Getting started (Part One) Collecting wild lactobacillus.
Making your own bokashi starter culture in place of commercially available EM is incredibly easy.
My goal from the start was to produce bokashi compost without the use of expensive EM, bran or fancy buckets.
The most important component of the commercial EM in relation to bokashi is lactobacillus bacteria, the others are secondary (if at all necessary) and can be cultured in the bucket when conditions are favorable.
I culture my own lactobacillus serum starting with a rice wash water solution.
Making the serum is amazingly simple.
I mix one part rice thoroughly with two parts water (1/2 a cup to one cup). Mix thoroughly and vigorously. Drain. The resulting water should be cloudy.
Place the rice water in a container with 50-75% head space allowing plenty of air to circulate. Cover lightly (air should be able to move in and out of the container) and place in a cool dark spot for 5-8 days.
At the end of the wait the mixture should smell mildly sour.
Strain out any particles.
April 28th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
You say to use a rice wash. Do you mean to cook the rice first or are you just using the water from washing the hard dry rice?
July 30th, 2010 at 4:01 am
mix one part rice thoroughly with two parts water (1/2 a cup to one cup). Mix thoroughly and vigorously. Drain. The resulting water should be cloudy.
August 3rd, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Arrow asked on April 28th:
>You say to use a rice wash. Do you mean to cook the rice first or are you just using the water from washing the hard dry rice?
Use the hard dry rice. The rice acquired a special micro-organism in the silo. We need to collect this micro-organism for the bokashi. Cooking the rice will kill everything.