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From Kitchen to Compost: Bokashi 101
80 Plays3 months ago
Welcome to this special mini-episode of Hort Culture, where your hosts Alexis and Ray dive into the world of bokashi composting. Today, Alexis shares her fascination with this Japanese method that ferments organic waste, including items typically not compostable. She's intrigued by its efficiency and how it enriches soil without the foul odors associated with traditional composting. Comparatively, bokashi is quicker and can handle a wider variety of waste, making it a superb option for urban gardeners. Join us as we explore this sustainable practice that's revolutionizing composting in small spaces!
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: [email protected]
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Many Minis'
00:00:17
Alexis
Hey everybody, Ray and I are back for another many ah sowed ah like mini many, minis, number two.
00:00:23
atack2010
many, many episodes, actually number two. Yeah.
Exciting Topics: Composting Methods
00:00:28
Alexis
um And i we just kind of thought, let's come at this as something that we're excited about or makes us happy, or in my case today, ah something that I deep dive down a rabbit hole, but I am no expert in, but.
00:00:42
atack2010
Not you, Alexis. No, not a, not a rabbit hole.
00:00:45
Alexis
Yeah, me. I'm just I'm just so curious and it's kind of going a popular topic going around in the flower world. And so me being a nerd ah has tried to deep dive. ah But anyways, what we're talking about today is or what I'm gonna monologue and occasionally let Ray ask questions about.
00:01:04
atack2010
as Ray gets curious about some of these topics.
00:01:06
Alexis
He's like, what? What are you talking about?
00:01:07
atack2010
Yeah. Yeah.
What is Bokashi and Vermicomposting?
00:01:09
Alexis
Is kind of the idea of alternative composting. And so more specifically, Bokashi is something that is what I am deep diving on, which is a, ah from what I have read and understand is is kind of got Korean ah base there and is a type of composting that's anaerobic. And we'll talk a little bit about vermicomposting, which I am pretty comfortable with. actually I'm staring at my vermicompost bin now that I've had for I think I've had this thing for 10 years now, because I remember I did this bin the year I started an extension um at a um at a chat at a talk and I've had the same worm bin and.
00:01:50
atack2010
So do you, uh, do you empty it occasionally and just use like part
00:01:53
Alexis
Yeah, yeah.
Vermicompost Setup
00:01:54
atack2010
of the stuff that's in there as a starter?
00:01:55
atack2010
How do you, do how do you work that murmuring compost?
00:01:56
Alexis
Yeah, yes, so I have. So my vermicompost bin is the most simple one. In fact, someone gave me like a fancy one that was, you know, like a technical vermicompost bin. And vermicompost, if you're like, what the heck is that worm composting? It's something that you would do indoors. It's done with red wiggler worms, which are are not.
00:02:14
atack2010
Specific top, I guess.
00:02:14
Alexis
and Yeah, it's a specific type and they don't like super high temperatures or super low temperatures So it's usually something that's done indoors or in a barn that doesn't freeze that kind of stuff.
00:02:16
atack2010
Yeah.
00:02:23
Alexis
But anyways so i've I've had a fancy vermicompost bin and I did not succeed with it the first time but the one I've had for 10 years now is to like plastic totes one nest inside the other one I've got then I and that's it, like there's holes in one so that it drains into the other one and that's it.
00:02:48
Alexis
ah But yeah.
00:02:48
atack2010
And you just what do you actively throw your stuff like your organic scraps.
00:02:53
atack2010
That's appropriate.
00:02:53
Alexis
Yes.
00:02:53
Alexis
Oh yeah. So all of my,
00:02:53
atack2010
You just pass them in there or what?
Compost Uses and Benefits
00:02:56
Alexis
I usually have a banana or an apple or some sort of fruit on the way to work. So that automatically goes in there. And then, um, we collect all the coffee grounds at my house. And so I'll bring those in, you know, every other week or something like that and put them in. And then my staff, we have two paper shredders, uh, just small paper shredders here at the office. And one is for paper. like non um-shiny paper, you know, ah only. And so it's it's the shredded stuff that goes in their newspapers, that kind of stuff. And then just the occasional, like, you know, my ah there's actually a sign in my office on our staff, um refrigerators, that's like, hey, if you've got any, you know, leftover of veggies, the worms will take them. And so people will come in and be like, can I feed the worms?
