Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Sounds like you have a mean landlady - not even a raised bed.

For composting you might want to consider Bokashi. I've just completed a bunch of research into it and started my own bokashi compost last week. It's an anaerobic method - and so most people will write it off because of that - I did until just the last few weeks.

It's a two stage process. In the first stage you ferment your food scraps in a bucket inoculated with the bokashi bran - a bran that has three different types of microbes - yeasts, lactic acid bacteria and photosynthetic bacteria. They all do best in conditions with limited air but they are what's called facultative anaerobes meaning they also do fine in air.

What you need to get started is a bucket or strong plastic bag that you can make airtight to minimize the amount of air and the bokashi. You just layer your food scraps as you go with a small amount of the bokashi. You can get this stuff on line. On my website are a couple of links. You can compost all food scraps including meats, dairy, bones, eggs and eggshells etc. It develops a kind of sour smell like sauerkraut that you'll only catch a whiff of when you open your bucket or bag - it doesn't stink the way a bucket that's just kind of gone to the dark side of anaerobia by itself so you can keep the buckets in your kitchen.

Stage two involves digging a hole and burying the fermented material. On average in 2-4 weeks that material will be completely broken down and you can plant into the area where you dug the hole. You can also use a planter box or container and bury the material with the soil mix you are using. It would likely be important to add a handful
of real dirt to your container.

I'm just working on this section of my website right now. Here is a link to one of the pages. By the end of the day tomorrow I'm hoping the whole section will be done. http://www.the-compost-gardener.com/bokashi-composting.html

When I have the section finished I'll post links here for the pages.

Leslie
Canada

--- In Organic_Gardening@yahoogroups.com, "April" <aprilconnett@...> wrote:
>
> I own my trailer, but not the land it sits on. Two years ago, my landlady made me get rid of my two compost bins. They weren't pretty enough for her. Does anyone use a ComposTumbler successfully? My husband and I cannot afford to buy one, but would it be worth the time and effort to make one? I have seen the directions online.
>
> april
>

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