Bokashi (horticulture)
However, Japanese-English dictionaries give the word an older artistic meaning: "shading or gradation" of images – especially applied to woodblock prints.
Even items considered problematic in traditional composting, such as cooked leftovers, meat and skin, fat, cheese and citrus waste are, in effect, pre-digested to enable soil life to consume them.
Large pieces may take longer to ferment and concave surfaces may trap air, in which cases cutting down is advised in support literature.
In addition, compost can also lose the key plant nutrient nitrogen (in the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide and in ammonia), while bokashi almost does not.
[12] When fermentation begins, physical structures start to break down and release some of the input's water content as a liquid runoff.
Each regular addition is best accumulated in a caddy, because it is recommended that one opens the bokashi bin no more frequently than once per day to let anaerobic conditions predominate.
The approach usually recommended by suppliers of household bokashi is along the lines of "dig a trench in the soil in your garden, add the waste and cover over.
This approach requires energy for homogenisation but, logically from the characteristics set out above, should confer several advantages: thoroughly oxidising the preserve; disturbing no deeper layers, except by increased worm action; being of little use to scavenging animals; applicable to large areas; and, if done repeatedly, able to sustain a more extensive soil ecosystem.
[citation needed] This traditional form ferments waste directly in soil, relying on native bacteria and on careful burial for an anaerobic environment.
A modernised horticultural method called Korean Natural Farming includes fermentation by indigenous micro-organisms (IM or IMO) harvested locally, but has numerous other elements too.
[21] While none have disputed that EM starts homolactic fermentation and hence produces a soil amendment, other claims have been contested robustly.
[22] Arguably, EM's heavy focus on microorganisms has diverted scientific attention away from both the bokashi process as a whole and the particular roles in it of lactic acid, lactate, and soil life above the bacterial level.
Some organisms in EM, specifically photosynthetic bacteria and yeast, appear to be logically superfluous, as they will first be suppressed by the dark and anaerobic environment of homolactic fermentation, then killed by its lactic acid.
Success has been reported with: The main use of bokashi that is described above is to recover value from organic waste by converting it into a soil amendment.
To encourage this, for example most UK local authorities subsidise household bokashi starter kits through a National Home Composting Framework.
[33] Social acceptability is a major obstacle, but niche markets such as emergency aid sanitation, outdoor events and temporary workplaces may develop the technology into a disruptive innovation.
