Bokashi
I know what everyone wants to read about.
Well, wonder no more. I am preparing a speech for my Toastmasters' club (does the nerdiness never end?) about apartment composting, so the topic is fresh in my mind.
Two summers ago, a friend regaled me with tales of successful indoor composting without worms, and advised me to seek out the guy who sells composting systems at the local farmers' markets. We met the Bokashi Man and bought a few buckets from him (these could be scavenged instead from a restaurant or wine-making place!) and two big bags of the magic bran powder, which is inoculated with beneficial microorganisms. This seemed like a significant expense at the time, but the buckets are going to last forever, and we still have a ton of bran powder left over.
How it works is that we have a set of nested buckets that lives in the kitchen closet, and we feed it veggie scraps, stale bread crusts and the like. Ok, I am exaggerating the quality of our diet. Mostly, we feed it coffee grounds and tea bags, but sometimes it gets vegetables and stale bagels. Unlike a worm compositor, it is perfectly happy to take carbohydrates. I think of it as a stinky, ever-hungry pet.
In between layers of food scraps, we add the inoculated bran powder, then mash the contents of the bucket down and keep the lid on tight. The result is a process of anaerobic fermentation. The food doesn't turn to compost, but neither does it get completely disgusting. It just kind of…pickles. The websites that promote this kind of composting describe the smell as "sweet" and "pickle-like" but I think that's a bit optimistic. It smells more like sauerkraut farts. But it's a sealed system, so unless you open the lid, it's not too bad.
The grossest part of regular maintenance is that the bottom bucket must be drained every few days. It collects a smelly brown liquid which, when mixed with water, is a great plant fertilizer. I feed it to my patio garden of tomatoes, herbs and ornamentals, and they all seem quite happy. Since researching this system for my speech, I've learned that putting down a layer of shredded newspaper in the bottom of a new bucket can help to minimize the amount of liquid produced; I'll try that next time.
When the bucket is full, it needs to sit closed for a few days, and then it's ready to be added to someone's backyard composter. Because the food scraps have been pickled, they turn into compost really quickly. So far, I've been really lucky to always have friends who are eager for high-quality compost and willing to take my food waste.
One last piece of grossness is that, after the fermented food scraps have been added to some lucky recipient's compost pile, the bucket remains pretty icky. I would not want to wash it out in the bathtub. For this stage of the process, I am happy to have an apartment patio, and to live in a place that rains a lot. After a few weeks of sitting on the patio in the rain, the buckets are fairly innocuous again.
Apparently, if you don't have access to a composter, the finished food scraps can also be buried in the ground and left for a few months. I can only imagine sneaking out at night with a shovel to find somewhere to bury a few gallons of fermented scraps, so finding a friend with a composter seems like a saner option for the average apartment-dweller.
Well, wonder no more. I am preparing a speech for my Toastmasters' club (does the nerdiness never end?) about apartment composting, so the topic is fresh in my mind.
Two summers ago, a friend regaled me with tales of successful indoor composting without worms, and advised me to seek out the guy who sells composting systems at the local farmers' markets. We met the Bokashi Man and bought a few buckets from him (these could be scavenged instead from a restaurant or wine-making place!) and two big bags of the magic bran powder, which is inoculated with beneficial microorganisms. This seemed like a significant expense at the time, but the buckets are going to last forever, and we still have a ton of bran powder left over.
How it works is that we have a set of nested buckets that lives in the kitchen closet, and we feed it veggie scraps, stale bread crusts and the like. Ok, I am exaggerating the quality of our diet. Mostly, we feed it coffee grounds and tea bags, but sometimes it gets vegetables and stale bagels. Unlike a worm compositor, it is perfectly happy to take carbohydrates. I think of it as a stinky, ever-hungry pet.
In between layers of food scraps, we add the inoculated bran powder, then mash the contents of the bucket down and keep the lid on tight. The result is a process of anaerobic fermentation. The food doesn't turn to compost, but neither does it get completely disgusting. It just kind of…pickles. The websites that promote this kind of composting describe the smell as "sweet" and "pickle-like" but I think that's a bit optimistic. It smells more like sauerkraut farts. But it's a sealed system, so unless you open the lid, it's not too bad.
The grossest part of regular maintenance is that the bottom bucket must be drained every few days. It collects a smelly brown liquid which, when mixed with water, is a great plant fertilizer. I feed it to my patio garden of tomatoes, herbs and ornamentals, and they all seem quite happy. Since researching this system for my speech, I've learned that putting down a layer of shredded newspaper in the bottom of a new bucket can help to minimize the amount of liquid produced; I'll try that next time.
When the bucket is full, it needs to sit closed for a few days, and then it's ready to be added to someone's backyard composter. Because the food scraps have been pickled, they turn into compost really quickly. So far, I've been really lucky to always have friends who are eager for high-quality compost and willing to take my food waste.
One last piece of grossness is that, after the fermented food scraps have been added to some lucky recipient's compost pile, the bucket remains pretty icky. I would not want to wash it out in the bathtub. For this stage of the process, I am happy to have an apartment patio, and to live in a place that rains a lot. After a few weeks of sitting on the patio in the rain, the buckets are fairly innocuous again.
Apparently, if you don't have access to a composter, the finished food scraps can also be buried in the ground and left for a few months. I can only imagine sneaking out at night with a shovel to find somewhere to bury a few gallons of fermented scraps, so finding a friend with a composter seems like a saner option for the average apartment-dweller.