Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
TWO WEEKS HAVE NOW PASSED
, and the microbes inside your bokashi bucket have been busy
fermentingallofyourfoodwaste,turningitintobokashipre-compost.Nowitistimetofinally
openthecontainerandputthefermentedscrapstouseinthesoil.Don'texpecttofindthesamedark
black,earthy-smellinghumuscompostyoufindinatraditionalaerobiccompostpile.Whatyouwill
find is fermented (pre-composted) food waste that looks very similar to how it looked when it went
intothebucket.Thefermentationprocessdoesn'tchangetheoutwardappearanceofthescraps,just
as cucumbers don't change appearance when they are pickled. But the physical and chemical struc-
tures ofthescraps have changed duringthefermentation process. The microbes that youinoculated
the food waste with have fermented and pre-composted it so it can be rapidly assimilated into the
soil.
So what do you do with all this fermented food waste, or bokashi pre-compost?
The most common method for incorporating it into the soil is the trench method. Someone that
isbuildingtheirgardensoilorhasapatchoflandtheyaretryingtorehabilitatewouldusethismeth-
od. It makes one big assumption: that you have access to land to dig a trench (and it isn't frozen). If
you don't have any digable land, don't worry; landless methods will be covered a little later in this
chapter.
The first step is to dig a twelve-inch-deep, shovel-width trench in your garden. It should be
twice as long as your container is high, so if you are using a fifteen-inch-high bucket, dig a trench
thirty inches long; exact dimensions aren't critical, so there is no need to get out a tape measure.