00:03:42
Alexis
so
00:03:43
atack2010
And you use this stuff like you would regular compost, the finished compost? Is that what you're doing?
00:03:46
Alexis
yeah it's Yeah, so it's
00:03:47
atack2010
Just kind of taking it and putting it on some deserving soil somewhere? Yeah.
Microbial Life vs. Sterile Methods
00:03:52
Alexis
only a small amount just because it's it's only in you know totes if I was doing this on a large scale.
00:03:56
atack2010
Sure, yeah.
00:03:58
Alexis
And more actively, they're more of a ah passive fun thing to have and I get to use the kids love it and stuff like that. but um I like to use it actually in like my potting soil mixes.
00:04:11
atack2010
Mm-hmm, mm.
00:04:12
Alexis
And one of the things I really love it it ah that comes out of it is like the tea, quote unquote, tea that comes out. um Compost tea, a lot of people have heard of, you know that's true of worm drippings.
00:04:21
atack2010
Pellet worm drippings, yeah. Sounds provocative.
00:04:25
Alexis
um
00:04:25
atack2010
Castings, yeah.
00:04:26
Alexis
So I actually have been using those, because you get a lot of that a lot faster than you do with the regular compost. You get that tea, um comes about and I actually use that as I've started using as a wedding media wedding agent for my potting soil media um which kind of leads me to like my overall fascination for the day of like microbial microbial production and how I don't know, I in my very traditional training of horticulture, um we were sort of led to believe in the production area of horticulture, not necessarily in this in the soil production, but the seeding and transplants and all that kind of stuff that we everything has to be super sterile, right? Like got to have super sterile media. It's got to be you got to you know wear gloves sometimes like there's this whole everything has to be really, you know, bleached and cleaned.
00:05:22
Alexis
which There is a basis for that right with pathogens and all this negative bad stuff that can come about. um and Nobody wants to you know have a super dirty little greenhouse operation, but there's this idea that I've come to through all of this like research I've been doing on bakashi, which, like I said, is that fermenting fermented compost, essentially, and vermicompost and stuff that like microbial life is good. and We know this to be true when we're working with true soils out in the field or in a high tunnel or wherever. We're like, yeah, we got to build up the the microbes. We got to make them happy. We got to give them compost.
00:06:00
Alexis
but like we
How Does Bokashi Work?
00:06:01
Alexis
It's like, why are we ah completely sterile until we get to that point? Like if microbes are so good, then why are we not using them in the right microbes in, you know, production, like plant production systems? And so I just found that kind of fascinating just because in our, in my brain, as someone who's kind of traditionally trained, it was always like, everything must be sterile, sterile potting mix, blah, blah, blah. Um, yeah.
00:06:26
atack2010
And you said that was an anaerobic process, which interested me.
00:06:29
Alexis
So.
00:06:30
atack2010
That's really different than any composting I've ever done.
00:06:33
Alexis
yeah so Jumping away from vermicompost for a second, they they link they can link together, which is why I kind of talk about them together. but so Yeah, compost.
00:06:42
atack2010
Compost.
00:06:43
Alexis
Bikashi is fermented food. and so It's an anaerobic process that ha that ferments. and so what What happens and why bikashi can be really great, especially if you're like small, um And you don't have yeah an area where you really can compost. Maybe you live in an apartment or just a small area and you have like some pots or a garden or something like that. Bikashi can be really great for you kind of no matter what your size is. And I feel like I should stipulate this with I have not done this personally, but I really want to. And
Food Waste Comparisons
00:07:15
Alexis
so here is what I have learned thus far um through this. So Bikashi is
00:07:22
Alexis
small to large scale. And the other cool thing is that you can use any food product. So usually when we're talking about vermicompost or regular compost and we say don't put your meat products in there with bakashi because you're fermenting it, you actually can use meat products. ah So it's one way to help reduce food waste and like One thing you'll see when you start looking up Akashi is all like the crazy amounts of food waste that there is, you know, it's like US is like 40% of the food we buy is wasted, which is crazy. And if you compare like, I think I read the average like
00:07:57
Alexis
American slash European, right? So like those those types of countries waste like 200 pounds of food a year. And then if you compare that to like Asia and like South America, it's like 11 pounds of food, like huge difference.
