In-garden bokashi composting
A tip for city dwellers needing
to compost in limited space: I highly recommend 5 gallon pails
with gamma seal lids, bokashi dust on the collect compost, wait two
weeks to a month and then bury it in your garden beds. Or, if you
have an abundance like I do, cut off the bottom of a 55 gallon drum
(skillsaw, sawzall or even a hand saw), dig a nice deep hole, and stick
the drum in about 1/3 of the depth of the drum. The top lid can
be locked or sealed with the metal ring that comes with a proper 55
gallon drum. When you've filled it to soil level, remove bin to
next spot, bury with a couple of reserved buckets of soil.
I highly recommend planting squash and corn.
I've a tiny garden on the front
and side of my home, 8 people's worth of compost on a regular basis and
not enough space for a covered, screened compost pile as required by
city regulations. This works even in our zone 4 winters. It
costs the "input" of the bokashi mix but I see that as a fair trade-off
for composting every type of kitchen scrap produced. I pre-dig my
raised garden beds in the fall, reserve the soil in 5 gallon pails to
our porch, and fill with compost and cover over throughout the
winter. I'll plant most anything but carrots in this.
As for varmits, danged,
varmits. We have none interested in our outdoor bins. We
also are the only ones in the neighborhood without a chewed through
garbage cart. Remember, we're in the city and squirrels and
rabbits and pets are what we get the most, minus the odd opossum
(different story there). The squirrels don't smell the "food" in
our garbage anymore and we have a very clean garbage cart now.
The slickness of the bokashi system in the city versus the worm tower,
which I tried and failed with, is that it is an anaerobic process to
start and so if it stays anaerobic just a bit longer till you pull the
bin off and cover with soil, there isn't a problem with smell.
The other nice piece is it allows us to compost an enormous amount,
easily two 5 gallon pails a month, on-site, through frozen ground
winters while still meeting city code requirements.
This is not what I'd do if I
had 10 acres and no city restrictions. But for our circumstances
I'd say it's very useful and others may have similar circumstances.
Editor's
note: The author of this tip chose to remain anonymous, but you can
read more about another
homesteader's experience with bokashi here.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
I live in a suburb on less than 5000sq ft in zone 6b south of Boston. I have done container gardening for a few year, and each year I add about 25 -50% of “garden space”. I have saved the soil from the containers for two years. This year I am using trash barrels. I also started bokashi this year, and I am adding layers of old soil, bokashi, straw, fresh stall bedding, shredded cardboard, and other random yard wastes.
After the winter I will sift the barrel contents, then add some not so composted bovine/equine contributions. At the dump I might be able to salvage some wood ash from the dumpster it is placed in. I hope that this, the compost teas, and trace minerals I plan to add will improve next years yields.