Bokashi

The ideal recycling/compost-creating system would be a small pig. Pigs cope with veg - raw and cooked, meat, fish and bones and do it very quickly. Output is good garden fertiliser and bacon!
Sometimes I regret half demolishing the two-apartment pigsty we had and turning into a greenhouse.

 

Doing an experiment, mixed a bucket of shredded leaves with some yeast & sugar, covered it with a couple of layers of newspaper & put it near the fire.

 

Don't forget to keep us posted with regular progress reports.

 

Umm, leaf ale. Should have quite a kick in a month or two

 

Didn't put any water in it, otherwise i'd be tempted to try it

 

Although ... no longer allowed to feed your pigs anything that has been through the kitchen ... I think?

 

There are many reasons why bokashi bins fail, the lid not being properly sealed, too cold, not enough bran etc.

I got a pair of bokashi buckets off of freecycle and never used them. I inteded them to be used as an overflow for my wormery but never needed it. The continuous cost of the bran was a massive deterrent for me. Although my workplace has now expressed interest in having a few, but they produce a massive amount of food waste.

To anyone thinking of buying one, my advice would be to buy a wormery first. Once it's been in for a few months the worms will speed up the rate of which they eat your waste. Also there's no real continuous cost. Also some bokashi buckets as a pair cost slightly more than a wormery in some cases.

 

That's a shame. I can remember 'pig bins' being situated on the corners of streets is the late 1940s in order to aid food production. All our kitchen waste was placed in them.
In January this year we were on a tiny caribbean island eco-resort and all their kitchen waste was sent to a small pig farm on the other side of the island.

 

Indeed. An over reaction to the last outbreak which, I believe, was caused by the pig owner feeding meat to their pigs that they had (illegally) imported from a foreign holiday or something like that. Bit like Dunblane causing all hobby pistol shooting sportsmen/women to have to forfeit all their weapons [kept at home] - a knee-jerk of immense proportions.

That's prevented me trying it too.

I've been put off having a wormery by the concern (maybe unfounded?) that care is needed in choice / balance of materials added? Citric acid fruit for example. For it to work for me I'd need to be able to just chuck everything in (well, I could obviously keep some things out, as we do with recycle bin, but for visitors / kids etc. it all works much better if the instructions are "simple").

I'd be happiest if we put absolutely nothing in our Rubbish [i.e. non-recycle] bin, so a solution that composts all the meat / cooked leftovers would suit me.

 

You have to be quite careful at the beginning what you put into a wormery so it does not overload the worms.You can't put meat or bones into it either, same with citrus fruit, spicy and greasy food or onions and garlic too. But I would put citrus fruit and onions in my compost bin anyway, the same with my potato peelings. I just have one caddy for one bin and one for the wormery.

I used to imagine I would hardly put anything in it too as it seems more restrictive than a bokashi bin but there is a lot more food waste that goes in now than I realised. You don't need to worry about putting in a balanced amount of waste (like c:n ratio with compost bins) as the worms don't really care once they are up and running.

I can understand not wanting to sort through it though so I would suggest a Green Cone (not a Green Johanna, which also takes garden waste and can be kept in the shade) would maybe better for you. That too has a continuous cost as you need to buy an accelerator and the initial cost is more expensive than a wormery.There is no compost as an end result but it would take more food waste than any other waste disposal system. I see it as the future for waste disposal, but I personally like to get something back from my waste.

http://www.tandsarchitectural.co.uk/productDetail.asp?PID=107082&categoryID=10296&feedID=1

 

Simple question then: will a Wormery taken anything other than things I currently put on my compost heap?

£72 for the green cone? They're having a larf aren't they - or am I missing something?

 

You can pretty much put most waste food into a wormery, like cooked food, which you wouldn't be able to do in a garden compost bin as you would attract rats.A lot of people put vegetable peelings and fruit cores in their compost bin already though, so it's only really beneficial for cooked leftovers or mouldy bread.

Here's a list I grabbed from a site to help

Vegetables
Vegetable Peelings (Potato Skins Take Ages to Rot Down)
Fruit / Peel
Coffee / Tea Bags
Bread
Pizza
Rice
Pasta
Flowers (if shop bought - ensure no insecticides are present)
Cereals
Crushed Egg Shells
Cakes/ Biscuits
Sugar
Cheese
Cardboard / Paper
Pet Human Hair (this takes ages to rot down)
Hoover Contents
Baked Beans
Pet Faeces (Rabbit / Gerbil Etc)

I find though that eggshells disappear more quickly in a wormery than a compost bin. Probably because the worms are digesting it quicker.

I suppose some may argue that overtime the amount of waste you would be putting into the green cone would save an awful lot of money on bin liners

 

Thanks JJ

Sure, but as far as I can see its just a couple of bits of plastic, I can't see anything "exotic" in the materials, or the thing being "huge" for example, that would justify even half that cost.