Everything you need, start to finish. Takes about a minute to read.
Keep the small tub on the kitchen counter and put food scraps and cooked leftovers in it as you go. Cut up any large pieces — big lumps ferment unevenly.
Every night, or whenever the counter tub is full, tip it into the 5-gallon bucket and sprinkle bokashi bran over the top — a generous handful. Use more if the food is wet.
Press the layer down flat. The microbes work without oxygen, so squeezing the air out is what makes this work.
Close the lid tightly, every single time. Keep layering — scraps, bran, press, seal — until the bucket is full to the top.
Once the bucket is full, stop adding to it. Put it under the sink or somewhere dark for two weeks.
Do not open it to check. Every time you open it you let air in and set the process back. If the lid pops off from the gas building up, just press it back down.
Start a second bucket in the meantime — that's why most people end up with two.
After two weeks, open it. You're looking for three things:
| Smell | Sour and sharp, like a jar of pickles. Not rotten. |
|---|---|
| Texture | The food has gone soft and slumped down. |
| Mould | White and fluffy on top is perfect. It means it's ready. |
Green, blue or black mould means air got in and the batch has gone wrong. Throw it out and start again with more bran and a tighter lid. A rotten smell means not enough bran — add a lot more next time.
What's in the bucket is pre-compost, not compost. It's pickled food — still recognisable, and that's normal. It has to meet soil to finish breaking down. Pick whichever of these suits you.
Dig a hole. Tip it in, mix with a couple of shovels of soil, cover with at least six inches. It breaks down into the soil over two to four weeks.
No garden? Use a planter at least a foot and a half across. A third old soil, a third fermented waste, a third soil on top. Three to four weeks.
Bury it in a heap you already have. The microbes give a slow or struggling pile a real boost, especially in winter.
Nowhere to put it? Call Superhero Bokashi. We pass it on to a community organisation growing vegetables.
Give it two to four weeks in the soil — longer in cold weather, and longer again for bones or big pieces. Soil life does the actual composting here; the bucket only did the fermenting.
Keep plant roots away from it for the first couple of weeks. Fresh pre-compost is acidic and will burn them. After that, plant straight into it.
You won't get a bag of finished compost out of this. What you get is ground that's noticeably richer than it was, and it gets better every time you do it.
Then start the whole thing again with the next bucket.
| It smells rotten | Not enough bran. Add a lot more, and check the lid is sealing all the way round. |
|---|---|
| Fruit flies | The lid isn't sealed, or scraps are sitting on the counter tub too long. |
| It's very wet | Add more shredded cardboard and more bran. Cut back on wet foods for a while. |
| Nothing seems to be happening | Fermenting is quiet and invisible. Give it the full two weeks before judging it. |
| It's cold in the house | The microbes like 80–100°F. In winter, move the bucket somewhere warmer and give it longer. |