00:08:13
atack2010
Food is not cheap people. Food is not cheap.
00:08:15
Alexis
Yeah. And so, you know, this was
Bokashi Process and Fermentation
00:08:17
Alexis
kind of this is kind of a way to to deal with that regardless of your scale. So anyway, so in Bakashi, you're taking all of this leftover food um and you're putting it into a um airtight bin that you're layering kind of like lasagna layering in a um some type of brand that usually use a brand that has been inoculated with these um fermentation microbes, right these like lactic acid microbes, all these guys who love to be an anaerobic, which is non-air, non-oxygen filled environments. And you're layering that like lasagna. And so you have a bucket. ah You can have a fancy bucket or a non-fancy bucket. The fancy buckets have spickets on them. ah So it's it's really very simple. You layer your food in with this brand layer. You fill it up to the top.
00:09:08
Alexis
You pop the lid on, um you know, getting as much air kind of out as possible and you wait two weeks. You don't have to open it. You don't have to stir it. You don't have to do anything. And because it's airtight, there's no smell and and there's no oxygen in there, right? So there's no smell.
00:09:22
atack2010
I have.
00:09:22
Alexis
um So you wait two weeks and then you open it up and everything's fermented. It kind of, I'm told from all, everything I've read has sort of like a vinegary smell, which makes sense, but it is nothing really off-putting. And then you actually bury that or you feed it to worms. So I've seen some larger operations have firmer compost, like large worm farms.
00:09:45
Alexis
um Worm farms is a funny thing to say, but they also have this bakashi going on and they feed their bakashi to their worms just because that makes sense, but they also will bury it. And so you bury it about six to eight inches deep. ah in a pot, in your raised beds, in your field, wherever. um A lot of people when they're doing it in field production will make us like a six inch trench. And then they're gonna dump this fermented food down in this trench, cover it back up. And within two weeks of it being buried, it'll it's completely gone. So all of those nutrients are then available to the plant. um You
00:09:45
atack2010
I don't know.
Bokashi vs. Traditional Composting
00:10:23
Alexis
can plant kind of right, you can seed stuff right on top of it if you want to. Like if you have a pot and you put your bakashi in there, you put a couple inches of potting soil on top and then you put your seeds or your plants in, that's totally fine as well.
00:10:35
Alexis
um And I just think that's fascinating. So essentially in a month you've converted everything into plant available nutrients versus one when a lot of us, ah yeah, when a lot of us are like doing home composting, right?
00:10:45
atack2010
Yeah, that's a faster process. Yeah.
00:10:50
Alexis
Like, I mean, I have like a tumbler that gets hot and you know, um but it's not, I know it's not going to be ready. I'd be lucky if it's ready in a year, you know what I mean? Like that's, and that's fine.
00:11:02
atack2010
Six months and months, yeah.
00:11:03
Alexis
Right. If you're actively, if you're the kind of person who's like turning a big compost bin, keeping temperature and stuff like that, then, you know, you're not super impressed by a month, but for like the other 90% of us who are like, yeah, sure. I'll have a compost bin. This is a really cool way. And you can still use it. So create, uh, creates like that T that I was talking about, which is why you can put a spigot on it, uh, that you can dilute and use that as a fertilizer for plants. Um, I just.
00:11:31
atack2010
It sounds like an interesting process because it's so different than like anaerobic is a bad word when it comes to traditional composting.
00:11:33
Alexis
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
00:11:38
atack2010
So it makes sense to me. You said that you're using specific types of microorganisms in that process.
00:11:42
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:11:45
atack2010
Because I know if your traditional compost pile goes anaerobic, you get hydrogen sulfide gas as a
00:11:51
Alexis
Yeah.
Compost as Soil Amendment
00:11:52
atack2010
byproduct, which rotten eggs smell, not desirable.
00:11:53
Alexis
Stank.
00:11:55
atack2010
So you're using really specific, like, ingredients, microbes in this process.
