate it from(brand-name) EM bokashi, with its formula inclusion of photosensitive odor-eating bacteria.


Composting tests are underway, as is a mixed-waste mini-bucket (all early tests are vegetarian). One obvious bokashi/silage test is not: irradiated foods or food given an antimicrobial rinse might disrupt a bucket (especially if a lactobacillus-only inoculant was used). As I choose not to purchase such things, someone else will have to try adding them to a fermenting bucket, fermenting only those, etc.


DSF

Not technically EM(TM), but is it effective?

LISA’S SOLUTION

I am still quite new to bokashi, which is fairly new itself. Unlike Indore (optimized layering) composting, that’s been around long enough for knowledge to have been passed down through generations—I learned from my grandmother—bokashi is younger than I am.

Young enough to still be evolving. Lisa’s solution is “bokashi powder” made from flour instead of bran. Odd idea to me, to whom flour still equals food, where bran and other carrier agents may not, but it’s an interesting new development. I’m quite curious to see how well it works.

Thanks to Al Pasternak, who twittered about it first, and the unsung hero who mentioned the free sample offer. And, of course, to Lisa. There’ll be a new test-bucket set up soon.

AND SPEAKING OF TESTS...

“It’s only an effective composting method if you end up with compost.”

What to do with the bokashi after curing remains the # 1 question on the forums and open-comment sites I’ve been perusing, with few really satisfying answers beyond planter composting for those of us without gardens or at least access to bit of, y’know, earth. I did turn up a few remarks from couple of people who mix bokashi with large volumes of old soil-based potting mix or soil, cover, and wait, creating humus-rich planting material for next season; the fastest-reported conversion of those is under a month. Call it
plant-free planter composting:

When the first one [bucket of bokashi] is ready [full]-- usually about two weeks
-- it will smell a bit like fresh pickles. The fermented mass is then buried in
a garden bed or in a large (10-gallon-plus) container of soil. After two to four
weeks, the mass has been converted to compost and is almost undetectable.

Did this mean ten gallons of soil plus five gallons of bokashi? When I was in school, they used to call this an “exercise for the reader.” Meaning, go figure it out! So I did. From personal experience, I can now report that this works at a one-to-one soil-to-bokashi ratio, not sealed but simply lidded enough to keep out rain and raccoons.

Compost, from bokashi’d waste, without a bin. Yippee! Not, however, a satisfactory solution for me—my current test substitutes dried leaf matter for most of that soil, since dirt isn’t, for the landless gardener, anywhere near “dirt cheap”!

There are other post-bucket tests in progess, but I don’t want to jinx them by speaking writing too soon. -G-

Of course, it’s quite possible someone’s already done all of this, and I’m just behind the curve. Most of my information on the bokashi process thus far has come from various online sources—Dr. Higa’s books are not in the stacks at my local public library, but several of his reports and speeches are posted here and there, as are excerpts relevant to the home bokashi bucketer, and several bokashi retailers are making efforts to educate as well as sell. But as with any new technique, questions remain and there are lags in the passing on of new knowledge.

Even at cyber-speeds, where a decent twitter can spread, as they say, virally. (Is that faster than bacterially? -VBG-) If you have had success with bokashi, tell someone! Preferably someone who might follow your lead.

Back to the buckets,

DSF

Call me the crazy bucket lady

I just joined BlogHer--well, about half a bucket ago. (What? You mean normal people don't measure their lives by their compost? -G-) My intro happened to include mention of my current multitude of cat litter containers, and my neighbors' likely opinion of same.

Turns out some of the newer locals haven't gotten past the fact that *I grow vegetables* to notice the brand names on my buckets, or the fact that some of them have lids instead of greenery:

"Is that a real pepper? I never knew you could grow food in a pot. Wow, no wonder you have so many..."

Um, yeah. I was tempted to mention that if I planted his head, I might grow cabbage, but if I can manage not to snark at the neighbors even when they steal my parking space, then rudeness in the face of cluelessness must certainly be avoidable.

I gave him a pepper and sent him on his way.

Though I grumble over the retailers who insist upon calling bokashi "indoor composting" when it isn't, I'm beginning to have more sympathy for them. How, exactly, would you explain bokashi to someone like him?

I'm growing compost in buckets by using magic dust. No, please don't call the folks in the white coats! I'll be good, I promise...