- Today, I'm gonna show you start to finish
how to do a composting method
that you may have never heard of before.
So what is Bokashi composting?
What's in this bag?
How exactly do you do it and why is it so important?
That is what we're covering today's video from A to Z.
The first of which, of course, what is it?
Bokashi means loosely translated,
it's a Japanese word that means fading away.
So what we're doing is we're taking food scraps
and we're mixing them with what is inside
this magical little satchel here
and slowly the bacteria and the microbes
that are in here on this spent beer grain
are going to be working away.
They're going to start to ferment those food scraps
and pre digest them so that we can then
use those food scraps in our compost,
in our worm bins,
or my personal favorite
in our actual gardens, straight away
without having to go through
the classical composting system
and just getting a lot of nutrition to our soil
for those microbes to break down in the soil.
And then of course, to make available for our plants.
So let's take a look at what's inside here.
Let's get you it.
So we've got our Bokashi grains in our Burlap bag
and this biodegradable little inner, which is nice,
but what we're looking at here is spent beer grains.
These are coming from one of the only organic breweries
here in San Diego.
So this is a waste stream that SD Microbes has taken.
And they're basically, okay, let's use this
and we're going to inoculate it with lactobacillus
which is our micro that's gonna start going to work
on our food scraps.
So this is what we're working with.
This is sort of the base ingredient in Bokashi composting
that you absolutely have to have.
And I very much prefer this particular one,
because not only is it local to me,
but I just find it to be a very effective
and fast active worker.
Now that we have a rough idea
of what's going on with bokashi composting
why would you use it over worm composting,
hot composting, even just static, cold composting?
Well, one of the most important reasons
is that you can compost things
that almost none of those systems can compost.
Fats, meats, cheeses, cooked leftovers,
things like this that normally would not go into
definitely a hot compost bin
and almost always a worm composting bin.
Bokashi will process.
The second reason you would do this is
because if you're not a worm composter or a composter
then it makes highly efficient use of your food scraps.
Not only in just a waste perspective.
It's not going into the landfill
where it becomes anaerobic and it's just completely wasted,
but it is a quicker process,
because of that pre fermentation
that you're gonna see later in this video.
Reason number three is going to be increasing
the organic carbon content of your soil
once you actually put the food scraps
that have been through the Bokashi system into your garden
it's going to increase the level of humus in the soil.
The soil life's going to explode.
You're just giving it what it needs.
It's similar to putting in other types of amendments,
but I find it can work quite a bit faster.
Finally, our fourth reason,
there are some anti pathogenic properties
to Bokashi compost,
just due to the nature of the processing.
It does become somewhat acidic, et cetera.
So if that's a concern to you
then it's a really good method to use.
Our next step in the Bokashi process
is actually building the system that is going to house
all of our Bokashi compost.
It's so easy.
Here's exactly what you need.
You need one five gallon bucket just as is.
You need another five gallon bucket that you've drilled
some holes in the bottom of.
You then need one lid,
because Bokashi unlike other accomplishing methods
is anaerobic without oxygen.
So you need to have a lid on the top
of this bucket right here.
The next thing you're gonna need is some kind of old t-shirt
or cloth or rag, because we want to line the bottom
of the one with holes in it,
just so there's not any super leakage,
just the water comes out or the liquid.
Then you need some kind of prop up,
because what you'll do is you'll probably
put this brick one in here
and you'll put this top
that gives it a little bit of a buffer
just because is you don't want the liquid to be sitting
in the actual bottom of the top container.
If that makes any sense.
Then finally, and this is somewhat optional.
I like to put something on the top of my scraps
once we fill it up.
So I have one of these old five gallon bucket inserts
but you could again, just use another thing like this.
You could use wax paper,
anything to give it that anaerobic seal.
That's all you need to start your Bokashi bucket.
Now let's put it together.
Step number one, put the bucket down
that has no holes in it.
Step two, place the brick or whatever you're using
to prop the other bucket up inside.
Step three, place your other bucket right on top.
Step four, cut out a circular section
of your t-shirt or cloth or whatever you're using
to put at the bottom as your solid waste filter.
(upbeat music)
Now, place that filter in the bottom.
This is to prevent any solid waste
from going through the holes
as well as to provide even a little bit more
of an air barrier.
It really is that easy guys.
These last two steps come after we filled our Bokashi bucket
which is what we're getting to right now.
So here we have quite the assortment
of food scraps and food waste.
There's some extra things that I had around the house.
I've got some coffee grounds.
I have some spent potatoes.
These are potatoes that I grew
that weren't quite up to snuff.
And they unfortunately have now gone a little bit bad.
I have some dragon fruit pieces
and these are all going to go
into our Bokashi composting system.
There's two things we have to remember.
The only two things you cannot
put into a Bokashi composting system
are items that are just simply too large.
Like this is too big.
You want to just chop it up a little bit
and items that are already going rotten or moldy,
because the microorganisms and pathogens
that are in that mold, that rot,
can actually out compete what's on the Bokashi grains
that we've so lovingly sprinkled into our system.
So don't put those two in everything else you can.
Let's go ahead and break some of these down
and then we'll get into how to layer your Bokashi bucket.
(upbeat music)
After our chop session,
what we need to do is first layer down
a nice, healthy dose of Bokashi bran on the bottom
as a nice little barricade
and also to kickstart the process.
So I'm pretty generous with this.
I'm just putting about a cup or so on there
and now we need to layer our scraps.
So here, I don't want to go overboard.
