This is the third of a three piece series on Bokashi.  The first was about using the retail version of Bokashi (at $17 for 2.2 pounds).  The second was about making our own (with water, whey from yogurt and blackstrap molasses).  And this entry is about the differences between the two, if they worked and which worked best.

The good news is:  they both work great.  We’ve kept a compost bucket IN the kitchen and there hasn’t been any smell.  No negatives to report at all.  There is one “but….” which I’ll get to in a moment.

The other good news is that the homemade version worked every bit as well as the store bought variety.  No problems.   And it helps keep more newspaper out of the landfill (if you aren’t able to recycle it already).

With both methods, we’ve been able to compost a greater variety of things than we were able to before, even though we have a bin, a tumbler and a worm bin.  If you’ll remember, we can’t put citrus or fat into the worm bin and we only put yard waste into our other bin and tumbler because we don’t want to attract vermin (there’s a creek at the back of our property which is sort of a wildlife highway).

With bokashi, we can put in everything.  We could even put in meat and bone if we weren’t vegetarians.  So, everything goes in and it there’s no smell.  We haven’t kept ours outside yet, so we don’t know about the vermin, but with no smell it doesn’t seem that there would be an attraction.

Now, the “but….”.  We’re using 5 gallon buckets.  They fill up fairly quickly but take four weeks to break down (after it’s full).  So you have to start a new bucket while the old one does its magic.  We need three buckets in all, and there are only two of us.  If you have a larger family or like to cook a lot, you might even need four.  A five gallon bucket doesn’t take up a lot of room, but that would be one in use and three outside (or in the basement or wherever).

Final score:  top grades for the bokashi system of composting.

Filed under: Uncategorized