For the last three or four months (since I read about it in Dick Strawbridge’s self sufficiency guide) Paul and I have been using bokashi bins.  Dick’s book didn’t go into great detail about the bins, it mentioned them in passing and said roughly how it worked but that was it. It intrigued me, all I knew was that he was making compost in a plastic tub by filling it with bran and food waste.

After looking into it further, I read that you could put all of you usual peelings and overripe fruit, but also dairy,  meat and fish, cooked foods and bones (though they may need to be cut up, as they take a long time to decompose).  These are things that you usually can’t just put into a compost pile.

So this is how it works:

You can make or buy your own bokashi bins, and I recommend having more than one  (this means you can still use one whilst the other decomposes). They are bins with air-tight lids, with a mesh near the bottom to allow any liquid to pass through to a tap. (They aren’t expensive to buy – I got two for £19.99 and that included two bags of the bran).

Bokashi Set

It’s used to make compost through an anaerobic process (meaning there should be as little air as possible in there). You put in your leftovers; cheese; fish; meats; vegetables all raw or cooked and you sprinkle over special ‘bokashi bran’ (it can also be sawdust, rice or leaves etc. as long as they have been inoculated with the right bacteria ) and press it down to get out the air, and you leave it. This then ferments everything inside the bin in a process that’s much quicker than ordinary composting. You don’t need a lot of space and you can keep the bins indoors, as we do.

Hot mess

The liquid or ‘bokashi juice’ needs to be drained as often as possible – this liquid is highly concentrated plant food, so I pour a little into a watering can and dilute it before watering my plants but it’s actually a really good drain cleaner if used neat. It prevents the build up of solids in the drains and can help sort out blockages.

Looks better than it smells

We used this stuff throughout the summer and it seemed to do a very good job.