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RE: A Permaculture Consultation for A New Garden - My 2nd Suburban Garden - Part 3

Your garden looks great!! Thank you for sharing and a lot of really good information! I´ll follow to see more :)
For compost - have you looked into bokashi? We put the foodscraps from our kitchen into a bucket an sprinkle bokashi bran over, and we keep layering like that until its full and then we let it sit for 14 days and then its ready to be dug into the garden. Within a couple of weeks it will be soil.

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Thank you @elfmyselfandi :) Yes I have heard of the bokashi compost method several years ago and I read up on it and shelved it because it seemed like it would take some time to perfect the art. You make it sound very simple though! Do you have to use any innoculant or is it just some grain that you layer with?

We just bought a bag of bokashi bran, I have a recipe for it but it suggested to buy a batch to begin with to see what it should look like , what texture it should have etc. We bought from a canadian company who makes it but it seems like there are a couple of different suppliers now.
The recipe I have uses wheat bran, water, EM-1 and molasses (and time, takes 4-6 weeks to get ready).
The EM-1 contains the microbs that makes the magic happen :) (as i understood it alteast)

OK! I do remember reading something about bokashi being invented by the same japanese fellow who developed or captured EM.... or something along those lines, it's been a while. Well I have been meaning to try EM out at some point, maybe now is the time and Bokashi as well! Thanks for inspiring me, I am excited to try it :)

Do you know if it has to be bran.. can you use other grains or material that is localy sourced or better yet.. wildcrafted? What are the parameters there?

Yeah we just got started with it so Im quite new myself but the fact that you can put any foodscraps in the bin ( can compost all vegetable and fruit materials including citrus, as well as raw or cooked food, and even dairy, fish, meat, and bones) is great. We dont have any animals yet that could have eaten our kitchen scraps so this way we get use of it. Oh Im happy that I could contribute with a little something, I loved reading your article!

It seems like some are trying to start their own EM with varying results, so it seems like buying it is the safest bet to get it right.

With the bran it seems you can sustitute it (rice bran was originally used but in the west it seems like wheat bran is most common, could be its easy to get). The information i found was that "Any carbon-rich plant material can substitute for bran, even sawdust."

The recipe I had was in swedish but I found what seems like a good website in english (even has a video hehe) https://www.the-compost-gardener.com/bokashi.html

OK! That makes a lot of sense! We have access to some sawdust. Also there is a lot of fallen leaves around, so I think those could be good carbon sources. It reminds me of compost toilets using sawdust, shavings or leaf litter as carbon layers. Now I am liking this idea even more!

Thanks for all the info and insights :) You've inspired me to try it out. First step..get some EM!

Np, im happy i could be of some help :) enjoy :) :)