Bokashi Update

I thought it might be nice to add a little about Bokashi, so here you go.

What is Bokashi Fermentation?

It is the process of pickling organic waste material prior to composting. Waste food stuffs, (including meat, fish, dairy, bones) are added to the special bucket which has a sump to collect the liquid. The aim of the Bokashi system is not to actually compost, but to ferment your food stuffs, this puts it in a prime state to decompose rapidly when it's buried and comes into contact with soil bacteria and microorganisms. The active ingredient is the 'bran' which you will need to keep purchasing for the system to work. The bran contains microorganisms (Lactobacilli, Fungi/yeast, and phototropic bacilli) which cause a fermentation process. When you add new waste to the bin you need to sprinkle 'bokashi bran' on top and push the contents down to exclude as much air as possible, since the fermentation relies on anerobic (with out oxygen) conditions. The container is filled and left to sit for a week or two and the contents are then either buried in the garden or put into the compost bin where they will very quickly compost into nothing. The advantage to adding it to your compost heap is that it will heat up your compost bin, speeding up the composting off all the other contents. The liquid that drains to the bottom of the sump needs to be emptied via the tap and can be diluted 1 to 100 water and used to feed plants, or poured down the drain/plughole, which gives the added benefit of deoderising action.

So, our progress so far? After several weeks of using the bokashi system the contents looks as above. The yellowy brown bits are the bokashi bran (comprised of wheat bran, molasses and microorganisms). The smell is not bad at all, it's like a mild vinegary smell, and only if you stick your fact right next to it. I had heard such terrible things about smells akin to vomit and dog poo, but I suspect people with bad results had skimped on the bran (or maybe they had a lot more meat waste than us, you don't get much meat wasted with 4 Greyhounds). The best bit is that it's started to release fluid, which we can drain off through the tap in the bottom. I've been using it to make fertiliser for the house plants. The only pain is that you can't add tea bags, coffee grounds work great but tea bags produce the dreaded blue mould of doom. Blue mould is apparently very bad in bokashi buckets. No matter, we have a compost caddy next to the bokashi bin so all the non fermentable stuff like paper towels, receipts and tea bags go in there, where they can blue mould to their hearts content. Blimey, what a load of hippies we are turning into!

*hack* *saw* *pound*

Last week saw the delivery of lots of tannalised scaffolding boards, ready to be dropped onto my thumb (sorry, used to make the raised beds!). This weekend saw us putting the first of them up which was quite a time consuming task. As no garden plan survives contact with the enemy the bed had be adjusted to fit on the fly; however that's an added bonus as it looks like we may have boards left to edge our lawn in so Bex can create exciting borders around it!

In other exciting news I may be about to own my first pair of wellies since childhood; with it being birthday time for us we're asking people for various gardening doo-dads and stuff - am quite excited at the thought, especially as the garlic seems to be coming up lovely :) Home grown veg, mmmm...

Hoping to fill the first of the raised beds over the course of the evenings this week, which should let us know how much soil & compost & manure we need for the others; a gardeners work is never done :)

Raised Beds

Construction! It took all day to erect one raised bed, mainly because of it's size, it's hugely long! They are made from brand new tanalised scaffolding boards and tanalised stakes, all screwed hammered and nailed into place. As you can see it's empty at the moment but it will be filled with a mixture of our sandy soil, compost and manure....er not our manure...you know what I mean! It's all coming together!

The man in the foreground is my dad, who's been fantastic with helping, we really couldn't have done it without him. I wasn't much use with this section of the proceedings, I stood armed with drill and drilled the screw holes! I did however make lunch which was home made gluten free bread sandwiches and egg mayo made with the eggs from Karl's chickens.

First Veg!

The first thing planned, all be it in a pot as we still have no raised beds, is Garlic! This is Amy, as you can see she is mightily impressed with the garlic tubs (there are 3). The problem I am finding is that things unknown are nibbling them...could be the pigeons and magpies I keep seeing in the veg garden, or it could be the dreaded rats! One more week of activity and I shall call the council to do a proper investigation in the area, the only activity I can now see is the occasional dropped nibbled food stuff but I can't grow food if something is going to piddle on it or dig it up.

Painting!

This afternoons job was a quick splash of wood stain and preserver in Forest Green. I have done no digging at all today as tomorrow is digging day. I think tomorrow will be the last one, just to level the ground until the scaffold boards arrive next week to make the raised beds with. The weeds are starting to return...oh noes! I've also potted up the 2 surviving strawberry plants that survived the winter.

