Do you Bokashi?
December 2, 2008 by Matt
Filed under Blog, Bokashi, Saving Water
Do you Bokashi? If so, how do you Bokashi? Is Bokashi-ing an easy part of your daily routine, or is it a chore? Have you persuaded others to Bokashi? Have your say on ooffoo, the Natural Collection’s new blog for eco-enthusiasts. Launched in November 2008, ooffoo is described as an ‘exciting eco space where it’s FREE to swap, sell, give away, recycle and share ideas with like-minded people’.
Submit an inspirational ‘feel good’ article and you could win £500. Or vote on such topical debates as ‘Is humanity capable of creating the golden age?’.
Recycling food waste – it’s a no-brainer mate!
Australia’s community and environment forum zoom in on some scary stats and remind us that, yes, we need to reuse and recycle, but one of the best ways to live a low-impact lifestyle is not to produce the waste in the first place. This is where composting comes in. If we can channel food waste away from the rubbish bin and into the bokashi or compost bin, collectively we’ll have a hugely positive impact on the amount of methane generated at landfill. Methane has a global warming potential of 21 times that of carbon dioxide.
This post describes the science in layman’s terms and invites readers to comment on their favourite way to recycle food waste. Of course, I added my two-pennies worth about the merits of bokashi composting! So, by composting our own food waste in a compost heap or bin, the carbon dioxide generated is far less harmful to the environment than the methane generated from that same waste going to landfill – it’s a no-brainer mate!
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Click here for more information on how to get the best out of your bokashi composter.
Buy a Bokashi Kitchen Composter
Get the low-down on how to make great compost
Effective Micro-organisms make great cleaning products
The Recycle Works is at the forefront of all things EM in the UK. Here Debbie blogs about how effective micro-organisms (EMs) make great probiotic cleaning products. The featured video shows how EMs tackle grease on a busy restaurant floor. Impressive stuff, plus they’re environmentally friendly. Could this mean the end of bleach?
I’ve written about the merits of bokashi juice on my Bokashi Instructions page. There I talked about how EM-rich bokashi juice (the by-product to bokashi composting) can prevent algae build-up in drains. I’ve also noticed how well bokashi juice cleans stains from around the plug when it’s poured down the sink, but with commercial products being developed, this takes the benefits of micro-organisms to a whole new level.
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Journalist Kate Hodal takes the compost challenge
Kate Hodal from Aberdeen’s the Press and Journal has taken the compost challenge. You can read about a worm massacre, fermented organic matter and nitrogen injected banana skins in her entertaining and informative pitch on the tribulations of being green. Find out about bokashi, wormeries and more conventional green thumb techniques to recycle food waste. She’s spoken to Carl Nichols, head of home composting at Recycle Now and she gets Heather Gorringe’s from wigglywigglers.co.uk take on bokashi and wormeries – “I might have drowned mine, but it’s worms’ resilience that makes them such good composters”. Recycling food waste is moving higher up the agenda for people and Kate reminds us that “one-third of all household waste can be composted at home”.
Kate provides us with a bit of know-how so we can ‘avoid some of these pitfalls and reap the benefits’ of home composting. Because, as Carl Nichols says, home composting, whether it’s a wormery, a Bokashi bin, or saving fruit and veg scraps to put in to your compost bin, doesn’t just give you nice, enriched soil to feed back into your plants, it also cuts down on your waste, clears our air, and keeps our planet from overheating. Read the ‘Take the compost challenge’ article.
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Click here for more information on how to get the best out of your bokashi composter.
Buy a Bokashi Kitchen Composter
Get the low-down on how to make great compost
Composting Autumn Leaves
Collect fallen leaves for leaf-mould. Store moist leaves in black plastic bags and after a year or so you’ll have a rich, crumbly mulch your plants will love.
Much as I love autumn, I do dread picking up all the leaves. It’s never ending, especially when you live at the end of a wind tunnel like we do. But great things can come of all that hard work. Here’s how to turn those damp leaves into a rich mulch for your garden:
Stack your leaves in a wire mesh compost bin
You can mix a few leaves into your compost heap, but too many will make the compost slimy. You’re better off stacking large quantities separately, using a wire mesh bin to keep them tidy. You can easily cobble together a wire mesh compost bin by wrapping chicken wire around four supporting stakes. The secret is not to let the leaves dry out, so you should sprinkle them with a little water during dry periods, or turn them occasionally to mix wet leaves with dry.
Pack leaves into black plastic bags
If you have a smaller garden you can fill black plastic bin liners with your leaves. Rake them up just after rain so they’re nice and moist and pack them into the bags. Tie the bags at the top and pierce them to encourage air to circulate. Alternatively, you can use biodegradable leaf sacks. Stack the bags somewhere out of the way and forget about them for at least a year while the leaves break down into a rich, crumbly leaf-mould. Some leaves take longer to decompose than others. You’ll find, for example, that oak, hornbeam and alder leaves will take longer to break down than sycamore, chestnut and beech. Avoid using evergreen leaves for leaf-mould because they take too long to break down.
