Bokashi composting, also spelled bocashi composting, is a new way to deal with kitchen scraps. The proponents of the system claim that it has a number of benefits not found in more traditional composting methods. In this blog post, I will have a close look at Bokashi composting and separate myth from reality.
Bokashi Composting—What is it?
From Bokashicomposting.com we have the following description: “Bokashi composting is a safe, convenient, and quick way to compost food waste in your kitchen, garage, or apartment.”
To get started, you need a special bokashi bucket that has a tight lid and a spigot at the bottom to drain off liquids (pictured above). These will run you $60 to $150, or you can make a DIY for $20. You also need the ‘special sauce’! It would not be a very good process if there was no special sauce to sell you. It is normally referred to as bokashi bran or Effective Microbes.
The process is fairly simple. Put your food scraps in the pail and sprinkle some bokashi bran on top. Squish it down tight to get the air out. Close the lid. Each time you have more scraps, add them to the pail, add bran, and squish.
After a few days, liquid starts to form in the bottom of the pail. This needs to be drained, or it will start to stink. This liquid, the ‘bokashi tea,’ can be used to fertilize your house plants or your garden plants.
After a few weeks, when the pail is full, you take the contents outside and either dig it into your garden or add it to your compost pile.
That is the basic process. If you want more details or have specific questions about the process, there is lots of info on the net.
Benefits of Bokashi Composting
I found the following benefits listed at various sites on the net.
1) You can compost dairy products and meat.
2) No strong odors
3) No nutrients lost
4) No insects or rodents
5) No turning necessary
6) No need to worry about the amount of greens and browns
7) Food scraps are inoculated with EM (Effective Microbes)
8) Produces a nutrient-rich tea for plants
9) Can be carried out on a small scale, which is perfect for apartments
10) Very quick—complete in 2 weeks
11) Saying the word ‘bokashi’ will impress friends. 🙂
This sounds like a good system, and any system that returns kitchen scraps to the soil is a good thing. So in general, I have no problem with bokashi composting. If it gets you composting—great.
But… there is always a but. Is this really a method of composting? Is this system better than the more traditional methods of composting? These are the important questions and the ones I will look at in the rest of this post.
Bokashi Composting—Is it Really Composting?
If you read the above quickly, you might have missed the statement that says, “After a few weeks, when the pail is full, you take the contents outside and either dig it into your garden or add it to your compost pile.” Does this make sense? Why would you add fully composted material back to the compost pile?
If you read the fine print, you soon understand that bokashi composting is not a composting process at all. Bokashi in Japanese means to ferment. This process is actually a fermentation process. What you are doing is turning your kitchen scraps into pickled kitchen scraps. At the end of the process, the food looks just like it did when it went into the system, except it’s pickled. An orange looks like an orange, and an apple looks like an apple.
There is no composting taking place in bokashi composting—talk about false advertising!
Knowing this fact makes the earlier statement make more sense. Once you have fermented your scraps, you then need to compost them. You can do this by adding them to a compost pile, or you can just dig them into your garden soil, where they will compost naturally.
This system is especially promoted for apartment owners—what do they do with it after fermentation? Throw it in the garbage? They could have done that before fermenting.
Now that you understand the process, it is also clear why it is so fast—only 2 weeks. It is fast because there is no composting, which is a slow process.
Bokashi composting is not composting!
Bokashi vs Traditional Composting
The benefits listed above as #2 to #6, inclusive, are really not benefits when we compare the two methods. I make compost in bins and don’t worry about greens and browns—I just add whatever I have. It is outside, so the smell does not bother me, and if a mouse comes by for a bite to eat, so what! Nutrients can be lost if it rains too much, but they are lost to the soil below the compost pile—they are not really lost since the tree roots under the compost pile use the nutrients. If I really care about nutrient loss, I can cover the compost pile to keep out the rain.
Traditional composting, if higher temperatures are reached, can even compost meat and cheese.
The difference in the two systems is the pickling process. The apparent benefits of pickling are the Effective Microbes added to soil and the bokashi tea.
For more information on traditional composting, see Compost—What is Compost? and Benefits of Composting.
For a detailed comparison of Bokashi and traditional composting see, Bokashi vs. Composting.
