What is a Bokashi bin?
Bokashi is one of the easiest composting systems because you don’t need to separate your food scraps. You can add all food waste, including cooked food, fruit and vegetable peelings, meat, fish, dairy, bread and bones.
With a Bokashi bin and Bokashi bran you pickle your food waste. This waste becomes a pre-compost mixture, which can then break down into compost in a compost bin or in soil. Bokashi is the Japanese term for fermentation.
What are the benefits of a Bokashi bin?
• Suited to small spaces.
• Can be kept indoors.
• Accepts cooked and uncooked food.
• Easy food waste recycling at home.
• No bad smell as food waste doesn’t rot – any odour resembles pickled foods.
• The Bokashi pre-compost mixture acts as a super-green activator in a garden composter, raising temperature and speeding up decomposition.
• Useful alternative, or addition, to an ordinary food waste caddy.
• If you don’t have a garden, use a Bokashi bin alongside a wormery to create worm compost.
• In a garden compost bin, the pickled smell of Bokashi mixture deters rodents.
How to start Bokashi composting
· Add chopped-up food waste to the bin.
· Press waste down using the tamper (also called a push tool). This helps to press air out of the mixture.
· Add Bokashi bran each time you add food waste – this adds beneficial microbes which accelerate fermentation.
· Once the bin is full, seal it closed and leave it unopened for about two weeks while the contents ferment.
· Liquid should be drained from the bin every few days using the tap or dispenser (depending on the model of bin). This nutrient-rich liquid can be diluted with water and used to fertilise plants, or it can be used full-strength as an organic drain cleaner to control smells and prevent algae build-up.
· After two weeks the bin’s contents will have become pre-compost. The mixture might not look very different, but its makeup is altered. This can now be added to a garden composter where it will accelerate composting, or to a wormery, or buried in soil to break down to become rich compost.
TOP TIP
Using two bins in rotation means you can leave the first bin to ferment while you start filling the second. Bokashi bins are often sold as twin-packs.
Bokashi Bins | Bokashi Composters For Food Waste Composting –
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