I promise that someday this will return to being an infertility-type blog. Don’t worry, we haven’t given up on that particular project. Trust me.
We recently purchased a bokashi composter. This nifty little thing sits in the kitchen and collects all of our food scraps, as well as the unbleached coffee filters and the occasional paper towel. We throw a handful of the bokashi mixture (a mix of bran, molasses, some other stuff and beneficial microbes…I don’t know exactly, I just order it online) on top of each day’s scraps and snap the lid back on. With just the two (and sometimes three of us) it takes a couple of weeks to fill the bucket, then we transfer the contents, which don’t stink…it smells rather sour…to a different bucket in the garage to let it ferment a bit longer. Then, right now, that more mature compost gets worked into one of my new flower beds around the patio with a little sand (our soil is heavy clay), a black weed barrier goes on top and about a week later, I plant the bed. But, I’m about to run out of flower beds, at least for the time being and our soil is so hard to dig in, neither S (who actually DOES the digging) nor I relish the idea of digging holes or trenches every few weeks simply to bury our compost. So, I’m toying with the idea of either purchasing a Green Cone composter, or making something similar by punching holes in a metal trash can and burying it halfway. I’m wondering if anyone else out there in the interweb has used this method and if it’s a viable approach or if I’m in for a world of smelly hurt if I go this route. I don’t want a traditional compost bin/pile, because if and when I need compost for my beds, I can just use my tried and true method of the bucket in the garage. I’m just looking for a way to deal with the extra in our rather small yard, so I’m sending this out there into the ‘net, hoping someone has tried this.
I really recommend the bokashi system, btw. We’ve probably gone through four buckets full since we got it and had a 75% success rate. I think we didn’t use enough of the bokashi powder in one of them and instead of the final product smelling like well aged manure/humus, it smelled like the contents of a septic tank. I’m sure the neighbors hated me when we dumped THAT one in the backyard. But, since we started the amount of trash we throw away has probably been halved, and the first bed to be treated is doing fabulously. Where before I had dirt so hard, it cracked on sunny days and rain simply ran off, now I have fat, happy worms making their way through the rich, moist soil.
Thanks for the post about composting. I’ll have to check out this product. We’ve been thinking about starting composting at our house. We don’t have a garbage disposal at the new house and we’ve been wanting to do something to reduce our garbage.
I almost wish I had a garden.
Creepy on the timing. I was just thinking I needed some composter thingy since my yard is too small to just pile my compost in the back and turn it over. Where did you purchase this delightul product?
Doh! I thought I put a link to it in the post.
I got mine here. That’s also where I order my bokashi “fermentation inoculant.” We keep it at the island in the middle of the kitchen and I have a one-gallon Rubbermaid-type pitcher I keep on the counter. During the day, scraps/coffee grounds/banana peels/whatever go in the pitcher and when we clean up after dinner the pitcher gets dumped in the composter. It’s usually enough to make one complete layer, so a big handful of the power goes on top and that’s it. The lid snaps on really tight, so no worries about curious little ones getting into it. It does have a spout on the bottom front for draining off the compost tea (I never get any of this. Most of what we compost is very low moisture.) That could be a problem for you, but you might get away with just turning it around so it can’t be seen or accessed. With the lid on, there’s absolutely no smell. With the lid off, it’s a sort of sweetish-sour smell, assuming everything is going well. If it smells like, well, a compost pile, throw some sugar in there and a little extra bokashi. You’re going for fermentation, not rot. It takes us 2-3 weeks to fill the bucket all the way. I do put egg shells in it, but I don’t put bones or meat scraps in it, although it says you can.