Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

You can buy the em microbes. I would recommend buying them as that way you will have the combination of microbes recommended. However, if buying them is totally offensive I did read about a guy who makes his own inoculant with newspaper and ricewater. Here is a link to that page.

http://www.wildlifegardeners.org/forum/fertilizing-soil-amendments/1292-extreme-bokashi-make-your-own-innoculant.html

The downside to this is that you will only have the lactic acid bacteria for sure. And it is pretty much certain you would not have those photosynthetic bacteria. I think they ae really vauable so it is well worth the investment to buy em.

I'm not sure where you live but if you live in the US you can get em-1 from
http://www.teraganix.com/EM1-Effective-Microorganisms-s/68.htm&Click=3161

I live in Canada and I can get an em mother culture from here. http://www.gardenerspantry.ca/em.html

If you live elsewhere let me know where and I'll find out for you. I know for sure it is available in at least 50 countries.

Once you have the em you then can make a big batch of bokashi bran. I have a recipe for that on my site. A ten pound batch would last a family 6 months to a year, a 50 pound batch 3 or 4 years. Could be a nice group project making a 50 pound batch and splitting costs. For me the cost would be about $30 for 50 pounds. It takes about 6 ounces of em-1 to make 50 pounds.

http://www.the-compost-gardener.com/bokashi.html is where I have recipe. I've been using bokashi bran I got online so far. I just got the em yesterday. I thought I'd make a small batch so went to the store to get 10 pounds of bran. It was almost $2 a pound. So I'm going to the feed store to get the 50 pounds for $20 and will persuade several friends to join me in making a big batch together.

I'll have quite a bit of em-1 leftover even from the big batch. I bought a liter - about a quart and only need about 200 ml or 3/4 of a cup. One thing em is supposed to be great for is skunked dogs. You can either spray directly on the dog or dilute it 1/10 and spray. They say it works in seconds. That I'd like to see.

Cheers
Leslie

--- In Organic_Gardening@yahoogroups.com, Cynthia Ybanez-Casares <cynthia@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Leslie - from the research I've done on bokashi one thing is still a mystery;
> the EM (effective microorganisms). How can we get the initial EMs to make
> bokashi? Is it as simple as mixing molasses, minerals, and water? or is there
> some secret ingredient that we have to get?
> Cynthia
>
>
>
>

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