Bokashi compost consists of two steps: 1. Pickling the kitchen wastes with Bokashi bran, 2. Mix or bury them into native soil to complete the composting process. For the second step, instead of digging a hole and burying them into the hole, I used a hollowed up bucket to build up the compost so I can use them directly to fertilize plants. This was called the “Soil Maker” technique by some experts. Well, I got a big surprise when I open up the Soil Maker bucket at the end of the 2nd stage. Check out the video: Be forewarned that you probably don’t want to watch this while eating.

It was all crawling with some kind of worms, maggots, or larvaes. They are called Black Soldier Fly larvaes, I later found out that they’re beneficial bugs, believe it or not. People actually harvest them to feed the chickens, ducks and birds. Very interesting and gross. I never intended to grow them but they showed up and ate up half of the pickled Bokashi kitchen waste.

I learned that things don’t always turn out to be what you expected. If that happened, you may learn something from it.

As I mentioned before, I practice Bokashi composting at home. The key benefits of Bokashi composting:
1. It doesn’t stink: The traditional compost can easily go stinky and attract gnats and flies if not properly aerated or turned.
2. Almost all kitchen wastes can be composted: Yes, add your fish, meats and other protein-rich materials, which traditional compost won’t do without being taken over by an army of critters.
3. The compost process is relatively fast: takes 2 weeks to “pickle” or for the Kokashi bacterial to propagate and another month for the 2nd phase of breakdown in the soil – about a 1 1/2 month effort. The traditional composting could take as long as a year.
4. You can compost kitchen wastes incrementally in small batches like in a typical urban home. The traditional compost requires a big batch of 3’x3’x3′ critical mass to be effective.
5. It can be used to feed your vermicompost (worm compost). Worms devour them. But it needs to fed in small amount and allows it to sit in the corner of the worm bin for the acidity level to go down a bit before worms would work on them.

Nothing is more exciting for me to see a big chunk of our family garbage not go into the landfill but turn into some kind of vibrant, rich fertilizer for my garden which in turn feed my family. All is done with a little help from the microbes in the Bokashi bran! It’ a win-win for everyone. I encourage you all to give it a try.

Now you’re all pumped up and ready to take some actions! The next question:
How do you do Bokashi compost? Here’s a video how I do it:

To give the proper credit, I learned a lot from other websites and Youtube videos as follows:
1. Prokashi.com and his video channel.
2. Bokashi Videos – no new updates.

Where to buy your Prokashi bran?
1. Amazon.com
2. Prokashi.com.
3. Do It Yourself. See my video.

When it comes to organic gardening, nothing beats the good old compost, considered by many gardener to be the “black gold.” After reading the book, “Teaming with Microbes,” I have come to appreciate how critical compost is to growing organic vegetables.

I heard from others a while ago about the “free” compost in Cupertino, California where I live. After spending more than $7 on a 2-cubic-feet bag of organic compost at Home Depot last week and failed attempt to do traditional compost, I decided to check out this Cupertino compost site last week. I videotaped the entire experience. If you live in Cupertino, by all means, check out the place and bring home some compost for your garden. I have even gone back a second time to grab more this week! For those who don’t live in Cupertino, be sure to check if you city offers a similar service, perhaps not free but at a less expensive price tag than you can get from Home Depot.

This compost site is located in the Steven Creek Quarry Factory or 12100 Quarry Road, Cupertino. You would need to bring your ID to show you’re a Cupertino resident and bring lots of buckets and a shovel to start digging!

After catching the gardening bug, I’ve been busy reading AND watching lots of Youtube gardening help videos. Here are my favorite YouTube gardening channels:

1. Grow You Green by John Koeler: Growyourgreen. John Koeler is passionate about growing your green at home. He goes on field trips to visit stores, gardens, conferences and bring back lots of new, interesting things to the self-made gardeners/audiences. His videos are often long with good entertainment value if you don’t mind the occasional “preaching.”

2. MphGardener Mr. MphGardener taught me so much about hydroponic gardening and somewhat fact-based tricks behind it. Very informative and down to earth if you don’t mind the religious lean.

3. Gary Pilarchik’s Rusted Garden and his Rusted Garden blog. Gary gives very concise tips and instructions on gardening. You can learn a lot within a short time.

4. Praxxus55712: Ray fashioned an easy-going, happy gardening method. He raised turkeys, chickens and a wonderful co-host, Rascal, the dog. It’s so relaxing to watch him and learn from him.

5. LDSpepper: LDSpepper also gives lots of good gardening tips and setting up the garden. He promotes the Mittleider Gardening Method, which seems a bit dogmatic to me. Informative but corny at times.

6. Grow Organic Peaceful Valley or their website: Professionally-done videos hosted by ??. Excellent videos to teach organic gardening. Some of the videos are designed to promote things they sell – informative, nevertheless.

I hope to seen share some of gardening experience on this site. Stay tuned…