Hi everyone I work in an office, we are contemplating composting food scraps. I want to know, do composting buckets like the "bokashi" things work? Do they smell? We don't have any windows near the kitchen, so any smell will be noticeable. The other option, is just a bucket which people take home for their chooks / compost bin, but that relies on people being disciplined. Adrian
Hi, I've had a wormcompost indoors for years. No smell as long as it is not too wet or fed to much (in relation to its size). Perhaps bokashi is great, but when I red about some two years ago it I didn't like it because I'd have to buy their products again and again. I'm a fan of worms!:blush: Anyway, I don't know how well worm will thrive in your climate. I live in Sweden and have a constant year round indoor temperature of 20 degrees celcius. And, I guess it´s not the method of composting that's the most important, but that we choose a form that suits us well. Good Luck! Erika
no, no space. I don't think there'd be enough to keep a worm farm going either, there's only incidental fruit peel etc from ~5 people.
Purecajn, what beautiful composts! Terracotta is good because it breathes. Adrians, I've had a little wormcompost in a terracotta pot with a lid. Little waste - little compost. It should work as long as you feed it relatively evenly. If the peels are mainly citrus, they may not like it, but if there's a mixture, well, "my" worms love it. I once worked at a YMCA camp, and one of the composts was outside a house where the only waste generated was coffee-grounds. They digested that too! /Erika
Hi Adrian I had a bokashi bucket indoors for years and it never smelt. I think they're a great idea for people who need to have their compost inside. There are a couple of things to consider though. 1/ You do need to add the grains. They aren't very expensive and they do last for ages, but you are suppose to sprinkle a few after each layer of food - so they end up touching all of the food. Someone would have to do that. Perhaps with the quantity you're talking about it would only need to be at the end of each day. 2/ You still need to put the contents of the bucket somewhere once its full. The contents don't actually break down much - they ferment or something (not sure what the instructions said specifically) and you are suppose to bury them once its full. Someone would need to take the bucket home (it's quite heavy when full) and bury the contents. This might only be once a month or so. If you don't want to dig a giant hole for them you can just add them to your compost pile if you like. They do break down very quickly once in contact with earth. I use to just rotate which garden bed it went in (depending on which one was empty) and I didn't even dig it in very deeply and it seemed to be fine. I found it best to have two bokashi buckets so that once one was full it could sit for a week or so before being buried. With the quantity you're talking about, perhaps it wouldn't matter. You could always make do without it for a couple of days (eg just fill a small bucket and either take it home or add it to the bokashi bucket once it was returned). Also, there is an extra bonus with the bokashi. There's a tap down the bottom of the bucket and you can get the liquid out and use it a bit like you'd use worm wee - water it down and put it on your pot plants in the office, or take some home in a jar. Its very nutritious. A think that I really liked about the bokashi bucket system was the you could really put anything in it - even meat etc. Citrus is fine too. We don't eat meat, but occasionally someone brings some over and I never know what to do with the scraps (as we don't usually have them). With the bokashi bucket, it wouldn't matter if they got mixed in with everything else. We've gone to a "normal" outdoor compost system now, and it's a nuisance sometimes to make sure animal products are separated out from the other stuff. Would be good for a situation like an office with various people using it, as they don't have to remember to be careful about what they put in. We only stopped the bokashi bucket system because we have way too much for it. We're a household of 6 and go through lots of veg, so lots of veg scraps, and it was filling up in less then 2 weeks. When we got a hole in the top of one (after many, many yrs of use) we had to decide whether to replace it and we decided to just go with a much bigger compost bin outside. I think for many people in residential areas though, the combination of a bokashi bin inside and a small worm farm outside would be enough. Fiona
Hi Adrians, I really like the fact that I can put my toddler's uneaten cereal (with milk soaked in), yogurt, dinner scraps (oily stuff, whatever) and occasional meat scraps in our bokashi bin. This is really my reason for using bokashi. Our bin is probably a big percent weatbix... Sprinkling the bokashi mix on top every evening is not too going to be a problem ... until the one who's normally in charge of that job goes on holiday. You also have to squash it down every day, to make sure there's no trapped air messing with the anaerobic micro-organisms. I think the most important bokashi task to remember is to empty the juice from the bottom. The juice is supposed to be a good drain cleaner. Our bin doesn't smell when the lid is on, but when opened it *does* smell *sometimes* if I've left it more than a couple of days without draining it. It is a very strong smell but sweet and not offensive. We also have a garden compost bin (for garden clippings, onion, garlic etc) and a worm farm (for fruit and veg scraps). If someone in your office eats lots of eggs and crushes the egg shells on top of the worm farm, that might balance out citrus peel. I think a bokashi would be a good choice for you. I reckon a small bucket under the kitchen sink that gets taken home on Friday afternoon would work well. I tried this once too, but I was not disciplined enough about taking it home. Best of luck! Jess
I want to start some bokashi, and I just read that worms don't like citrus or onions in a closed environment. But you guys mention citrus, how have your worms responded? fiona and jesscam, do you get gnats? Even with a lid and other composting in buckets and cans for me, the gnats go crazy, especially in the summer.