Effective Microbes
Dr. Higa, the person who originally developed the bokashi system, also developed a special sauce that he called ‘Effective Microbes’ (EM). All kinds of special properties have been assigned to this mixture, but nowadays lots of people sell the microbes already added to the bran. Everyone in the industry now has their own ‘secret sauce,’ i.e., Effective Microbes + bran.
Adding the microbes is important since they control the fermentation process. For example, in winemaking, special starter yeast mixtures may be added to start the process. The reason for doing this is that you want the right kind of microbes to grow quickly and outcompete the ones that will create a lot of bad odors.
There are also claims that the EM are good for the garden. There are some studies that show a benefit from the microbes, but most show no positive results.
Testing of EM tea on field-grown crops found that they did not increase yield. Similar field studies have shown the same results. Effective microbes are important to make the bokashi system work, but they don’t really add any benefit to your garden.
Note (added April 2021): More recent research indicates that even the EM microbes may not be required for making Bokashi.
Nutritious Bokashi Tea
As fermentation progresses, excess liquid drains into the bottom of the pail, and you need to remove it. It is claimed that this tea is a great source of nutrients for your plants.
How nutritious is it? Some sites say that you can use it straight or dilute it 1:100. That is a huge red flag. A fertilizer that can be effective at full strength and at a 100 dilution rate does not make sense. Some people have commented that “it’s a biology thing, not a chemistry thing, and so the dilution does not matter.” They are saying ignore the nutrients because it is the microbes that are important. I addressed that in the discussion above. The science does not support the idea that the microbes add value. Even if they did, dilution by a factor of 100 would still be important.
There is very little published about the nutrient levels in Bokashi tea, which is odd since so many websites promote it. I did find one study and analyzed it in another post called Is Bokashi Tea a Good Fertilizer?
In short, it contains very little nitrogen, high levels of P and K, and several of the micronutrients are on the low side. It also contains high levels of sodium and chloride, both of which are toxic to plants at low levels.
Bokashi tea should not be used on container plants, and even in the garden it should be diluted 1:100 before it is used to reduce any potential damage from sodium and chloride.
Real Benefits of Bokashi
I am still not sold on Bokashi. The tea has no real value, and the fermented food scraps still need to be disposed of. If you are going to dispose of them in the garden, you might as well compost instead.
In recent years a new way of handling the Bokashi ferment, called Soil Factory, has become popular. I have discussed it in detail in Soil Factory Using Bokashi Ferment. It is a way to process the scraps in the home in a few weeks. You can even use my improved Instant Soil Factory method and eliminate the two-week period. Using these methods, Bokashi makes sense for apartment owners and others with no garden.
Both bokashi composting and traditional composting provide your garden and plants with the same benefits. Bokashi just seems to be an additional extra step that is not necessary. I would not use it.
That leaves us with one benefit from the list presented above, and this one can’t be denied. Saying the word ‘bokashi’ is cool and will impress your friends.
I appreciate your view on the acidic anaerobic fermentation method of dealing with organic waste. I am curious as to whether you have tried Bokashi fermentation? I have been actively fermenting for a few years now and I can say with great certainty that it does what is claimed. An example is the fact that I have not used chemical fertilizers on my lawn for the past 2 years.I only use the bokashi tea and the finished soil thru the fermentation process and my lawn rivals any other in the neighbourhood. Stated just as an example. Btw.I had previously composted the traditional aerobic way and found it way too much work for the minimal results and issues, hence my switch to Bokashi and subsequent opening of my business, Good Green Earth Company. Best regards
I have not tried it – can’t see any real benefit.
Your test does not show much. You do not indicate the controls you used, and given your business you might have some bias.
I see you ship in Canada. Lets give it a try. You send me a system to try – it can be an old one or a damaged one. I’ll run two tests and report on their results. I notice you have no references on your web site – so some solid proof should help your sales.
Test #1. I will set it up with kitchen scraps, and see how long it takes for everything to decompose to a point where it resembles regular compost. This will show that bokashi is either faster or slower than composting.
Test #2. I’ll use the juice and spread it on my grass in alternating rows. We will use a row for bokashi, one for nothing and one for compost. We can see which produces the best results. The evaluation will be done by others in a blind test.
I urge you to give it a try, then you will see the benefits for yourself. The information on my website is not a test but rather results that I have personally witnessed and/or been stated by my clients.
