Bokashi Update (Again)

Comments Off on Bokashi Update (Again)

I know you’re all dying to know how it went… well, we managed to find a composter* and trundled out there with our Bokashi bin. Something was clearly horribly wrong, however. When the bin came out of the house, the smell produced as it was moved was… bad. Exceptionally bad. We bagged it up and even still could smell the foetid odour.

So, we pulled up at our land (after visiting a garden store, ACE hardware, and finally the Eastside Urban Farming place**) and plonked the composter down, unceremoniously, as the rain poured down on us. And then I opened the bin. Oh good holy fuck did it smell.

Even as a seasoned emergency nurse, I was concerned I might hurl. With fine technique I launched the contents into the compost bin, and then we piled wet leaves on top, damping the smell down a bit. I had planned to take a photo, but the horror of the scent was beyond comparison so I skipped that step. Then using one of the puddles of water around the place I rinsed the bin, wiped it out with bio-degradable cleaner, rinsed it, rinsed it some more, wiped it some more, rinsed it some more, and eventually conceded that it smelt less-bad-enough that we could bag it up again and throw it in the back of the car.

So raging success it was not.

Having googled – it may have been too wet, or our stuff may have sat on the counter too long, and we possibly want to be better at draining it. The white fuzzy fungus is apparently exactly what we want, which it was showing… so I’m not sure exactly why it went so horribly wrong.

We’re going to continue with the other bin, and when we’ve cleaned the other bin out more thoroughly, we’ll try another attempt without anything wet-ish. I’m wondering if the wet tea-bags and wet-coffee-grounds are the problem.

And hopefully it’ll rot down quickly, because I really don’t want to have that smell again next time we go out there.

Bleuch.

*which it turns out is harder than you’d think if you’re trying to shop at independent stores
** oh such a bad place. So bad. I will spend faaaaaarrrr too much money there.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.