Making Bokashi

Today we began preparing for the actual food growing that we, me especially, are eager to getting started with, hopefully in the next few weeks.

We prepared a big pile of Bokashi. In the words of the composting guy;" Bokashi is a Japanese term meaning "fermented organic matter". It is often referred to as a type of composting but it is actually an anaerobic fermentation process, resulting in a much different end product than that produced via composting".

We will use the end product when we start our seeds, when we transplant and sometimes as a compost tea to fertilize when needed. We are hoping to not use much of any kind of fertilizer, certainly only organic natural kinds such as Bokashi, and only when absolutely needed. Right now as we are starting out, building the soil we will need a little extra help, which is why this preparation.

We used layer upon layer of wheat bran, horse manure, soil, finely ground coal (which we gathered from around the land from all the burned trees, from the forrest fire a couple of years back) as well as a mixture of water, yeast and molasses.

We wet each layer with the sweet mixture and built it at least 20 layers deep, with just two layers of the coal.

Lastly we covered it with a tarp and left it to ferment for three weeks.

The smell was amazing, sweet and bread like, very nice!

The pile at about the 5th layer

Once finished we moved the pile from one spot over to another and then back again, to properly mix it all up. Below you can clearly see the layers before it got mixed.

 Listo!

~Blessings~