Yes I have bias because of personal evidence and experience, That is why I started the business and dedicated the remainder of my life to promoting the Bokashi method.
Thank you for your suggestion regarding posting statistical proof on my website to help my sales. Btw..my business is doing very well thanks.I’m exporting Bokashi products globally and sell my products in big name retail stores.
I am involved in a multi phase applied research collaboration with the college in our city. When the results are summarized, They will be posted on our website.
In fact the reason I was able to secure the collaboration is due to the information and analysis that I received regarding a similar pilot project that was done in British Columbia.
Here is the link:
http://www.bokashicycle.com/canada/Armstrong_Pilot_Sep012010_No_AS09012010_Summary%20Report_web.htm
As far as giving you a bokashi system, I’m not in the business of giving my products away, but I would love to sell you a system. I do ship the systems free in Canada.
I don’t need to prove anything to you. I feel a bias towards aerobic composting from you, therefore if you feel you want to try to disprove the bokashi method, go right ahead with my blessing.
I would like to clarify the lawn fertilizing process . I use 100:1 water:bokashi tea, spraying 2-3 times a year and spread the Bokashi ‘compost’ in the spring.
About the tea. whether it was a misunderstanding on your part or your source, do not use tea at full strength because of its acidic value. 2 tbsp per gallon of water will give a ph of around 7.
You can use the tea at full strength for drains and septic systems to kill pathogens and unclog drains.Yes really!
I could go on but I better wrap things up. Anyone that has any questions or concerns about acidic anaerobic fermentation (aka Bokashi Composting) check out my website goodgreenearthco.com and contact me, Gary Crowell
Compost tea kills pathogens? One of the arguments against compost tea is that it can be a good growth medium for them. In fact most proponents argue that the real value in compost tea are the microbes – not the nutrients.
The study is interesting but of limited value to show that bokashi makes sense for home owners.
– home owners are not going to put their food waste through a food chipper as in the study.
– the study does not seem to have been published in a scientific journal?
– the study shows that adding food waste to soil increases nutrients and may help soil structure. That is nothing new. We all know that if you add nutrients to soil, it will have more nutrients.
– the study claims that the bokashi material decomposes very fast. 20 days for bokashi vs 6 months for compost. The team clearly does not understand the decomposition process. Compost takes 5 years to decompose. I suspect the same for bokashi. This study did not even look at decomposition. Their only observation was “Observers at the end of the fermentation soil integration cycle reported that ….no foul odor or evidence of decaying food waste in the field where product had been integrated.” That tells you nothing about decomposition.
– I quote, “The total end product at the end of the fermenting process (approximately 2 tons) will then be spread evenly over the 20 x 20 foot plot”. Two tons of fermented organic matter was spread over 400 sq ft of soil – and nutrient levels went up! That is a ridiculous amount of material for a small plot of soil. In your post you claim to use a 100:1 dilution of just the tea and spread in on the grass. That is virtually nothing compared to 2 tons of actual organic matter.
– the study has no controls!
– the study did not even try to grow anything in the resulting soil!
This study has the same problem as most bokashi and compost tea studies. They show that if you take organic matter and spread it on the soil – you add nutrients and organic matter to the soil. We know that. It does not prove bokashi is any better than other methods. It does not prove that it is any better than just shredding the food material and digging it in the soil – much less work.
In your article you say, “Both bokashi composting and traditional composting provide your garden and plants with the same benefits.”
Yet in the PDF that you cited, titled,
“Treating Food by Bokasi Composting: http://www.envirolink.govt.nz/PageFiles/749/1014-GSDC94_Bokashi%20composting%20for%20food%20preparation%20waste.pdf“, the source states,
“Conclusions:
Fermenting food preparation ‘wastes’, such as domestic kitchen scraps, as an alternative to
composting has a considerable number of benefits.”
Also you state here repetitively that there is no evidence that bokashi composts any faster, yet in your same source of information it says,
“The key benefits are:
• A simpler, potentially cheaper, and shorter processing cycle post-collection”.
And further, you make dubious regard at best, for the cycling of nutrients with bokashi, while the same source says,
(among the Key Benefits)”The return of greater amounts of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and energy to land compared
with compost, with potentially useful improvements in soil quality and/or crop growth.”
Can you please break down what seems like contradictions?