Good things come to those who wait
Although leaf-mould takes longer to make than compost, once you’ve packed the leaves in a wire mesh bin or plastic bags you can just leave them alone. After a year to eighteen months you’ll have a rich, crumbly mulch, which you can either spread around the plants and borders in your garden, dig in as a soil improver, or mix with your potting compost.
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Click here for more information on how to get the best out of your bokashi composter.
Buy a Bokashi Kitchen Composter
Get the low-down on how to make great compost
Half Price Compost Bins
Get a traditional wooden compost bin half price: £29.99
This Compost Box from Crocus is a traditional style wooden compost bin made from pressure-treated FSC wooden slats.
The compost bin is guaranteed for 15 years against rot
Dimensions: 650 litre capacity, 100×100x70cm
It will be delivered flat-packed and is quick and easy to set up.
On Sale! £29.99 Buy It Now
Bokashi Troubleshooting
You’ve embarked on your bokashi composting adventure, you’re feeling good about your green credentials, but to your dismay, your bokashi bin leaks. This is what to do:
My Bokashi Bin Leaks! How do I Fix It?
This is a problem for two reasons:
1. It smells bad
2. The composting process is anaerobic; a leaking bin means air can get in and your waste may not ferment properly.
So, what do you do?
Well, you need a two pronged attack – fix the leak and reduce the juice. If, after that, your bokashi bucket still leaks, you’ll need to replace the tap’s washers.
1. Fix the leak
Assuming the leak is coming from the tap at the base of the unit, the likelyhood is that the silicon seal isn’t doing its job. Remember, it should only be finger tight. Any tighter and the washer may stretch. You can’t access the nut without first removing the waste, so try to tighten it by turning the tap clockwise. If this doesn’t work, try applying some silicone sealant to where the tap joins the bokashi bin. Otherwise, I’m afraid, it’s a case of removing the waste, replacing the seals and making sure the nut is only finger tight.
2. Reduce the juice
You can easily reduce the amount of juice your bokashi bin produces by only adding dry material. Avocado skins, egg shells, potato peelings and bread crusts, for example, won’t produce much liquid. Fruit scraps like pineapple peelings and apple cores, and tea bags do produce a lot of juice, and for now at least, should go straight on the compost heap, or dug directly into the garden. While your bin is drying out, stand it on a tray just in case there is any further leakage.
3. Replace the washers
The tap screws on to the bokashi bucket and a rubber washer should be placed on both the inside and the outside of the unit. If the nut holding the tap is too tight, the washer may stretch and the seal will be broken. Consider replacing the washers with good quality washing machine inlet hose washers to ensure a water tight seal. You can buy a set of six from Homebase or B&Q for about £1.20. These won’t stretch, which means you can tighten the nut more than you could with the standard issue silicone washers. Once the tap is in position, fill the bucket with water and test for leaks before adding your next batch of bokashi compost.
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Click here for more information on how to get the best out of your bokashi composter.
Buy a Bokashi Kitchen Composter
Making Compost: Ten Top Tips
Reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and boost the health of your garden with these ten top tips for making compost :
1. Make sure your heap is handy
When setting up your compost heap find a spot in your garden that’s fairly close to the kitchen, so that it’s handy enough so you don’t mind popping out with kitchen waste fairly frequently. And if possible, make sure your compost heap or bin is in the shade, so the compost doesn’t dry out.
2. Build your heap on the cheap
The only piece of equipment you must have to make compost is a garden fork. You don’t even need a compost bin. If you want you can just build a heap and cover it over with some old carpet or cardboard, but a compost bin will keep the compost heap neater. You can build your own using recycled materials such as brick, stone, timber or plastic. For example, you can assemble a bin from old wooden pallets, or cut the bottom out of an old plastic dustbin and press the bin into the soil, keeping the lid to cover it.
3. Think about tomorrow
If you’re making a wooden compost bin, build a four-sided frame about 1 metre cubed that is open at the top and make sure one of the sides can be easily removed so you can turn the heap and extract the ‘cooked’ compost.
4. Protect your stash
If vermin such as rats are present in your area, they may pay your compost heap a visit in the same way that they might visit any other part of the garden. Bury wire netting 30cm deep around your compost heap to keep them out.
5. Help the worms help you
Worms and other soil organisms are crucial for making good quality compost. Make sure you position your heap on a level, well-drained area of soil. The worms will soon find your heap, but if you want to boost your compost production, bags of worms can be bought on the internet. The best worms to get are tiger worms (elsena fetida). Don’t worry about adding too many, their numbers will quickly adjust to suit the conditions.
6. Blend your ‘browns’ and your ‘greens’
Add alternating layers of carbon-rich ‘brown’ materials such as dried leaves, egg boxes, sawdust, dead flower stalks and twigs with soggy, nitrogen-rich ‘green’ materials such as cut grass, manure, tea bags and vegetable and fruit peelings.
7. Get to know the neighbours
Ask the neighbours for any organic matter they might otherwise throw in the rubbish. While you’re at it, offer to gather up compostables from your workplace; unbleached tea bags and coffee grounds break down very quickly and supply proteins, oils and nitrogen. Pile the material on your compost heap to rot down into glorious soil food.
