All Seasons Indoor Composter Starter Kit – 5 Gallon Tan Compost Bin For Kitchen Countertop With Lid, Spigot & 1 Gallon (2 lbs.) Bag Of Dry Bokashi Bran – by SCD Probiotics

I've used bokashi quite a lot over the years and after moving across the country our last composting set was left behind. I bought this starter kit because it seemed to be the best value for money.Bokashi is a pre-treatment for your food scraps and we use this mostly for pre-treating meat, fish, or dairy. I add my food scraps, press the air out using an old potato masher, then sprinkle about 1-1.5 cups of the bokashi bran.The anaerobic bacteria kind of pickle the food scraps making them less attractive to pests but it also makes them really fast at breaking down.What I Love:- The buckets are much bigger than the kit I had before. I have the buckets inside next to the kitchen to top bucket is being filled whilst the bottom bucket is fermenting/pickling for 4 weeks.The bigger size means that much more food scraps can go into the container and I'm not filling up so fast whilst the other bucket it full.- The lids are easy to open and are flexible. Bokashi needs a low air/low oxygen environment for the anaerobic bacteria to work best so a well fitting lid is a must but the lid needs to be used friendly to be able to take off to add food scraps.- Easy to clean. The parts are easy to take apart to wash with hot soapy water.- The buckets have handles that are comfortable to hold when they are full.- The containers have a false bottom that allows water and liquids to fall through and not the food scraps so the spigot doesn't get clogged up.- The bokashi juice or leachate is easy to harvest using the spigot.- There's no smell. I have 5 dogs and my Irish wolfhound cross is very smell orientated and would get into the compost container at every opportunity. Not with these! They are on the floor in a high traffic area and he's not interested!- You get 2.2 gallons of the bokashi bran in this kit which is so much more than I expected to get.How I Use BokashiI add the leachate from the composter by diluting about 1/2 cup to 3 gallons of water and use in my vegetable garden.I add 1/4 cup of leachate to a 1 gallon mixture of water, Neem oil, fish emulsion, kelp, and a touch of Castile soap to make a spray for my fruit trees and other plants in the vegetable garden.Dilute 1 cup leachate to 3 gallons of water and use to water a dry compost pile after turning. Works as a great compost activator.I leave the full bucket to ferment for 2-4 weeks then I empty it. This part can be smelly and messy.I mostly use the treated food scraps by turning my compost so that I have the top half now on the bottom against the ground. Then I empty the bokashi into the middle of that pile. Next I add the bottom of the compost over the bokashi food scraps so the bottom of the compost is now the top. I water everything with the diluted bokashi leachate and leave it for about 2 weeks.The compost will heat up fast so I turn everything again and I usually have a good amount of compost I can take and use around the garden.This also is good to add to a trench compost where you bury the treated bokashi food scraps and it will break down in about 2-4 weeks.It is a little acidic so works great near those acid loving plants. Since we have wood burning fireplaces to heat, the bokashi helps to rebalance our compost with the higher pH from wood ash/lime.I would recommend this to a friend and I would even get another set so that I can compost more in winter when everything is frozen solid outside.ImprovementsIf I could ask the manufacturer to make an improvement it would be that the bokashi bran is OMRI listed or able to be used in organic farming. Bokashi is a great way to use more food scraps in the garden and on the farm so having options that work for organic practices would be great.

Used in the winter for compost - convenient, easy to use and set up. I do not put anything too messy in just veggie or some fruit scraps but it does work - I cut a thick sheet of plastic to place just under lid to keep any odors at bay and that works- it goes outside in warm weather- a nice addition to the home composting system.

This is a good product, and does what it says it will do. However if I were to start all over again, I would use a secondhand 2-bucket system and homemade Bokashi mix because the labeling of the product as a "starter kit" for beginners is misleading and leaves out additional starter/recurring costs to this system. I started as a newbie composter. You really need 2 buckets for Bokashi (3 if you accumulate a lot of waste): 1 bucket for composting your scraps, and 1 bucket for composting your scraps while the 1st bucket is fermenting. When the 1st bucket is filled, you need to let it sit for 2 weeks for it to fully ferment, hence why the 2nd bucket is needed. So 1 Bucket isn't going to cut it. If you buy a 2nd All Seasons Bucket that'll cost another $50 . Ok not bad. But you also need much more Bokashi bran than what is advertised in the thumbnail. The 2kg of bran in the thumbnail lasted me about 2 weeks. Maybe I'm heavy handed with the bran, but directions say to sprinkle a small layer every time you dump your scraps in the bin, and if you're dumping 2-3x a week, that adds up and runs out fast. So I bought a 22lb case of Bokashi Bran from a 3rd party vendor (just to be extra safe), around $90. So now you've spent $140 extra - nearly triple what you thought it would cost to start this whole thing. And if you live in an apartment complex or residence without a backyard, you might need to spend another $30-$40 for a compost bag or soil bed to bury this under.So here's how you should do it:Get these buckets secondhand or make them yourself. If you buy a secondhand version of these buckets the spigot does the draining of the bokashi tea for you. If you decide to make these buckets yourself, you'll need 4 pail buckets. Drill small holes at the bottom of 2 of these buckets. Stack those buckets on top of the buckets that are not drilled (so you have 2 sets of buckets) This will serve to catch the bokashi tea.Now for the bokashi bran. If you don't accumulate much trash or aren't heavy handed consider yourself lucky and skip this step. Otherwise, buy the EM1 liquid probiotic solution online (1 L) for $20. This is dormant bacteria that is used for the bokashi fermenting process. It will probably last you years.You can find any recipe online to make liquid Bokashi spray, but EM1 + molasses will do the trick. Then just spray the concoction + water (1:4 ratio of em1 mix to water) into your buckets.Then best part. Every time you need to drain the bokashi tea from your compost, DON'T THROW IT AWAY/USE IT ON YOUR PLANTS. This Bokashi Tea can be reused to make Liquid Bokashi Spray! Since it's the product of fermented/aka bacteria activated compost, there will be a bacteria population in it. Put this mix into a empty spray bottle you have, add some molasses/honey to give something the bacteria to feed on, and reuse it again and again or refrigerate until the next time you need it.This is a good product, but it's not a proper start, the materials above are.