How To Recycle Kitchen Waste At Home Using The Bokashi System

What can you do if you’re an apartment gardener or have limited space but want to compost? In this video, I’ll show you how to recycle kitchen waste at home using the Bokashi system. This anaerobic process relies on inoculated bran to ferment food scraps including meat and dairy. The result is a microbe and nutrient-rich pre-compost ready to add to your garden. Growing your food or habitat for wildlife is a valuable benefit to health and wellness. Composting and cycling nutrients are essential for a healthy and sustainable garden that results in healthy people and communities. How To Fill & Level A Raised Bed Garden: https://youtu.be/M-oaoz4XaLs

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CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:34 How Does Bokashi Work
01:42 Bokash Bin Details
03:20 Starting A New Bin
04:54 Checking Bokashi Activity
05:59 Harvest And Use Bokashi Tea
07:04 Adding Food Scraps To A Bokashi Bin
07:48 How To Use Bokashi In The Garden

composting and cycling nutrients are essential for a healthy garden and growing your food or establishing habitat for wildlife benefit our health and wellness but if you’re an apartment Gardener or have limited space what can you do in this video I’ll show you how to recycle kitchen waste at home using the Bashi system this anerobic process relies on inoculated brand to ferment food scraps including meat and dairy the result is a micro and nutrient-rich pre-comp that’s ready for adding to your garden I’m Scott from New Garden Road always out here to inform Inspire and Elevate you encouraging biodiversity and restoring habitat is my mission one Garden at a time one of the Essential Elements for bringing this all together is bran which is the protective outer layer of many cereal grains such as rice barley and corn which has been inoculated with effective microorganisms or em these are a specific blend of beneficial bacteria including lactic acid and yeast lactobacillus convert sugars to lactic acid lowers pH and creates an environment that’s less hospitable to pathogens and methane producing bacteria yeast work to decompose sugars and generate vitamins hormones and amino acids purple nonsulfur bacteria or pnbs break down hydrogen sulfide gas and ammonia reducing the odors that they produce and this is how we get to a fermented or pre-digested food waste that’s low in odor and requires less time to fully compost so all of the microbes that this brand is inoculated with are dormant and they’re waiting to come in contact with Organic matter the bokashi brand has a shelf life of around 1 year although I’ve been pushing the limits and still seeing some active Biology one of the Privileges of being in the Creator space is that companies will reach out and offer you their products in this instance I want to make it clear that I reached out to Bashi on my own because I really wanted to try this system and I say all that just to let you know that I wouldn’t be recommending it and highlighting it in this video if it’s something that I didn’t truly believe in thanks to Bashi living for sending me their Tu bin starter kit and sponsoring this video Bashi living is a family-owned business and what they produce is a high caliber bin that’s made of food grade resin and it won’t cause any leeching into your pre-comp the bin comes with a durable spigot already installed it’s got a strainer plate and an airtight lid while this is an investment it’s an investment in quality and it will get you composting quickly in researching this topic I did come across a lot of do-it-yourself options and I think there’s some pros and cons to this that I want speak to number one is you’re going to save some money if you do it yourself that’s the Baseline for why we do it oursel a lot of times however you’re going to pay in another form you’re going to pay in time because you’re going to have to do some research figure out how to do this Source your materials and put it all together so for me with a lot of projects on the board that I just don’t get to I find a lot of value and having a quality system that’s ready at my fingertips that I can get going and get going quickly unlike the do-it-yourself options this bokashi starter kit comes with a great manual that tells you exactly how to move through the process it answers some frequently asked questions and points you to some other resources they have a lot of information online as well including some video tutorials so I encourage you to check that out and go for it get your bokashi going putting together and starting a new bin is really simple all you got to do is put your strainer plate in the bottom of that bin it fits perfectly and then you’re going to sprinkle it with some of that bokashi brand it’s important to note that you should chop up your food scraps really well before adding them to your bin this will create more surface area for those microbes to do their work and now you can add some food scraps in a 1in layer you’ll follow that up with a sprinkling of 2 to four tablespoons of the Bashi bran and you’ll want some type of additional cover to keep oxygen away from your food scraps as you fill up that bin you can use a plastic bag or you can do like I did and take that strainer plate ahead of time and trace it on some cardboard cut out that cardboard and it’ll fit perfect LLY