-What is the purpose of fermentation? Why are fermented scraps preferable to fresh ones? --Purpose? In a kitchen bucket, it has the same general purpose as compostingto break down material into plant-accessible nutrients. Its just a different process, requiring conditions easier to maintain in a bucket. I dont know that fermented matter is always preferable; that depends on your needs and situation. For me, bokashi means I can feed my container garden all my kitchen waste (including meats, dairies, and oil). The liquid has value as a fertilizer, too, and is harvestable in as little as a few days after starting a bucket fermenting. Also, materials compost more easily after fermenting than when fresh. -Does it smell? If so, how much? Any rat or bug issues so far? --If you have the right container, theres no scent at all outside the bucket, so nothing to attract pests. When you open a healthy bucket, the smell is like vinegar, though if youve added a lot of a strongly scented item, the bucket will smell like that and vinegar for a day or so. Mistakes will stinkas with any processbut I didnt run into any problems until after I started testing which of the retailer instructions I could safely ignore, so if you follow directions, thats probably not an issue. -G- -Does fermented stuff take longer to compost than fresh stuff? --No!!! Fermented bokashi speeds aerobic composting marvelously; you can add it to a slow pile as an accelerator. I get fresh compost from cured bokashi and dried leaves in about a month, ditto from bokashi and soil (as with any compost, it should be left to mature awhile before using in the garden, and Im still testing those times). -Is anyone burying the fermented stuff without composting it first? If so, do you live in the city/ have rats? --Sadly, I have no holes in the ground. -The biggest benefit as I see it, is that I wouldn't need browns. I could probably filch a used newspaper here and there, but finding browns in three times the quantity of my kitchen scraps is not proving easy. If I can compost without having to drive around looking for bags of leaves/ begging home depot for sawdust, so much the better. --This is true. If youre going to trench (bury) orplanter-finish your bokashi, youll need soil but no browns. To compost your bokashi in a container after fermentingI recommend that part be done out on a balcony or other outdoor spaceyou will need some browns, though not nearly so many as with fresh-matter aerobic composting. Ive been using equal volumes of bokashi and dried leaves; YMMV. Retail EM bokashi bran is usually wheat bran in the US, but thats convenience and consistency more than anything, and you dont use much per bucket. Buying EM-1 inoculant fluid is cheaper than buying pre-mixed, and you can make your own bokashi "bran" with any number of things. Im playing with used coffee grounds right now, and have used EM inoculant fluid in shredded newspaper with some success. Cant speak to the non-retail newspaper-and-whey technique, as I havent yet tried it (small space, lots of experiments, but I will, soon. Ish). If odors are a concern, you might add a handful of really good soil and hope for rhodobacters! Obligatory disclaimer: while not a retailer, I do have a blog about bokashi, so am probably not the most unbiased of sources. DSF

I just push back the mulch, dig a shovel depth of soil, dump in the scraps, place the soil on top, pound it down with the shovel, and replace the mulch. I do this every day all summer rather than add to the pile. Takes about 2 minutes. Usually have at least 1 quart of scraps each day. I'd never be able to dig a 24" hole in my 'concrete-like' clay. I dig one hole each day and after burying today's scraps move the shovel to the next location so I know where to dig. I have a short shovel so it's barely noticeable as garden decor! The only time I ever covered a burial plot with a concrete stepping stone was when I buried my cat and even then there were no signs any predators were at all interested. Only once did my buried compost attract wildlife and that was late in the fall when a big old (and possibly sick) black bear lay down beside an old burial site to eat the worms. Scary, but since I've lived in bear country for more than 25 years having it happen only once does not make it a problem IMO. If you are concerned about odors you could keep your UCG separate and sprinkle them on top. Likely mask any possible and more attractive odors.

