Comments

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  Megan August 25, 2013 at 2:44pm

  hello Katherine, the person who introduced bokashi to NZ, Neville Burt is a member here and he recommends that we only need to wait a week for the bokashi contents to neutralise before it can be planted in.  When you have time on your hands, scroll back to the first discussions on this comment wall for a read, there's a lot of interesting comments from various people who are using bokashi that you might find helpful. Great link thanks, really interesting reading:)
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  Katherine Wheatley August 25, 2013 at 1:28pm

  I haven't used the bokashi at all without first making sure it's completely broken down, but after reading today of other experiments with in ground bokashi composting (http://bokashiworld.wordpress.com) I'm starting to think of suitable sites in the garden for one for this summer's pumpkins. My bokashi mentor at the Wollongong Botanic Gardens apparently does away with the bokashi bucket altogether and just buries each day's scraps in her compost with a little bokashi bran. Every now and again needs to top up with grass clippings to create a new layer for burying in.  Have you had any plants dislike the bokashi around their roots? I thought it might not be the right PH.
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  Megan August 25, 2013 at 1:04am

  Oh and googled unsulphured molasses and it says the sulphur kills the beneficial bacteria. I think you'd have to use any awful lot of molasses to damage your soil though, have read elsewhere that adding sulphur to the soil makes your garlic taste stronger. Might be someone out there with practical experience who can answer your question?
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  Megan August 25, 2013 at 12:57am

  Hello Katherine. Have you tried using your bokashi instead of compost/potting soil when planting in containers? I put a thin layer of soil at the bottom, 3/4 bokashi bucket contents topped with more soil followed with vermicast and a thin layer of commercial potting mix. Leave to to settle a couple of weeks and then sow or plant into it. Tomatoes and zucchini love this and at the end of the season, all the bokashi will have broken down to a rich dark compost. There's usually enough material to have sustained the worms from the vermicast too. It them gets used as mulch:)
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  Katherine Wheatley August 23, 2013 at 1:12pm

  I've run out of spots to dig holes for the bokashi so I'm now using closed compost bins (think of them as above-ground holes!) to mix the bokashi and dirt in (often using manure in place of dirt).  This week I started an experiment with a 'soil generator', much the same idea, after seeing Bryan McGrath's youtube video. The bokashi and manure mix doesn't break down as rapidly as the bokashi/soil mix, probably because the soil contains the rich ecology of microorganisms that racehorse manure does not (I'm guessing the horses are routinely wormed etc), but after a few weeks in the closed compost bin (layered - bokashi, soil or manure, bokashi, soil or manure) the worms love it. I often dig a bucket out at that stage and put it directly in the worm farm too. 

  Had been struggling with some perceived bokashi failures but it turns out I just needed to put a plastic bag over the top of the bokashi in the bin to reduce air flow. Now it moulds up beautifully. Need to remember to do the same to my inoculated bran mix.

  I've heard that it's important to use unsulphured molasses rather than sulphered - has anyone else come across this?
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  Dallas Nesbitt February 27, 2013 at 8:55am

  Thanks Megan,

  It was such a frosty winter and we had a couple of floods and now a dry dry summer that things are not sprouting. We get wonderful things from our compost bins though - melons, fabulous pumpkins, all sorts.
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  Megan February 26, 2013 at 11:58pm

  welcome Dallas, good on you for organising your "Bokashi team" - your trees must be flourishing! It will be interesting to see what comes up where you've buried your buckets - I've found fruit tree seedlings, pumpkins, tomatoes, avocados:) Too cold down here for the latter to survive but have given away a few as houseplants.
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  Teeli February 26, 2013 at 9:01pm

  Thanks for the welcome Bridge Scully.

  Unfortunately I don't seem to have success with the bokashi system at all. Maybe it is because I have a worm farm plus 6 compost bins and there is only me, so not much in the way of food scraps. I also forget to empty the liquid often enough. However, I enjoy reading about how others have success with Bokashi...  :)
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  Dallas Nesbitt February 26, 2013 at 9:32am

  We live in Sandringham, Auckland and we also have a bit over 1 hectare of land in Waihi which we are re-foresting. I have a 'Bokashi Team' - I bought cheap bokashi buckets on Trade Me for a couple of my colleagues and my daughter and my neighbour. They all fill them up, drop them off at my place and I take them to my land, use the contents, clean the buckets and drop them off to respective houses. If any of you are living in or near Sandringham and find, as many others do, that you run out of spots to bury your bokashi, please join my team. I can use as much as you can produce!

   And if you wear gardening gloves to avoid getting bokashi grit under your fingernails, check out my group 'Glove Love'
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  Sheryl Kitchen February 14, 2013 at 10:56pm

  I started using the bokashi system after seeing my nephew's. I went to worms-r-us in Manukau and bought 6 units for family members. Got quite a good discount. My nephew had told me about the potato masher. Have been digging it in to my raised beds.