Nath' is amused by my picture as it look like he actually did the painting...it was all me, but I needed a willing model.

Argh...no more digging...make it stop!

So, last weekend there was more digging (see title!), we also accomplished the following tasks

• Filled a second Hippo bag full of stones and turf and bits of unidentifiable plastic gubbins.



• Cleared out all the fallen conifer bits from round the back of the shed, which are already leaf mould, so I'll stick those in the raised beds.



• Fixed the slipped fence panel on the back fence that may have been allowing ingress of rats!



• Noting with delight that the rats now seem to have gone!
  


• More digging!
  


• Scrubbing the deck(ing) and the patio.

See..pics to prove it! Note the ridiculous use of New Rock boots to garden in. There is a point actually, they have no treads so I don't trail mud into the house...but they do make you look a bit of a tit while gardening.

More Hard Labour

So this weekend was one of labour. On Saturday end of the garden was attached by me and my mate Ant (friends with muscles help), we've managed to dig out almost all of the turf now, the only bit left is under the pile of dug up turf we have created (the floor in an otherwise winning plan). In the evening it was off out to buy a Hippo Bag for the waste.

I realised with dismay that the rat problem is still excalating, not only are they are refusing to take the bait from the bait boxes but they have now discovered the delights of the compost bin. I have done some reading and have decided that I shall be buying a pre moulded plastic base tray for the bottom of the bin to provide some rat protection and wrapping the whole thing in chicken wire (maybe overkill but I am so sick of bloody rats in the garden!). I have also just purchased a Bokashi system.

The Bokashi system cleverly pickles down your waste (even meat, fish and dairy), fermenting it into a better state for composing in your cmpost bin (or burying in the ground). It also apparently creates a hotter compost bin, which should nicely speed up the rotting. This is good from two aspects, the rats apparently dislike fermented waste, and the compost should be ready quicker than it would in a slow bin. I found out my local council offer a reasonable deal on Bokashi bins, so I bought mine from their website (birmingham.getcomposting.com)

Sunday was the big push. We worked from 11am to 7pm without a break, we being me and Nath, plus my mom and dad. We've cleared 90% of the turf, rubble and junk from the end of the garden, and lots from all over the garden really. It was surprisingly easy to fill a 1ton Hippo Bag! I think we may need another! Today I ache like a bugger, but I am hoping that one more serious session in the garden, plus buying and errecting the boards to make the raised beds will be enough to have a useable veg garden. Hopefully the rats will be eliminated soon. Not sure I want to even think about eating from where rats are walking!

Moving Forward

This is Nathan, Bexs' partner. With the advent of spring we've been moving from the planning and anticipating phase in the garden, to the doing and digging phase. We've cleared quite a lot of the previous owners old turf, burnt mattress springs, random metal bits and big stones from our soon to be vegetable garden. This is a reasonable afternoons work, but by crikey it's been a bit hard on the joints.

I suspect come the summer we'll be smoothly muscled, toned athletic specimens of glorious humanity. Either that, or I'll be a broken down cripple curled around the ibuprofen packet :)

It's been a good day for breaking in the new spades, so here's in anticipation of more!

Tentative Steps

One thing I shall mention from the outset, I share my home not just with my partner Nath' (who will sometimes post on here too I hope), but also with a menagerie of animals: My 4 retired Greyhounds, Amy, Bobbie, Lenny and Jack and my 2 budgies Hugo and Charlie. Greyhounds, being the athletic little blighters they are can easily leap fencing, in fact all of our perimeter garden fencing is 6 ft high, so the preparation for any sort of successful vegetable garden is fencing, fencing , fencing!

I bought sections of lattice fencing, about 3 feet high, with the help of my dad they've been cut to fit and slotted in and a temporary gate made at one end.

There's a fantastic software tool for people like us, wanting to set up a new vegetable garden and maximise it's potential, it's called Grow Veg.Com. I subscribed to a free 30 day trial and made my plan according to the measurements we made. Can't wait to see how it pans out.

The start of new things

Today we made a start on changing the garden at our new house. We bought our sub-urban mid-terrace house in the late summer/early autumn of 2009 but have not really had time to do much to the garden yet. We wanted to create a vegetable garden at the far end. At the time of purchase the end of the garden was a waste land of plastic, metal bedsprings and ash. The groud was uneven, strewn with huge rocks and covered in grass. The section was elevated from the main garden using 1ft concrete knickboards. There was lots of work to do.