00:11:57
Alexis
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:11:59
atack2010
And you have to order those, you said, like, you can order those specifically.
00:12:01
Alexis
You can, so you can produce them yourself. Um, usually you start with like, you like it's sort of like, ah um, like a, um, like a sourdough starter idea.
00:12:09
atack2010
OK, yeah.
00:12:10
Alexis
Right. And so like you can order them, um, they last a really long time and you can create a lot of this bakashi from just a little bit of, um, this brand.
00:12:13
atack2010
Mm-hmm.
00:12:21
Alexis
And it's, it's, you know, there's, it depends on what you put in it as the nutrient level for it. Cause I'm always looking at that.
00:12:26
atack2010
the
00:12:27
Alexis
And so obviously if you're using a lot of banana peels, you know, your your phosphorus levels are probably or your potassium levels are probably going to be higher but um or eggshells you know your calciums but kind of on average it's like about like a two percent kind of across the board is what I saw which is pretty comparable to a lot of organic um things that you're going to put on your garden but I think what
00:12:44
atack2010
whole.
00:12:54
Alexis
What compost does that I don't think we acknowledge enough um is that it I never I've stopped thinking of compost as a fertilizer and more of a soil like like amendment like it's there to improve the quality
00:13:08
atack2010
Yeah, lower in nutrients. Yeah.
00:13:12
Alexis
Right. It's really not high in nutrients, which the nutrients had, like it's not bad, but it's there more to make sure that the environment is good for
00:13:22
atack2010
Mm
Bokashi for Small Spaces
00:13:23
atack2010
hmm.
00:13:23
Alexis
microbes that can make nutrients more available.
00:13:26
Alexis
It's kind of how I think of it. Like I don't, I don't know if you've, if you've always thought that, or if you're, you've recently kind of had a change of heart or.
00:13:32
atack2010
yeah Yeah, no nutrient. Over time, I've come to believe that when I'm adding soil amendment, it is a soil amendment, the nutrient levels in most compost. And there's been some studies that we have some data on that, you know, sometimes when I go over this data with people and they're like, Oh, that boy, then why am I putting it on? It's so low and actual, you know, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are macro nutrients.
00:13:51
Alexis
one
00:13:55
atack2010
It's so low. Well, that's not the point of compost. It's to improve the physical structure of the soil, it improves its water holding capacity.
00:14:04
Alexis
Right.
00:14:05
atack2010
It does so many more things and what ah what nutrients that are available in compost tend to be really, really high quality.
00:14:08
Alexis
Mm-hmm.
00:14:13
atack2010
Low in quantity, high in quality, and I'll take that.
00:14:16
Alexis
Yeah.
00:14:16
atack2010
Plus you get all these other benefits of increasing organic matter, which increases water holding and nutrient holding capacity ah in itself.
00:14:22
Alexis
Mmhmm.
00:14:23
atack2010
So yeah, there's all these other reasons to use compost. And that this process you're talking about has, it sounds like it's almost like an intermediary process where it accelerates the breakdown.
00:14:31
Alexis
Mmhmm.
00:14:33
atack2010
And then did you say you put it in the soil and then it finishes decon decomposition?
00:14:37
Alexis
Yeah, yeah it's um so Bakashi, you're gonna put it in your bucket, you're gonna wait two weeks, and then you will take that out and you're gonna bury it.
00:14:38
atack2010
No.
00:14:47
Alexis
So six to eight inches, it's just so animals and stuff like that don't go get in there.
00:14:51
atack2010
oh yeah batcha
00:14:52
Alexis
And then within two weeks, it should be gone. like You're not gonna see it anymore. So because that stuff is already fermented, a lot of that breakdown has already happened. And so once it gets into the soil with the soils microbes, it's kind of, it's a rapid, rapid thing.
00:15:09
Alexis
And so, and
00:15:09
atack2010
my My brain
Community-Supported Composting
00:15:10
atack2010
is translating all these things that you're saying, which I'm not familiar with this process.
00:15:13
atack2010
My brain is translating that into a pressure cooker. It's like pressure cooking. I mean, that's really cool because you're accelerating because you know, all these advertisements for tumblers and stuff saying it makes finished compost in four weeks. I don't think that's true.