And I do recommend that the readers follow up with the citations above, and to also do your own home-based research, see if bokashi benefits you.
The reference was provided to give readers a better understanding of Bokashi, which it does.
Re: “A simpler, potentially cheaper, and shorter processing cycle post-collection”. What does this mean? The Bokashi system is a faster process – I never claimed it was not faster. But it is not a composting process which the reference agrees with. How long does it take for the fermented material to decompose? I have not seen any data on this.
Re: “The return of greater amounts of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and energy to land compared with compost, with potentially useful improvements in soil quality and/or crop growth.” My plants have lots of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen so that is not a real benefit. More nitrogen would be a benefit – but where is the data to support this position? Where is the study that shows fermentation products improve soil more than compost? This might be true but without some data it is just a guess.
Thank you for a very informative break down of the Bokashi system. I’m big on compost, but interested in whats new in gardening.
One other thing I noticed while reading about Bokashi is the use of the juice for the garden. Now we know that the Bokashi is an anaerobic process and one of the reasons why the leachate from a worm farm is not recommended for the garden (for edible veggies) is that the the worm leachate is the moisture from unprocessed, decomposing food given to the worms and it might contain pathogens and bad bacterias not annihilated by the worm’s guts unless you are having a very well ventilated worm farm and are mixing moisture absorbing material to the food. If worm leachate should not be used for veggie gardens, then shouldn’t bokashi juice be potentially harmful too? Not sure…
But I saw some people combining bokashi with worm farm. They use the bokashi to pre-process the food that you cannot give to the worms, then they would mix the complete fermented bokashi with some lime and other carbon rich material to neutralize the pH and give them in controlled amount to the worms.
What you do you think of those points?
Worm leachate could certainly contain pathogens. Compost and teas could also contain pathogens. I am not sure about bokashi – since it is a pickling process, the acidify may prevent pathogens from growing. So what?
How are you going to use any or all of these products? It is not smart putting them onto vegetables where you will eat the leaves in a few days – you can end up eating pathogens that way. The smart thing to do is to put them on soil. The pathogen is already in your soil, and it will not enter the plants from the soil, so your crop is safe to eat.
Putting things through bokashi first and then to the worm farm may make some sense – but why do it?? Just throw it onto the compost pile or right into the garden. why go through all this trouble, when nature does it all for you? Just use cut and drop composting as I recommend
Thanks for the response.
To my understanding compost teas are made from compost dumped into a bucket of water and aerated for 24-48 hrs. Composts have been thru worms gut and should have their pathogens destroyed.
I was interested because one use of the compost tea is to spray onto leaves to nourish and protect them. So I was trying to assess the risk to spray that on edible plants’ leaves.
I do agree burying bokashi into the garden is the way to go. But my garden is not big and I was thinking completing the bokashi with a worm bin and then share/sell/swap the final compost with the local gardeners community.
Compost tea is made in many different ways. Lets assume that organic material has been fed to worms and that through their digestion process they remove all pathogens. I doubt that is true – but lets assume it is. You now take the worm castings and make tea from it. I assume this is not done in a sterile condition – gardening generally is not sterile. That means that new pathogens can enter the tea from the air while it is being brewed.
I know proponents of compost tea use it as a foliar feed, but most experts agree that this has the potential of spreading pathogens to the leaf surface of the plants. I would not spray my editable plants with a bucket of brewed microbes of unknown origin, ie compost tea.
I just found this report showing that earthworm castings can spread pathogens to plants. http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/pub/php/research/2012/earthworm/
Thanks!
A lot of bad info have been spread all over the internet with those compost tea thing. Even worse is that lots of people still confuse compost leachate with composte tea.
My friends have said so much of goodneeds that would be derived from the Bokashi EM (in composting kitchen scubs) & Bokashi tea (as nutrient for plants & odor remover) BUT verily with Pavlis comments….I have doubts whether to continue my Bookashi programs…..shed some light…ooo knoelegable participants..
Interesting post!
I found a swedish study on using Bokashi tea (leachate) as fertilizer. They find that it is very low in nitrogen, but high in potassium and phosphorous. It was also high in sodium and chloride, and low in some trace metals.
