Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Making Activated EM
You can't make EM yourself unless you want to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of
dollars to set up a lab and get the proper strains of microbes, but you can buy an existing
mother culture from a supplier and multiply that, much like you would make yogurt. The
process is called “activating.” Unlike yogurt, which you can keep going forever, EM can
only reliably be activated once, maybe twice, and then you need to get a new mother cul-
ture. This is because the microbes need to be in specific proportions, and will move away
from this with each activation.
You can definitely do it once, making five gallons of good activated EM from one quart
of mother culture. This is done both to save money and to wake up the microbes that may
be dormant if the mother culture has been around for awhile. Dechlorinated water is actu-
ally not necessary, but definitely beneficial because chlorine kills microorganisms. Tap wa-
ter can be dechlorinated by letting it sit out for 24 hours, unless your city uses chloramines,
in which case humic acids or ascorbic acid should be added.
