You can add anything and everything to a bokashi bin, except liquids.
It can take fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy, fish, coffee grounds, even paper.
When you get a new bokashi bucket you will also get a masher to squash the bokashi down (this is very important) and either a spray bottle of effective micro-organisms (EM) or a bokashi bran made of food industry waste product that is soaked in the EM.
With each addition to the bin, you need to squash it down with the masher. Crush it into the previous layer. Squeeze out as much air as possible.
Air is the great enemy of bokashi.
Air will create a foul-smelling, dry-retching inducing, maggot-infested hell-hole that is not usable unless you wish to have your garden infested with blow-flies and rats.
Because air is the enemy of bokashi, it's best not to add to the bin too often. It's best to store scraps in the kitchen and empty it once a week or if there's a hint of a smell brewing.
In my first bokashi attempt I made all the mistakes one could make in bokashi composting. I kept the bin at the side of the house which got way too much sunlight in summer which then created a festering oven of putrid meat and waste. Also, I hadn't pressed each addition to the bin down enough and worse still I had a chicken carcass in there that I didn't break down at all which was a giant air pocket in the middle of the bokashi bin. And the lid wasn't on tight.
Blow flies were able to get in and lay their eggs which hatched into colony of maggots feasting on everything and the worst smell imaginable. Even the juice was not usable as it had not fermented and had become rancid. Putting it on the container garden seemed to be a 'bat signal' to every fly in the city to come and munch on the juice in the soil, and didn't aid the plants much either.
So, to stress it once more;
Using the juice
Drain the juice from the bin as often as you can. Leaving the juice sitting in the bin can cause it to turn bad and smelly and unusable.
To use, add the juice to a watering can or sprayer at a ratio of 1:100 (1 part bokashi juice to 100 parts water) and add to the soil.
You don't want to let this valuable fertiliser go to waste anyway. It adds so much beneficial bacteria and microbial life to you garden beds or pot plants to feed the soil life that then feeds your plants to produce a bountiful harvest.
This is the true value of going waste-free. The fertiliser and nutrient rich soil that feeds plants that then feeds you and your family.
It's not just about the climate disaster we now face, it's about how you can benefit from what you used to throw away and then pay someone else to get.
Fermentation stage
When the bin is full all you need to do now is leave it for 14 days.
Simple as that.
Drain off the juice and mix with water in a 1:100 ratio as always and that's it. The bin only needs 14 days, I've let it ferment longer to see what happens but there's no increase in benefit or stronger fermentation.
If you only have one bokashi bin, put the scraps in the freezer or fridge while waiting for the bin to complete the fermentation process, then once it's emptied you can begin again.
But it's better to have two bins as this makes the transfer less stressful and easier, you also get more bokashi juice too, but this depends on how many people are using it, and how often scraps get added.
Composting stage
Once the bokashi has gone through the 14 day fermentation stage it can now be put into either the soil or a hot compost. If you are setting up new garden beds then the bokashi can be spread as a base layer then compost and soil put on top but needs to be more than 30cm (14 inches) deep. It can also be buried in an existing garden bed or just in the soil but at the same depth.
If you do not have access to soil, you may have a courtyard or a balcony garden, you can still accomplish the composting process by the use of a separate worm farm and use the worm tea made from bokashi for a powerful liquid fertiliser and you will also end up with a fertile soil to use in potted plants or a top dress for existing plants.
The fermented bokashi can also be added to a container with soil and worms. these will break down the bokashi into rich humus that can then be added as a top dressing in your container garden, or used as part of a soil mix too.
or a simpler way, if you're using large pots, is to add a plant into the soil and composting bokashi and let the plant access the nutrients as the bokashi breaks down.
In fact, this is how I grow my potatoes.
Add to hot compost
Add to the centre of a new composting pile, layer with green and browns as you would normally.
The pile will heat up and there will be a slightly different smell; more of a fermented, vinegar-ish smell coupled with the normal compost smell, but if the bokashi is done right it won't be too offensive and won't attract pests.
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