8. Bottoms up
If you have the energy and the motivation, ‘turning’ your compost heap at least once a month will speed up the composting process.
9. Do compost
- Fruit and vegetable peelings
- Coffee grounds
- Tea leaves
- Unbleached tea bags
- Stale bread
- Eggshells
- Sawdust
- Vacuum cleaner dust and hair
- Natural fibres
- Grass cuttings, non-woody prunings and leaves
10. Don’t compost
- Meat, fish and bones
- Cooking oil and fats
- Cooked food
- Dairy products
- Diseased plant material
- Dog and cat waste
Cooked food, meat, fish and dairy can all be safely thrown on the compost heap if they have first been fermented in a Bokashi Bin. But, if in doubt, leave it out. Suspect materials can be sent to your local green waste recycling facility.
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Get the low-down on how to make great compost.
See our Compost Checklist for a full list of what you can and can’t compost.
Get the best out of your Bokashi Kitchen Composter.
Buy a Bokashi Kitchen Composter.
Beehive Water Butts Sale
August 26, 2008 by Matt
Filed under Blog, Saving Water
Beehive Water Butts blend into the garden beautifully – and they’re on sale here: £59.00
Water butts are environmentally friendly and save you money – but sometimes they can be unsightly. This 150L capacity beehive style water butt is different. It’s made from terraccina, a resin material that looks frighteningly like clay, so it will blend in beautifully with your home or garden. Complete with tap and lid (which includes an indented cutting mark for those wishing to slot a down-pipe directly into the top).
Dimensions: 150L capacity, 58 cm X 78cm
Please note: The matching Terraccina Stand is sold separately. Click to view the Terraccina Water Butt Stand.
On Sale! £59.00 CLICK TO BUY
Bokashi for quicker composting
Want to compost ALL your organic kitchen waste fast? Try a bokashi bin for quicker composting, plus get all the added benefits while you’re at it.
Sound familiar? I’d love to recycle my food scraps, but my garden’s too small for a compost heap… or, I haven’t got time to sort through what I can and can’t compost, so my food waste ends up in the rubbish bin.
Recycling ALL your food waste quickly – it can be done
Composting organic kitchen waste (plate scrapings and the rest) especially when you only have a small garden is not easy, but it is possible. One solution is to purée your scraps in a blender each day and bury the pulp in the garden. It will compost and it won’t attract pests, but it will take months to break down.
I’ve tried lots of different composting contraptions developed for home gardeners and I’ve found that indoor compost buckets don’t really work. A composter needs to be big enough to generate the required heat. Without this critical mass, stuff just becomes slimy and smelly and instead of rotting down, it just rots. Worm bin devices work well, but only for plant-based scraps, and they take up more room than a lot of people would like.
A simple composting system from Japan comes to the rescue
Thankfully, a composting system developed in Japan means you can now recycle all your organic kitchen waste including dairy, meat and cooked foods. The process uses bokashi bran, wheat bran that has been inoculated with effective micro-organisms (EM). EMs contain good bacteria that help ferment the organic material and transform food waste into rich compost in just 4 to 6 weeks.
Bokashi composting works much faster than ordinary composting. The bokashi bran helps to pickle the organic material and speedily break it down into enzymes and amino acids, which plant roots love. The fermentation period takes about two weeks, and the composting stage takes about a month. That’s why bokashi bins are usually sold in sets of 2; it takes the average household about 2 weeks to fill one bucket, so while one is being filled, the other can be fermenting.
Using the bokashi bin system
The system is very straightforward and if adopted will quickly become part of your kitchen routine. Simply put your non-liquid food scraps into the bucket and sprinkle one handful of bokashi bran to every 3 to 4 centimetres of waste. Press the mass down lightly and reseal the container. The mixture will produce a liquid by-product called bokashi juice, which should be drained using the tap at the base of the unit. Repeat this layering process until the bucket is full, then leave it stand for 2 weeks to ferment, but make sure you regularly drain off any excess juice.
Once the first load is ‘cooked’, the waste will smell like sweet pickle and can be directly buried in the garden, or in a large container of soil (at least a cubic metre), or, if you have one, tipped on the compost heap.
After about 4 to 6 weeks the bokashi waste will be unrecognisable; the waste will have converted to a rich compost, perhaps with the odd avocado stone or piece of bone still detectable. You can now plant straight into it, or move the compost to other parts of the garden. See Bokashi and your garden for more information.
Satisfaction guaranteed – especially if you’re a plant
The beneficial microbes present in bokashi compost go to work as a nutritious soil conditioner encouraging healthy plant growth, whilst bokashi juice can be used as a liquid fertiliser for plants indoors and out (simply dilute it with water), or used as a probiotic cleanser and poured down the sink to keep the pipes clean.
The bokashi bin system fits perfectly into your low-impact lifestyle. You can vastly reduce the amount of waste you put out for the dustmen, and at the same time, quickly produce bokashi-enriched compost to give your garden a boost.
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