on top of those food scraps and then you’ll seal up the bin with your airtight lid and I recommend making sure that the spigot is fully closed the optimal temperature for making your bokashi is room temperature so inside the home is going to be ideal now you can experiment depending on your climate what type of average temperatures you have throughout the year if you can do this outside but you want to make sure it’s outside of direct sunlight I’ve got a front porch here that’s fairly protected on the north side of my home but in Texas pretty hot a lot of the time so I’m a little bit Limited in that I did start off with a bin here on the front porch early in the spring and I left it out into the ’90s so this is the bin that I set out on the front porch in the spring I had some questions as to whe whether or not I had left it out for too long and it had gotten too hot but I kept it going and I finally filled it up I brought it inside to finish this cardboard does not hold up so it’s going to be a little difficult to peel it away oo look at that oh my goodness yeah that that’s really nice a lot of you know development with the lactobacillus on the plant material I’m not smelling any strong odors so if you live in a cold climate what you would expect is these microbes won’t be working very very efficiently they’re going to be slow and not as active as they would be if you kept your bokashi bin indoors so again you can experiment you can look at your seasonality and if you want to keep it outside you can do that but optimally you’re going to keep your bokashi inside after several days you’ll want to check for any bokashi tea that might have accumulated in the bottom of the bin this is simply the leech eight from the food scraps that are being fermented in your bin place a cup or some type of container under the spigot and give it a quarter turn you really don’t have to turn it that much and take it easy on that spigot because you want to ensure that it has a long life draining the tea from the bins on a regular basis can help to keep any potential odors down but I just got to say that I have two of these bins in my office right next to where I do all my video work and research and I do not notice an odor this tea is a great source of beneficial microbes but it is highly acidic and it’s recommended that you dute it 1 to 100 Parts in my Texas Garden I find it much easier to dilute it to a ratio of 1 to 128 that equates to 1 o of the concentrated Bashi tea per gallon of water and from there you can apply it to your plants your container or garden soil your compost pile and it may be helpful to unblock slow or clog drains in your home consider supporting this work by ling up for my patreon and together we can sew the seeds of sustainability for many seasons to come when it comes to adding more scraps to the bin I recommend collecting those scraps in a regular kitchen compost or bin for adding every 2 to 4 days this will limit the amount of oxygen exposure that you’re introducing to this Anor robic process I found that this has helped to keep my kitchen compost bin fresher as I’m emptying it more frequently than I would if I was taking it to my outdoor compost pile add those food scraps in 1in layers and follow up with a dusting of 2 to four table spoons of the brand the more the better you can’t really overdo it here you’re just going to get more microbial action and if you’ve got some tougher or bigger pieces in there then you want to add a little bit more that can help but you can do multiple layers in one pass but each time you add a layer of food scraps push down on them to remove any air pockets once that bin is completely full you want to let it culture for 2 weeks or more before you add it to your garden and then you can bury it in trenches or holes directly in your garden soil or you can add it to the middle of your compost pile and mix it in with the existing material before covering it back up again if you don’t have a compost pile or you’re in apartment Gardener you can create a soil factory system using small or large bins by simply layering soil it can be potting soil garden soil along with that pre-post those fermented food scraps will break down rapidly and they’ll be good for top dressing any containers that you might have another option could be to donate this to a local community garden each time you empty out your cultured Ki band just give it a good rinse the advantage of having a two bin system is that you can have a bin that you’re always able to add to as soon as you get one full and it starts to culture you can begin building the next one and about the time you get that one full your first bin will be ready to add to your soil Factory or your garden and you’re good to go I really loved adding this bokashi to my compost and as I begin to harvest it and use it in my garden create soil conditioner for my next planting of vegetables I observed a lot of my celal growth where I had added that bokashi so I think it’s fair to say this is a great source of food for indigenous microorganisms and a tremendously valuable asset in the organic garden encouraging biodiversity the bees be buzzing if you Google bokashi we can pickle that this goes on and on now check out more awesome gardening videos on my channel like this video and follow New Garden Road for weekly content content you can grow your own food keep it organic [Music]