I keep a small 4 litre pail by the kitchen sink. All of my coffee grounds, egg shells, veggie scraps, mouldy bread and other non dairy, non meat scraps go in there. I only put a tiny amount of this into my worm bin at a rate that they can handle. The rest goes outside to the compost bin at least every week. I never store food for the worms as there is always an endless supply of fresh scraps for them. Since I use small pieces of corrugated cardboard for bedding, the worms will survive for months and months just on their bedding alone. The worms don't actually eat the bedding and compost scraps; they feed on the mould, fungus and other organisms that are breaking down the bedding and the kitchen scraps. I add a bit of powdered limestone to the bedding as the worms use this "grit" to grind up their food. (Red wigglers don't have teeth for chewing). The limestone also helps to neutralise acids in the worm bin. I do NOT bring food for the worms back in from the outdoor compost pile as this can be a source of some nasties that I don't want inside my home or in my worm bin. At the first "whiff" of rotting material (like the inside of your garbage can on a hot day), my pail of kitchen scraps goes outside to the compost pile. If this smell should ever come from my worm barrel, it means I'm feeding them too much and the moisture content is too high. It's better that the worms have too little food as opposed to too much. The key thing to me is the temperature and the moisture level. I think that the commonly used phrase, that " A worm can eat it's own weight in food scraps every day" is somewhat misleading. Most vegetable scraps are mostly water and the idea that one pound of worms will eat one pound of lettuce (for example) in a day does not hold water ( Yes...... pun intended). Most of the vegetable matter simply loses it's water content into the bedding and to evaporation. Besides, it takes several days for the scraps to decompose to the point where there is food in a form that the worms can process (digest).

Cats will convince you that having eaten fifteen minutes ago means they're starving. I'm very concerned about the enlarged kidney-maybe meghane will weigh in on that. Wheezing is abnormal too, I don't know if obesity contributes to wheezing in cats. Get the dry food out of the house altogether. That veterinary Iams is as bad as Science Diet. They're both loaded with grains which cats lack the ability to metabolise so these foods can end up making them more obese. They can also contribute to chronic disease, such as diabetes, renal failure, and heaven knows what else. I turned my cats over from dry food entirely until they were all at a proper weight. It's much easier to get cats to proper weight with species-appropriate feeding. They're cats, not cows. Leave the grains out of their diet. Cats are obligate carnivores, so need to be fed primarily meat. To make the transition easier, start by watering the kibbles that you currently feed. Then place the dishes within reach for 15-20 minutes. Pick up the dishes and clean them after that time, then NO MORE FOOD until the next meal. You're best feeding four times a day if you can, but twice isn't going to kill them. They WILL try to convince you that they're going to go skinny and die before tea if you don't go back to their kibble-on-demand schedule. Don't give in. Over time start adding grain-free, low-carbohydrate wet food to the moistened kibble, while reducing the amount of kibble offered. The cats will put up a stubbornness but please persist. Try offering a piece of plain meat as a treat too. Cat treats are usually made of wheat which should be avoided. Plain meat contains nutrients in a form that cats can metabolise, so it makes a far better treat food. My cats get real meat as the primary food source, augmented with commercial grain-free, low-carbohydrate tinned food. I admit that I do keep kibble on hand, but it's a grain-free variety that is ONLY offered as treats no more than once daily. A tiny sack of the kibble lasts for weeks and weeks with SEVEN cats. Incidentally, I had two cats who would go overweight very easily, two others who had interstitial cystitis with crystals, one with tentatively diagnosed IBD, one with patchy fur and itchy skin problems. Guess what? These problems no longer bother my cats. Although there is no way to claim that diet alone healed the problems, it certainly helped. The heavyweights are within the middle of their healthy weights, the cystitis cats have shown no symptoms of discomfort urinating nor crystals in lab tests, the itchy patchy cat is not itchy and the patches have grown in again, and the IBD cat is eating well and only throws the very occasional hairball. Our vets are peeved that I did this without the very expensive "prescription" diets (that the cats didn't like anyway). They keep trying to find something wrong with my cats so they can justify their position that the toxic 'prescription' diets are the only way to have healthy cats. ONE vet in the practice is completely supportive of my position on proper cat nutrition and only looks for signs of malnutrition so that we can supplement appropriately. One other is 50-50 about it, the last one is adamantly against my feeding non-"prescription" foods. Good luck with your kitties!