In summary you cannot rely on Bokashi tea alone as a plant fertilizer.
http://stud.epsilon.slu.se/7353/11/lind_o_140929.pdf
Also, they referenced a study that had found no benefit of the bokashi microorganisms. There was no difference in plant growth between “live” bokashi, and sterilized bokashi.
Their conclusion was that you should be able to use any lactic acid bacteria, such as those found in saurkraut or other pickled vegetables.
Interesting reference. When looking for references it is important that they are for published material in peer reviewed journals. That helps provide some level of assurance that the data is validly reviewed. This one is not even published in a journal. It seems to be a class project. But it is still interesting.
No doubt the analytical nutrient results are valid. The nutrient level does depend on input ingredients – no surprise there, except to Bokashi fans.
If you average the nutrient NPK value is 0.07-0.2-0.8. Completely out of whack with the ratios plants use.
The study does not tell us very much else. It was done in the lab using potted plants – so the results can’t be translated to the field. It is not clear how they arrived at the dilutions for the Bokashi leachate. They seemed to have used very small amounts compared to the commercial fertilizers.
But their conclusion is that Bokashi leachate does not work as well as commercial fertilizer. That is what most of the research on this topic shows.
One thing that is very interesting is one of the references the author quotes, which compared the effect of unsterilized Bokashi leachate to sterilized leachate. If the microorganisms in the leachate were a benefit to plants there should be a difference between these two treatments. There was none. That agrees with most studies. The microbes don’t help plants grow better.
For peer reviewed research on the benefits of Bokashi EM treated manure on field crop production please visit
http://www.isca.in/AGRI_FORESTRY/Archive/v1i1/1.ISCA-RJAFS-2013-001.pdf
You can Google “EM fujita et al 1997, Xu et al 1997” and a wealth of scientific research citing the benefits of EM and farm scale bokashi treated manures and agricultural waste used by rice farmers throughout Asia will be revealed.
Before you throw out your Bokashi Bucket, do a little research and – put not thy faith in blahggers.
Thank you very much for the reference. Unfortunately it does NOT show that Bokashi adds value to the composting process. All you need to do is look at the researchers own conclusion which says “Based on the yield performance of succeeding crop, it was cleared that the application of these two manures in EM bokashi form could be improved soil fertility on sandy regosol”.
The study shows, and the authors confirm this in the conclusion, that adding their manure EM Bokashi improves soil fertility. I agree with them – the study does show this, but only in pots, not in real life field situations.
They also say “yield performance of succeeding crop and extend of effects depend on the nutrients content of manure. Radish tuber yield was high (76.98 g) in poultry manure and followed by 57.48 g in goat manure (T4) on fresh basis.” So the difference in growth in various tests was due to the type of manure used. Not the EM organisms, nor the bokashi method!
Here is the major problem with the study. They did not compare the growth between regular manure and Bokashi manure. Without this comparison, you can’t reach any conclusions about the benefits of EM or the bokashi method. Everyone knows that just adding manure, or composted manure will improve soil fertility.
A second big problem, and one with many scientific studies, is that it was done in pots. This is valid research, but until the work is repeated in field conditions, the results don’t tell us very much about real life conditions. Agricultural studies are notorious for showing things in the lab, that can’t be demonstrated in the field.
It is an interesting study – but it does not contradict the conclusions I made in this post.
After the two weeks of fermenting, the stuff breaks down much faster in the compost or soil than if you had not fermented it. Over all it reduces the amount of time it takes to make compost. Keeping animals out of your compost is also more important when you have raccoons rather than mice… Raccoons can make a big mess. If you don’t create a lot of compost then fermenting the dairy and meats is very nice, because you can’t really get a hot compost without one that is at least 3×3.
bokashi is also good for storing compost materials until you have enough to create a sizable pile (able to reach high temps to kill off seeds and such) of good ratios.
I used this process at a summer camp using 50 gallon drums. We filled a drum up after a week of having lots of kids putting food scraps in the bokashi, then we would let sit for two weeks give or take, and then we could add it all to the traditional compost in layers with higher carbon stuff, and then toss it all together. It finished very quickly from that point, with minimal turning.
None of the references I looked at said anything about speeding up composting. The composting process takes about 5 years – compost continues to decompose long after it is added to the garden. How much faster is it if some Bokashi material is added?