I want to hear maybe like an inch or two,
and then from there I'm gonna recoat
with some more Bokashi bran.
So let's put in just a little bit more.
That should be good.
Good. And now we're coming back in with our Bokashi bran.
This helps to fill up the air pockets,
but it also helps to inoculate everything
and get that lactobacillus
really acting as quickly as possible.
Also soaks up a little bit of moisture.
(mellow music)
Okay, now that we are on our final batch
this is as much as I have to put in right now.
I'm gonna really quickly just compress this down,
because we want it to be as airtight as possible.
So I'm just gonna get as much air as I can out.
And we're gonna layer it
with a very healthy dose of Bokashi bran on the top,
because this is our final sort of capping off process.
So I'm gonna give it two cups of bran on top.
Just be a little liberal about it.
No big deal.
And then I'm going to put on my little liner
which of course you could use parchment paper
or something like that.
I just decided to use the five gallon bucket liner
that I had for my previous video I did
on self watering container.
So we're gonna do this just like that.
Now you have to put on your air tight container lid,
because again, it's an anaerobic process.
So snap that tight.
There we go.
It's been a little over a week
since we started our Bokashi bin,
so let's go ahead
and crack it open and see what's inside.
Oh wow.
I can already smell the fermentation for sure.
Let's go ahead and take a look.
So we have a lot of this white mold
which is actually completely fine.
That's kind of what we're looking for.
You can see some potatoes right there, some bran.
Looks completely normal looks as it should.
I'm curious if there's any liquid down below
it's hard to tell just from looking,
but there's only the tiny little bit of moisture
which is another good sign.
You don't want a ton of it.
So we're looking really good.
We've got another week to wait.
So we'll be back in a week.
(mellow music)
We're at the two week mark guys.
Let's peel it back.
Ooh, take a look.
I did add a couple more things here at the top.
So it probably is not gonna look that different,
but we're about ready to get it into the garden.
Just so you can see there is actually some liquid now
that we've waited another week
so we can discuss what to do with this as well.
So the first thing we have to do is actually dig
about 10 to 12 inch deep trenches.
I'm dig two, one down right here and one down right here.
And then after we layer our Bokashi in
we don't want to put especially young plants directly in,
because you can burn them.
So we're gonna give it probably another week or so
and then come back and check.
But let's go ahead and get our Bokashi in the ground.
(mellow music)
♪ Yeah ♪
Okay, we're fully buried.
So the only other thing I'm gonna do
which I feel to be necessary in my area
I have a lot of skunks that come through
and they're gonna smell those scraps.
So I'm just going to put some frost blanket
over the top of this raised bed and that should protect it.
I notice they don't really want to climb in if I do that.
So we're just gonna put some clips on
and now we have to wait another week.
And by the way, if you like these raise beds guys
they're called Birdie's garden beds.
And I actually sell them on my online store
which you can hand go check out in the description below.
It's been about two weeks
since we buried our Bokashi food scraps into my raised bed.
We've had a couple rainy days here in San Diego
more than a couple actually, which is really unusual.
I'm unsure how that would've impacted how quickly
the bacteria and soil
that could have broken down what's inside.
So we may have food scraps still, we may not.
Only one way to find out.
Let's go ahead and get digging.
So this was our trench.
So I'm gonna go straight down in here
and see what we've got.
And honestly right away, I'm not really getting anything.
Let's keep going though.
Do we have any food scraps in here?
Yeah, it looks like we have some for sure.
Look, there's definitely some food scraps right there.
They're a little rotted or a little moist,
but they're there.
They're just not as prevalent as they once were.
Cause we put in over five pounds worth.
I actually also see a lot out of worm life going on.
Look at that.
This bed was more or less devoid of worms
when we first started
and we've got one nice guy right here
amongst many others that are down in this trench
working away at this food.
Let's just keep digging over here.
See if we can get anything out of this section.
Okay, that's about as deep as we were.
And look, we do have some scraps.
They're still there,
but they are massively broken down already.
Like there's just a lot of decomposition going on.
You could see that the soil life
was really starting to take effect.
And honestly I would give it maybe another week.
We probably won't even see these here in the soil
which means that more or less, those nutrients have been
become bio available to most of the soil life.
And thus we have supercharged our soil
with a bit more organic matter
which is exactly what we were trying to do
in a manner much faster than composting.
So there we have it guys.
Bokashi composting 101.
In this video we've taken you all the way
from set up explaining what it is
all the way to processing food
and actually getting it into our raised beds
and getting that soil life to really start to break it down.
This process took about three and a half to four weeks.
That's faster than most composting processes
you're going to run into.
And that's all due to the Bokashi bran.
Like I said, I get my Bokashi bran from SD Microbes.
They're good friends of mine.
They've put together a pretty crazy deal
where you can get a percentage off
by using a code as well as
free nationwide shipping for this.
It's Bokashi bran.
It's enough to last you many, many batches.
You're gonna get it in this Burlap sack
as well as a biodegradable compostable container here.
And then you just have beautiful, beautiful bran
that you can feel good about,
because it's even being repurposed.
I mean, this is spent beer grain.
In fact, they call their Bokashi beer Kashi.
So if you'd like to get into the Bokashi composting game,
I can highly recommend them.
It's actually pretty funny.
In this Bokashi mixture, one of my good friends farms
actually is contributing to some of the inputs.
Steven over at Nature's Always Right.
You might guys may have seen some videos
I've done with him in the past.
So anyways, if you'd like to check it out
go ahead and do so.
Until next time, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.