http://www.parkseed.com/

Putting a lot of color and pattern in your garden is easier than you might imagine. Of course you need some good seeds or plants to get it started but the key to a healthy and vibrant garden has to do with the soil nutrients and microbial flora as much as it does with the seeds and plants you plan to admire.

Make Your Own High Organic Content Soil:

You don’t need commercial fertilizers or pesticides. What you need for healthy gardens is good soil. Make your own!

You can easily turn all the food scraps at home into a bio pulp using microbes that will then provide plenty of nutrients and organic matter for all of your plants. Bokashi fermenting your food scraps is the fastest most efficient way to generate good soil. And none of your food scraps will ever end up in a landfill or at the curbside.

The Bokashi advantages are immediate;

• Food scraps including dairy and meat diverted away from landfills
• Greenhouse gas reduction by processing waste at home
• It’s 10 x faster than composting without the work
• Can be done all year around
• Tea formed in fermenting is valuable nutrient to stimulate plants and improve soil
• Pulp formed adds organic content to soil
• Smelly waste is recycled in a manner that eliminates odors
• Insects and rodents or other animals avoid fermented organic waste

Minimize or Eliminate Dependence on Fertilizers and Pesticides:

Why waste your money on fertilizers and pesticides? They’re hazardous, noxious to work around, and they cost a lot. Food scraps are free and with little cost can be rapidly decomposed and fed to the soil microbes returning many nutrients, trace minerals, and organic content to the soil.

Commercial fertilizers and pesticides applied to the soil are going to select out microbes that can tolerate soils that are chemically treated. Many beneficial organisms will be destroyed when chemicals are mixed into the soil. The native microbes in the soil serve many purposes.

Soil microbes are intimately involved in feeding nutrients to your plants. You want lots of them around. Bokashi fermented food scraps will bring them back.

You’ve got to ferment the food scraps. It’s fast and it’s easy. The pickling process (fermenting) takes away the smell of rotting garbage and alters the surface chemistry so the soil microbes can then finish off the job….getting nutrients and microbes back into the soil. It’s really kind of miraculous.

You can convert all your organic waste into something great for the soil, get rid of your garbage can for food waste, save money on garbage bills and get a great garden.

Don’t be tempted to just bury your food scraps. That won’t work. You’ll end up with a smelly slimy mess in the ground with a lot of insects. Rats and other animals will also enjoy your mess. They won’t touch Bokashi fermented material. There’s no food value left for them because the microbes used in pickling the waste got it first. Even bears have no interest in Bokashi fermented scraps.

Breaking down Waste Material – It’s a hard job!

Did you ever wonder why it takes so long to compost organic material? Why don’t the carrots, beets, roots, potatoes, radishes, and plants bedded in the soil get eaten up by the soil microbes? Why don’t they just rot away?

After the plants die, they will slowly begin to rot. They have to break down the cells which are composed of a lot of cellulose. Cellulose is a complex sugar molecule that is the major structural material that makes the plant, fruit or vegetable firm. It’s the outer skin that keeps the bad guys out. It’s very tough material to breakdown.

Some microbes are able with enzymes to break it down quickly. Only certain types of microbes can produce these enzymes and they are the ones we use in the Bokashi fermenting process.

I like to think of the microbes involved in this process as the equivalent of chefs preparing a banquet for the hungry microbes in the soil. When you mix the fermented waste material with the soil, the soil microbes finish off the job leaving rich nutrients and minerals that can then be used to feed the plants.

The Soil Food Web – How it Works:

There is a kind of feeding frenzy that occurs when the material is mixed with soil. All kinds of critters get involved. All of the players at the table compete from the microscopic to the macro size including fungi, microbes, earthworms, centipedes, etc. Soil is alive and healthy when all the critters are competing and they all establish their populations and relationships. We have in essence a web of relationships established and the plants are an important part of the picture.

Bokashi Composting (Fermenting) – Rapidly Improves Soil:

Gardeners who want to have really healthy plants should appreciate that a lot of what makes a plant strong and healthy has to do with the quality of soil. If you feed the soil nutrients and microbes and support the soil web, you are going to have the best plants around. They will bloom more frequently and be far more vibrant.

Almost any soil will in short order with proper support of the food web transform to the best soil you can find for your plants.

It’s easy. Save your dollars and start thinking about those chemical additives you might have thought you needed to get your plants growing as potential toxins altering the food web. Bokashi Composting (Bokashi Fermenting) is a gardener’s dream.

You don’t have to do a lot of work to pickle your food waste or ferment your yard waste. It’s so much easier than composting. It’s fast. You will eliminate bad odors and get a richer soil when you mix the pickled waste with your garden soil.

Want to learn more? See how easy it is at www.bokashicycle.com

Photographs can show you the difference. Here are a few examples comparing plants with and without treatment.

Bokashi Tea Positively Impacts Ornamental Plants:

When you ferment your food scraps, you will obtain a liquid tea as the enzymes do their work on the waste material. The tea is usually collected when the spigot on the fermenter is opened every few days and it is very rich in nutrients and microbes.

Bokashi tea (AgrowTea™) can be applied directly to the soil or as a foliar spray. It is very potent and should be diluted 50 to 100 times with water before it is applied. You can apply it to vegetables, ornamental plants or even your grass.

Here is an example of how quickly plants respond to good treatments.

Identical potted plants were placed in the soil on the same slope with the same sun exposure and watered in like manner. Both clusters were watered using a spray attachment on the end of a standard garden hose.

The second cluster of plants had AgrowTea applied twice within the 4 weeks after planting at a dilution of 1:50 in a metered spray in place of only water.

Clusters that were treated with only water have far fewer buds and flowers and are less vibrant and lush in appearance.

Bokashi Treated Soil Positively Impacts Tomato Plants:

We’ve also looked at tomato plants grown in soil treated with Bokashi fermented food waste (AgrowPulp™) in comparison to plants grown in untreated soil. There is no doubt about the positive and improved outcomes in treated soil.

Identical plants were placed in the soil in separate greenhouses with the same sun exposure and watered in like manner.

AgrowPulp/Tea was applied at a rate of approximately 10 pounds per square foot in one greenhouse before tomato plants were placed in the soil. No AgrowPulp/Tea was added to the soil in the second greenhouse

Tomato plants in the greenhouse with soil treatment show tremendous vibrant growth and abundant fruit relative to tomato plants in the greenhouse where no soil treatment was done.

Bokashi Treated Grass – Beneficial Impact Limiting Turf grass Disease:

Dollar spot commonly appears in closely cut turf grass where there is high humidity and heat. Golf courses in the US spend millions of dollars each year on fungicides in an attempt to eradicate or control its spread. It is unsightly and difficult to control.

Two investigators at the USDA, Eric Ervin and Robert Kremer looked at bentgrass in greenhouse experiments to see if Bokashi microbes might effectively inhibit the fungus responsible for dollar spots, Sclerotinia homoeocarpa.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/aug01/turf0801.htm

In theory, if soil microbial populations are well established and competing, infectious opportunists like dollar spot will not so easily take hold.

Their findings show Bokashi microbes did significantly reduce infection rates. In control experiments with no Bokashi microbe treatment 19% of the turf grass pots seeded with Sclerotinia. In pots treated with Bokashi microbes less than 1% of the pots seeded with Sclerotinia were infected.

Your table scraps are precious! Don’t throw them away. Recycle them putting them back to soil. You’ll save money, get a better garden, and in the process will make the planet a better place.

Posted on August 9th, 2011 by admin0
Filed under: Bokashi Blog