00:15:16
Alexis
yeah, sort of, yeah.
00:15:25
Alexis
Mm hmm.
00:15:26
atack2010
It takes typically months, but the process you're talking about is significantly different than I want.
00:15:28
Alexis
Mm hmm.
00:15:31
Alexis
Yeah, it should really be, you know, if you're doing it right and layering and and putting, you know, just following the basic directions, it's you're looking at nutrients available to the plant and, um you know, the plant having better, you know, getting all those amendment things we we're talking about within a month, which is incredible.
00:15:31
atack2010
I'm familiar with.
00:15:36
atack2010
Mm hmm. It's faster.
00:15:48
atack2010
Mhmm.
00:15:51
Alexis
and And it's a way to use more of your food scraps because you can use like meat products and stuff like that.
00:15:54
atack2010
Mhmm.
00:15:58
Alexis
I thought of it, I saw someone use the term And I wish I could remember who it was, so I could give him credit for this, but almost like a probiotic. And so you're thinking about, thinking about Bakashi or or Verma compost, compost in general, as like a probiotic for your plants, where like when we take probiotics, right?
00:16:10
atack2010
Mhmm.
00:16:16
Alexis
We know we're not taking like, it's not like we're taking a vitamin, right? When we take a vitamin, we're taking straight nutrients, like a fertilizer, right? Versus probiotic enables your body and those microbes in your body to break down food better and to
00:16:31
atack2010
Supporting the ecosystem, yeah.
00:16:32
Alexis
supporting the ecosystem right and so that's I think a better way to think about compost and what made a lot of sense when I was thinking about this like fermented you know stuff um but I just thought it was so cool and there's like so many easy the other thing is like it doesn't have to be expensive and so you know you can convert this and there's ah this one ah I heard about this initially on a podcast and called No-Till Farmers.
00:16:32
atack2010
Yeah.
00:16:58
Alexis
And Jenny Love has a episode with, I think it's a BLH Farm, and he does bakashi ah and vermicomposting both on large scales. And one way he's
Innovations and Collaboration
00:17:10
Alexis
incorporated that is that he, so they grow mushrooms and some microgreens and flowers. It's kind of their big crops. And so they deliver as part of like a, I guess a CSA or something, they deliver to homes. And they give those houses buckets that they can put their food scraps in that then he can use in bakashi so he drops off.
00:17:28
atack2010
So it's not like it's one. I was trying to figure out the one large, huge airtight container, so but that's not it.
00:17:32
Alexis
Yeah, yeah, he's.
00:17:34
atack2010
He's using small containers and then accumulates those. Yeah.
00:17:36
Alexis
So he's yeah he's getting these small containers from people once a week full of food and then he's taking them back and he's getting those big 95 gallon um rolling dump like dumpsters or whatever that you know the ones you use at home and he's he's put an airtight gasket on this and there's videos out there like for this it's not super difficult he's just putting like a rubber gasket around the top of that with like some bungee cords and he like drills and puts a spigot in the bottom and then it wheels so it's you know easy to move around
00:17:37
atack2010
Gotcha.
00:17:49
atack2010
oh yeah
00:18:06
Alexis
and when he needs to dump it and so then he's dumping these you know five gallon buckets that he's getting from people's homes every week into these big 95 gallon ones and like every two weeks it's got compost he's putting down um in his and he's like a big no-till farmer regenerative farmer so it's like really important to his ecosystem to have kind of this source yeah yeah
00:18:15
atack2010
Oh yeah.
00:18:25
atack2010
Kind of community supported at its purest form, community supported composting. Yeah.
00:18:30
Alexis
It's,
Microbes and Soil Health
00:18:31
atack2010
out
00:18:32
Alexis
I'm fascinating.
00:18:32
Alexis
So you anyways, you can buy like these small, just like the Verma compost bins you can buy.
00:18:36
atack2010
Yeah. How do you spell this? Because I'm going to, I need to look this up and see what these containers look like. Do you have a spelling?
00:18:41
Alexis
Yeah.
00:18:41
atack2010
Because if I try to spell bakashi, it's, it's going to be bad.
00:18:44
Alexis
it's it's at It's the way you think, it's no, it's the way it's B-O-K-A-S-H-I.