I find it hard to believe that adding some Bokashi compost to a regular bin of higher carbon stuff would speed up the decomposition of the carbon stuff. but I am interested in seeing some references on the subject.
I think you are missing the point completely that bokashi is not fertilizer but biologically active life forms that feed the soil. Bokashi cultivates a herd of microbes creating an ecosystem in the soil.
Your right, I did not include that as a benefit of Bokashi, since it was not a benefit claimed by most web sites.
Since Bokashi is a fermentation process, the microbes in the brew would be microbes that live in acidic conditions. That is not the condition found in soil. so when these microbes are later placed on the soil, they will die because the environment in the soil is so different from the Bokashi pail.
Besides that, soil has all the microbes it needs–you don’t have to add more.
Not always true, and in some cases such as mine this is the exact idea. The pickling process kills most of the air breathing microbes, nematodes, etc which are pathogenic on my land. The faster composting of material after Bokashi is a huge improvement that should be noted, and does work. Instead of years, natural composting with the pickled material mixed with soil and carbon rich items can be managed in a couple of months. Obviously organic matter continues to decay, but this makes it usable much faster.
Can you provide some references supporting your position that Bokashi output composts faster? I have not seen people promoting this practice make this claim.
Regular compost takes about 5 years to decompose – you can’t just look at it to determine when the process is complete. Since the pickled material has not been significantly broken down any more than material going into compost, I would suspect Bokashi material also takes 5 years to decompose.
As far as being “usable much faster”, I just drop my yard and kitchen waste on the ground and it starts to degrade. Nothing is faster than that.
I compost using bokashi. The fermented waste that I mixed with soil and let sit undisturbed in a bin in my furnace room In December was sufficiently broken down for me to add to my indoor plants in early March.
I’m really curious–what’s your beef with people who use bokashi? Even if you choose to do traditional composting instead, why be so snarky to those who opt for a different method? I have a bokashi bin, and it has absolutely nothing to do with looking “cool” to my friends. It was a thoughtful decision that weighed the many benefits over traditional composting for my lifestyle, and I’ve been very pleased with my decision. And by the way, there are many ways that apartment dwellers can still benefit from composting (and bokashi-composting): I live in an apartment, and I have a deal with a local community garden: whenever I bring them a load of bokashi material that they can dig into their garden, they reward me within the next month with a gift of whatever veggies they happen to have an excess of. And my town has a community compost pile near the dump, and they have a deal where you can drop off a load of kitchen scraps or bokashi material, and in exchange you get your choice of: a bag of “finished” compost, or a credit for one free dump run, which we ordinarily have to pay for. So even though I don’t have a garden, I still compost. Mostly because it’s the right thing to do for the planet.
I don’t have a beef with people who use bokashi. I have a beef with people that make false claims about bokashi, and companies that sell products for bokashi who are dishonest in their marketing message. The false promotion of Effective Microbes and the exaggerated claims about them produces much confusion among gardeners.
If the system works for you and you have a good place to take your fermented food scrapes then it is a good system for you. I doubt that many apartment dwellers will drive somewhere to dump their bokashi end product. But provided that the material ends up in the soil somewhere, and you do not have to drive out of your way to dump it – this is a good solution for the environment.
I agree about exaggerated claims about Effective Microbes for use in fermenting kitchen waste. As I have noted elsewhere, bokashi is another name for fermenting. That’s what happens in the bucket. Once fermented, the waste is buried in soil. In order to get the fermentation going, some kind of inoculant is needed. I use whey from dairy kefir (mixed with equal parts molasses) to spray on the waste as it is put into the bucket, daily. It’s far cheaper and just as effective as the EM. An alternative inoculant can be made via the process described by the unconventional farmer (something like that) by rinsing rice (resulting in a starchy water), leaving the water out for a few days, adding milk to the water, then waiting until the curds and whey develop. The resulting whey is then mixed with molasses (very cheap at farm supply stores). Only a small amount of the mix is then added to water in a spray bottle. We should ALL be doing this. Food waste is a great resource.
