Bokashi is a method that uses a mix of microorganisms to cover food waste to decrease smell. It derives from the practice of Japanese farmers centuries ago of covering food waste with rich, local soil that contained the microorganisms that would ferment the waste. After a few weeks, they would bury the waste that weeks later, would become soil.
Basically you buy or make your own Bokashi bran, this is just bran that has been inoculated with certain 'good' bacteria that help the decomposition of food waste. You place your food waste, which unlike any other composting methods can include meat and dairy, into a bucket. The bucket must have a lid that makes it air tight when fastened on as the process of decomposition with bokashi needs an anaerobic environment to work. When your waste is in, you sprinkle on some bran and close the lid. Repeating the process until the bucket is full. When this happens you leave your bucket and let all those micro-organisms get to work for a few weeks, the waste is basically fermenting or pickling. If when you open your bucket you smell a sweet pickled smell the process is working.
What is a little strange about this process is the fact that the waste you have put in looks no different at the end. Don't expect to find a pile of lovely compost just yet. If you buy a bokaski bin they are basically buckets with a tap, similar I guess to a wormery or a homebrew barrel. The tap will give you your first product! A very strong liquid fertiliser rich in good micro-organism. I dilute mine 1-100 and it works fine, other sites suggest this might be overkill so next year I will experiment with that a little. One you have captured you fertiliser and the food waste has fermented for several weeks you can do a couple of things with it. I myself put it in the compost bin. by digger a hole in the centre and then put my bokashi waste in. Making sure to cover it all over with a bit of soil or what's in the compost. Leave this for a month or too and it will degrade in the compost. I left mine in over winter and cleaned out in the spring and it was brilliantly black moist compost. Your other option is to dig it in to a trench in your flower or veg beds and cover over with soil. A few months down the line if you dig were you buried it you will find a very rich black soil.
Bokashi has many uses and it really worth taking a look at, if you are really into being green it something I think you should try. As I said above ALL food waste can be composted safely with bokashi! Here is a video that probably explains it all a little better than me.
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