00:18:49
atack2010
Okay.
00:18:51
Alexis
B-O-K-A-S-H-I.
00:18:52
atack2010
okay
00:18:54
Alexis
So there's not a lot of, um so there's not a lot of, usually, you know, we're an extension here, so we we like to use our science base. There was only a couple dot .orgs that I was able to find. And they had some good information, good research on it. There's kind of this idea of like kitchen bakashi, which is what I've been talking about versus like the true traditional bakashi, which is usually more manure. it's on ah It's not really in bins. It's kind of on a large scale. That's a little bit different. um but ah So just these little, like they look like little square buckets that have a spigot on the bottom and have an airtight gasket on the top and that's it.
00:19:34
Alexis
like you just It's a compost pressure cooker.
00:19:35
atack2010
It's a compost pressure cooker. that's my but My brain is locked in on that. I'm going to and go have to learn more.
00:19:38
Alexis
Yeah. No, I love that. I'm glad you said that, it's but it's
00:19:40
atack2010
Yeah.
Exploring Future Composting Content
00:19:42
Alexis
so cool and fascinating.
00:19:43
Alexis
and Anyway, so bringing me back to this idea of like using this tea or um using the, I mean, you're going not going to want to put pakashi. It needs to be with the so ah some sort of soil. You're not going to put that in, in like a potting mix, but you could certainly use the tea, like a diluted tea for your plants.
00:20:00
atack2010
Mm
00:20:03
Alexis
ah You could feed your worms that if you're doing that, that's what this guy does too, because he's got so much fermented pakashi, feeds it to his worms. And so they break it down even faster, so then you get worm castings and vermicomposts even faster than you would with you know normal kitchen scraps. um But this idea that like microbes are so good, and why did we think that they were
00:20:24
atack2010
hmm.
00:20:30
Alexis
bad or why, why have we kept them out of a lot of production systems? Um, it's like, we kind of thought if we, you know, there's just bad ones, so we must eliminate them all. It's like, I don't know. It's, it's this.
00:20:44
atack2010
take a sound environmental concept or a scientific concept, and then we apply it to everything unilaterally.
00:20:48
Alexis
Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:50
atack2010
And sometimes that gets us into trouble. Yeah.
00:20:52
Alexis
Yeah, it just, it's, it was, it's been kind of a fascinating thing. So I'm going to try one of my goals for 2024 is to try a Bakashi and see what happens.
00:21:01
atack2010
We need to follow up on this to see how your compost pressure cooker square bucket system experiment goes because I want to know because anaerobic I'm thinking rotten egg smell I know that this is a different system and it's interesting because you're using specific starters in there which is interesting but yeah something totally I'm totally familiar with.
00:21:10
Alexis
Yeah. Uh-huh. Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:21:22
Alexis
Well, go, you know, if you're listening and this sounds fascinating or maybe something that you could actually do in your system or think that would help you go look it up, you know, do your own research on that. I i am i am trying. I am learning more and more. And we have a um a great but professor now at UK who's specializing in microbes and fermentation. ah Dr. Corbin and she seems really, really cool and she's doing a presentation at the Organic Association of Kentucky ah with some two other great professors that I'm hoping she's going to hint a little bit more on kind of this.
00:22:00
Alexis
micro world that we have been kind of forgetting about for a long time. So maybe I'll have more information to share with you all in the future if you want a deep dive or we'll have Kendall on to be amazing and teach us all about fermentation and microbes in the plant world. But ah yeah, go look it up, be curious, stay curious out there. That's, I don't know, that's some
Connect and Join Future Episodes
00:22:21
Alexis
podcast they say that, which I think is awesome.
00:22:22
atack2010
Just another form of composting that's going to add to what you already know.
00:22:26
Alexis
Awesome. I give your soil some probiotics is what we're doing. But anyways, if you like this episode, please let us know. Give us, leave us a review. Uh, shoot us a message on Instagram at hort culture podcast. Uh, you can shoot us an email at hort culture podcast at l.uky.edu. That should also be in the show notes for you. If you're like, I cannot remember that Alexis. I understand. And we hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and join us for some more mini episodes with Brett and Josh. Have a great one, y'all.