Adriaan van Roosmalen

RE: Alternative for bran
I bought a bale of shredded organically grown hemp straw that is used for horses. I have not used it yet. Culturing LAB requires a temperature of 20 - 25 degrees C and our weather has been too cold for that.

RE: Direct spraying food scraps
Sydney Tay in her video Make Bokashi EMA from scratch by Rice water & Milk | Cheap Bokashi without bran | Indoor composting sprays her food scraps directly till she sees small droplets of water forming on the surface. Sometimes she also adds some plain (uninocculated) bran when she thinks it is getting to wet. The direct spray is at about the 8:00 minute timestamp of the video. Note that she lives in Malaysia with a hot tropical climate.

Her source for making the LAB/EM liquid is based on Bokashi Bran Recipe - DIY with Rice Water (Fraser Valley Rose Farm)
Jason from that farm relies on the LAB culturing of Korean Natural Farming (KNF_ by Master Hankyu Cho. The original instructions can be found in the Indian version of the KNF book by Rohini Reddy: https://ilcasia.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/chos-global-natural-farming-sarra.pdf
Note that the rice wash to milk ratio in the book is not the standard 1:10 but 2:1. And also unrefined cane sugar instead of the dreaded molasses that is very hard to get in Europe.

RE: EM-1 recipe
A video showing how the previous owner of EM USA taught how to make EM-1 in during a permaculture course in Belize. It does not use rice wash: NEW Recipe: HOW TO MAKE EM-1 EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISMS - EM1 LACTOBACILLUS SERUM CULTURE INCOCULANT

The ingredients are:

molasses

Greek yoghurt

egg whites

activated (dried) yeast

2 cups of soil dissolved in a gallon (US or UK?) of water

I have not made this yet, but the advantage is that you create a lot of EM-1 without using a lot of milk.

If you monitor your sunchoke mulch regularly, any possible or spontaneous regrowth is easy to spot and to remove.

BTW nice to see somebody commenting Shows the strength of a forum format like permies.com. On Facebook or Reddit it is very difficult to search and react to older posts.

From Floating gardens of Bangladesh - in pictures :

Many farmers in south-western Bangladesh use floating rafts made from invasive water hyacinths to grow vegetables during the monsoon season – when dry land is scarce – to ensure food security in the low-lying country, which has recently been experiencing prolonged floods and waterlogging as a result of the changing climate

So besides the Chinampa system of Mesoamerica something similar is also used in Bangladesh.

For the  Chinese floating gardens described in an ancient Chinese text see  Water spinach section of "Plants of the Southern Regions"

An article from the UK's Guardian newspaper (no paywall) : Restoring Hawaii’s ancient food forest

A few years ago I bought plans to make the  Mini-Microbulator compost tea brewer from Tim Wilson's site
It is not difficult to built and the PVC piping parts are not expensive. You only have to find a  suitable air pump.
A YouTube video of the brewer:  

The acronym stands for "Continuous Flow Through" It is rather well-known in vermicomposting circles.

With Aerated Static Pile composting (ASP) you don't have to turn the manure or compost at all.

A nice introduction of ASP with a diagram and a referral to a video can be found at Steve Churchill's Introduction to ASP

Steve uses an ASP system designed by Peter Moon from O2 compost.com
, who also has designs for larger facilities for example : stable of 28 horses

Steve also has a separate video about composting horse manure, where he mentions the problem of persistent herbicides in manure: Vermicomposting Horse Manure

Juliet Kemp from the UK has written a book about permaculture in pots, You can find an review at:  https://www.permaculture.co.uk/book-reviews/permaculture-pots-how-grow-food-small-urban-spaces

There is also a quite expensive Spanish translation at https://bookdepository.com. Search for "Permacultura en macetas"

Michael Cox wrote:I’ll say it again - the lack of thermal mass is a big issue for your situation. Your internal temperature will swing wildly with the stove.

The architect who designed my brother's house, made the this mistake in designing his own super insulated house in the 1980s. Instead of stone, his walls were metal. So he insulated it well on the inside. But when he did not close the door fast when entering or leaving the house, the temperature would drop significantly because of lack of thermal mass.

Note that this was in Belgium with a moderate sea climate with mild winters ;-)

When you use non organic straw or mulch there is a chance that it has been contaminated by 'persistent herbicides'. These are neither broken down by animal digestion nor by subsequent hot composting and can stay in the soil for many years.

An horror story telling what these chemicals can do: http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/compost-will-destroy-garden/
Resources from the US Composting Council about this subject (including a Persistent Herbicides FAQ): https://www.compostingcouncil.org/page/PersistentHerbicides