I do this too inside for the winter in my basement, it makes such great soil to use wherever you want it and is far better than anything store bought because of the beneficial microbiology in that dirt. Added bonus as well is you have amazing living soil ready in the Spring when you need it. You can even go totally free with yard soil and compost you make for the bokashi to go into. I recommend looking up making the LAB inoculant yourself using just rice water and milk, incredibly cheap and every bit as effective if not more so than the pricey bran inoculant. Just use the finished lab liquid, diluted easily 50/50 or even more with a little brown sugar to keep them happy. I put it in a,one liter plastic water bottle kept in the fridge with holes poked in the cap and squirt some on to the freshly added food scraps. Mine breaks down as intended with a pickle smell and after a few weeks the while mold you like to see-never had anything go bad or rancid yet. It costs me about two dollars for a few months worth of bokashi inoculant and I don't need to order anything, it can all be down with one quick trip into the kitchen.👍🏻
I have red wrigglers worms and they love Bokashi for a food source they eat 200 lbs of Bokashi every week. Plus I makes a wham bam soil amendment too. Good luck.
About to make my soil factory since my bokashi bucket is full. With your experience, do you feel it's necessary to put drainage holes in the bottom? Thank you for the video!
for harder materials like eggshells, bones, or anything that takes longer to compost can be left out to dry 1st either by sunbathing it or baking it, then you can crush it and turn to powder, now u can add it to ur compost, I don't recommend you put hard materials in the bucket
Thank you for sharing your video. I've been running my soil factory through the winter and it got infested by fungus gnats. Now I realize I did not have enough soil on top of the scraps.
It would be beneficial to use or at lest add some actual ground soil. Bagged mixes sometimes are sterilized and void of any of the microbial life needed to break down the bokashi. The added worm castings is great though, you’re adding back what the bagged soul maker destroyed. 🪱
Brilliant, thank you. Wanting to try this method. I grind egg shells and pour the powder into plant pots every few weeks. Maybe that would help when it comes to using egg shells with the Bokashi method.
Besides adding biochar for odor control, you're making it and the soil the ultimate soil for plants. That charcoal with all the microbial life inside it will be around basically forever.
I make a lot of biochar too, and also add it to all my compost. I love turning in my raised beds and seeing pieces of biochar in there, knowing it’ll forever be so beneficial. I cut down a maple tree in my yard earlier this year and a lot of it is already biochar in the ground, I love that whole cycle. Adding it to compost to soak in all that good stuff is such an easy and great way to utilize it.
Thank you so much for the information! I have been very interested, but really needed the visual of the soil factory since I was skeptical of it working without live worms or some sort of earthy bugs to help with the compost breakdown.
I do thus myself with my bokashi in the winter in my cellar. Warm weather I do the same thing but outside and it really makes fantastic soil. RU-vid making labs (lacto bascillus) from rice water and milk, so easy. You just put it in a plastic water bottle when done diluted easily to 50/50 with holes in the bottle cap and spritz your veggie scraps in the bucket. No expensive bran or ordering, just some rice water and milk and one week and you have a several months supply of bokashi inoculant that works fantastically.
That would make a cleaner looking soil mixture, but not sure it would be worth the time or effort. The egg shells break down rapidly in the raised beds.
I did not put a lid on my soil factory (its the first one), only a towel, but now there is white mold on it. does it mean its ruined? I should not plant anything in it, am I right? thanks for the advice.
White mold is happy mold. Red, green, and black mold is sad mold. May be able to save it from a bit of bad mold by mixing in a good amount of bran and letting it try to do its magic.
white mold means success. fungal growth is so good for breaking down composts and providing readily available nutrients for the roots to uptake. If you ever see mushrooms too, rejoice.🥳
Great information. Thanks for taking us through your process. What was the plastic piece that came out of the bucket when you tipped the food waste into the soil tub and what is it’s purpose?
Thanks! That plastic grid on the bottom of the bucket is to keep the Bokashi off the bottom of the bucket so that it does not plug the spigot. That grid is sold for use in car wash buckets to separate the dirt and grid from the wash water, but it works great in a 5 gallon Bokashi bucket, too.
Thanks for your video. I just started bokashi and 1st bin is half full. I emptied the liquid yesterday and fertilized the plants. Great to see how it into soil so quickly!
Look into making "LAB" inoculant yourself at home, only need rice water and milk. Added as a liquid over the food scraps without needing to add it to bran only costs what milk costs. I could never afford the cost of buying bran inoculant and as it turns out, you don't need to. I use a half gallon of milk and dilute 50/50 the finished LAB inoculant and have it in the fridge in a water bottle with holes poked in the cap. It lasts me several months and all I spend is less than two bucks.
My Bokashi buckets are 5 gallon food grade buckets fitted with a spigot and air-tight Gamma lid. I am not sure the size of the container which I picked up at a thrift store, but it is large enough to hold about .75 cu ft of soil and the 5 gallons of Bokashi. After this video was made, I added another 5 gallon bucket of Bokashi to the container to see it if will also compost down to black soil. I hope to make a follow-on video of that experiment.