Thanks for the article and yes you are right, bokashi is a picking process. I’ve recently started to Bokashi and I can vouch for the claim that using the juice can remove the smells from sinks and drains, so it gets a thumbs up on that score. On the effect on plants, well something beneficial is going on though the mechanism may not be unclear. Why do I say this? I’m an appartment dweller with no garden. I’ve got many house plants that I tend and care for well, watering and feeding to thier respective needs and ensuring thier other needs are met – placement, light, humidity etc. Since I’ve started watering with bokashi juice they have all responded well. In face the peace lillies so well that their growth is lush, even in this winter period and those leaves have got bigger. Coincidence? Nothing has changed apart from adding the juice. I speculate that perhaps the juice has tipped the balance in the soil towards enabling the plants to utilise more nutrients from what’s already there. They certainly seem to like it! Also, not all the microbes die in the presence of oxygen, done fermentation microbes tolerate oxygen, though the process may not work as well with lots of air. I think there are other dimensions to this and it would be great for you to explore it more? On the breakdown thing, clearly the contents of the bucket is undergoing.Change and that may be a precursor to facilitating more change when bokashi is added to traditional compost our dug in. I’m going to try the next bit of the process using a friend’s garden to make a ‘soil factory’. I’ll let you no how that goes if you’re interested? But thanks for the blog. I Iain
I don’t think there is any magic to understand. Adding the juice to plants will have some benefit, especially if it is not drastically diluted. But commercial fertilizer will have the same effect.
The problem with most recommendations for the garden is that they dilute the juice to such an extent that there is nothing left in the juice.
For the garden it is much easier to just compost.
The dilution of the juice is needed in order to control the acidity of the solution. So depending on the Bokashi juice, and also the plants one wishes to feed, much or less dilution may be needed in order to obtain something acceptable for the plants (without any negative side-effect).
Otherwise, considering that the composting process of the Bokashi material starts the moment one buries it into the soil, and that many reports show that, depending on weather and on the material, just two weeks are necessary for the wastes to be undistinguishable from the soil, this indicates that the bokashi fermented materials are generally most efficient to compost, if one considers the invisibility of the material as an indicator of a sucessful compost.
Two weeks for the bokashi material is way much faster than the several months needed in traditional composting which requires a certain volume in order to be efficient contrary to the bokashi method.
The problem with your argument is that “the invisibility of the material as an indicator of a successful compost” is not a valid way to measure the end of the composting process.
When normal compost is ‘finished’, and nice and black without any plant material showing, it is still years away from being completely composted.
same problem with egg shells. People think they have decomposed because they can’t see them, when in fact they have not decomposed at all. They have just been broken into small pieces.
Is there a reference that looks at the degree of decomposition?
The invisibility of the material (its transformation into soil) is the only way any gardener or agricultor can judge the success of the composting process whatever method is chosen. The result is a dark black material with a characteristic odor.
So, unless scientific studies show that traditional composting methods offer a richer dark black material or a more decomposed material than the bokashi method, then it is safe to say that bokashi is more efficient, as it is faster to achieve the compost, and the fermentation process gives to it more advantages on a nutritional point of view (more nutrients are preserved in the process for the same quantity of organic matter, without gas generation nor pathogens creation).
The acidity of the fermented material that is added to the soil has effects on the nitrification, it eliminates pH-sensitive bacterias like pathogens, and all indicates that the composting process takes care by itself of restablishing a correct pH for the plants after two weeks of composting. So the organic acids are transformed, and the acidity equally favorises the development of fungis. Worms are attracted to the compost as the process is maturing. All the first-hand and practical observations of gardeners indicates that the “finished” compost is of quality and encourages plant growth and health.
Nevertheless, you’re right that comparative studies between different compost methods would be appreciated, like the number of pathogens in a traditional compost compared to a compost made of fermented materials, comparatives of potential phytotoxic effects produced by different types of composts, and also comparing traditional korean methods involving indigeneous micro-organisms for the fermentation to the more refined and selected “effective micro-organisms” mixes.
All those research fields would be very interesting and useful to develop for human plants cultivation.
I thought you were very kind in your comments! Rather more fun for gardeners who want some messy play is to have a worm bin. I describe my friend Harry Kennedy’s worm bin in a blog I wrote last year.
Many gardeners get more pleasure from their compost heaps than actually growing anything.
ps I had some difficulty figuring out how to make a first comment and in desperation pressed the comments in the previous post and bingo! there must be an easier way I have not spotted.
If you click on the bog posting it should take you to a full page for just the one blog post and a comments section is at the bottom. I’ll have to see how to add it to a list of blogs.