Bakashi Compost Activator

[Smiles Jr.]

I watched the video and a few others but they do not tell you how to make your own EM.
They give you all the info on making your own bokashi but one of the ingredients is the EM which they don't tell you how to make or where to buy it and I have not seen it for sale.
On one of the comment pages on the video a few people questioned the same thing as me and one of the replies was that it is dangerous to make your own EM and it needs to be done in a laboratory or under similar conditions so what is the deal with that?
I am curious to what is dangerous in the starter.
I am editing this to sayt that I followed a link found in one of the posts at the top of the page and they talk about making EM starter from rice water.
Is that what anyone else here is doing and I am wondering how it compares to commercial brands.

Yes, use the rice wash method. It works great.

Try this link:
http://bokashicomposting.com/?p=17

I do not believe that any of this stuff is dangerous to work with. These are nature's micro-organisms that are found in just about every area of our life. Are you afraid of sourdough bread? Sauerkraut? Wine? Beer? Ginger ale? Of course not. We have much more powerful stuff brewing in our intestines than this.

 

[simple life]

I think what the person meant by being dangerous is that there is good bacteria and obviously bad bacteria and is his concern is that if you don't do it correctly it could be a bad thing.
If you have ever had sour dough starter go bad then you know what I mean.
Like anything you ferment stuff can go bad.
With the rice wash and the milk you add in the second step, that does not seem that much different than keifer or whey, expecially the milk, that is whey that is left when the solids rise to the top.
I have jars of whey in the frig right now from when I make keifer.
This makes me think that there are alot of other ways to make this starter.

 

[Mackay]

Well, I have my bokashi trash can now full. Soon I will empy in my lasagna garden bed to let it do its thing over the winter....

I probably should have posted this after I dumped the can cause I am cluelessas to what is in there but I wanted to bump the tread.

Regarding the quesiton about paper.... I do not use 5 gallon buckets that collect bokashi water in the bottom. I line the bottom of the bucket with shredded newpaper... lay down 2 or 3 sheets of bokoshi paper then some compost, about enough to make a 2 to 3 inch layer of food scraps of garden waste... then cover with a single layer of bokoshi paper... repeat until your bucket is full. Let sit for 2 weeks after the last layer was placed.... then it is ready for the garden or in my system, for the bokoshi trash can where I layer this with dirt...

 

[Mackay]

well I after I havested my garden and started to construct my new layers for the lasagna bed I opened by bokoshi trash pail that had been sitting since I last put a bucket load in it about 3 weeks ago. I know it should sit for a month at least but a freeze was headin my way and I needed to get it into the garden now.

I find the trash pail very convienent for garden refuse.. I just put it in there with layers of bokoshi newspaper below and on top of it and don't worry about it. Then when I have a bucket of bokoshi to dump in there I shovel dirt in before and after.

So I dumped the whole pail in between a layer of staw and a layer of alfalfa hay. It looks pretty messy. before I put down the alfalfa I covered it all with a few shovel fulls of dirt then continued on with my lasagna layering.

I had burried a bucket in part of the veggie bed earlier in the summer and I dug that up now to see what was happening down there. No garbage seen, fully decomposed.

The trash pail was only enough for one 4 x12 bed so I'll be filling one up over the course of the winter.. It should be well cooked by the time I put it in the bed around mid may for mid june planting.

So far I continue to be pretty impressed with Bokoshi composting.
My goal is to never turn another compost pile and between this and the lasagna method I may find my way.