Alternative Bokashi substrate...

First ever post! Been lurking for a while but wanting to get a bit more involved.

I'm looking at making my own bokashi bins, and was thinking of initially buying some premade bran while I figured out how to make my own.

Thing is I don't have ready access to a supply of bran, unless I bought it. Though I do have a few possible alternatives at work that I could "borrow".

I was just wondering what everyone's opinions were of the alternatives- I'll put up brand names as well in case anyone fancied doing a bit of research!

BedMax Wood shavings (big wood shavings, about 1 square inch)
ComfyBed wood shavings (small shavings, stuff you'd put in a rabbit hutch)
Snowflake Softchip (very finely chipped wood chippings)
BedSoft (finely chopped wheat straw)
MegaZorb (tree pulp leftover from paper making)

As far as I'm aware none of these are treated.

Any opinions, or ideally facts, on which would be the best option would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Rhys.

I'm not positive that the wood products would work well, the straw would be my first vote from that list. I made a successful batch last year (still chipping away at it cause I made so much) and used a mix of wheat bran and coffee chaff. I got the coffee chaff for free because it's a waste product from roasters (it's basically the bits of bean skin and little chips of coffee beans that flake off during the roasting). If you have a coffee roaster local to you they can likely hook you up with as much of the chaff as you'd like to take. I think that if you mixed it with dried out coffee grounds that you could also get for free you would have a solid free substrate

Hey Rhys!!
I had the same problem. I can sometimes get (wheat) bran but $$$$$$!
but I can get sawdust and shavings for free.
I followed a thread I found here on Permies https://permies.com/t/11246/bokashi

and ended up here http://carazy.net/diy-home-made-free-em-bokashi-mix/

The last time I made my own inoculant (I make a new batch when I run out of my sawdust type mess) I was able to get bran, so I used maybe 3kg (was max a gallon and a half) with two very large feed bags of sawdust/shavings (i get them from a sawmill, so it varies from literal dust to pretty shavings). It made me two small trash barrels, should last me a good 6 months at least.

I have done it entirely without any bran, and I've also used some bits of shredded paper mixed into the sawdust (following a blog entitled Newspaper Bokashi).
(in case it matters, I'm making my inoculant from rice wash water and then skim milk, with maybe half a cup of molasses thrown in. I keep meaning to try fresh sugarcane juice instead but the sugarcane juice guy around the corner doesn't seem to have a schedule conducive to my inoculant making...... maybe next time!)

Edited to add: if I were purchasing these products, i'd be concerned if any of the stuff would not encourage bacterial and fungal growth. that post-papermaking stuff sounds likely to have something in there, although I'm not familiar with it. I'd go with as close to the source as possible, like maybe the chopped straw? But woodshavings for me have been great.
Have fun! I remember when I first stumbled into Permies looking for info on bokashi and it seemed IMPOSSIBLY complicated. Making your own is not difficult by any means, but it's pretty awesome to not have to buy it.

Hi both,

Thanks for the responses and your tips.

I was thinking that the chopped straw might be best as it's quite as dense.

Thank you for the links - I have already done a bit of looking into making my own EM (1st attempt went bad!) - I'll try again at some point, just don't use rice as often as I'd thought! Is there anything else than rice that could be used as well?

My first attempts were failures as well. It didn't help that I had never actually seen or smelled the starter culture before, so they might actually have been viable....

I am more good at the mechanics of making it rather than the theory..... but I gather that we`re just making a lactobacillus culture, and that yogurt whey could be used?
This is where I got my info for the actual starting (not the bran/sawdust). Scroll down to where it says "Yogurt Whey as a Starter Culture" https://newspaperbokashi.wordpress.com/tag/diy-bokashi-starter-recipe/

Hi Tereza,

Thanks again for the tips.

I did come across the newspaper method in my 'research' - but you're right, I don't actually know what it should smell like!

I mean, I've read what it should smell like, but without actually smelling the right stuff I don't want to be putting the wrong bacteria in!

Whey might be a good option for me actually- got a 22 month old who doesn't always eat all his up!

I hope we can revive this already-helpful thread!
In my research (both here and offsite) I've come across a few possibilities for Bokashi substrate. Off the top of my head, and repeating options from previous replies in this thread, I recall:
(hardwood?) sawdust
grain (wheat, oat, or rice) bran
coffee chaff (castoffs after roasting)
spent coffee grounds
spent brewer's grain
chopped up leaves
chopped up (raw) peanut hulls
shredded paper
shredded cardboard

Edited to add new option:
No substrate at all! Just mix serum with kitchen scraps.

To the best of my current understanding, a desirable substrate will work for bokashi if it can take inoculated moisture in, go through a ferment, then be dried out again for long-term storage. It seems to me (though I'm not sure why I think this) that smaller particles would be more desirable (sawdust versus shavings, for instance) but it sounds like shavings worked great for you, Tereza.
Specific to my needs, I'm looking for a low-/no-cost option. (I'm leaning toward trying to source coffee chaff.)

Does anyone have ideas about what else might work?
Are there any requirements I'm missing?
Does it matter if the sawdust is hardwood versus pine? Is one preferable over the other?
Does anyone have further experience with alternatives to sawdust and bran?
Where did you learn about your alternative substrate?

Tereza Okava wrote:I have done it entirely without any bran

Tereza, can you tell me more about this? Did you simply spray the LAB serum on top of your material?

Hi, Sara

How do you feel about using milk, rice milk, or even molasses as a substrate? Will these work for Bokashi?

Sara Hartwin wrote:
Does it matter if the sawdust is hardwood versus pine? Is one preferable over the other?
...

Tereza Okava wrote:I have done it entirely without any bran

Tereza, can you tell me more about this? Did you simply spray the LAB serum on top of your material?

I got mixed sawdust from a sawmill that worked with all kinds of wood, pine as well as tropical hardwoods. I didn't see any difference.
(the sawmill has since closed-- I've got a small stock of sawdust but am not sure what I'll do when it's gone. We have a business where once a year we shred a lot of documentation, I'm thinking the shredded office paper might be a good option)

As for the serum, I just mixed it into the sawdust. When i have bran, I mix it into the bran and then mix that into the sawdust, I keep the bran separate, it stays a bit moister, it all seems to last longer. But when I don't have the bran, I just dump the serum in and mix it up.

While not free. I just made some out of rice bran. Was $12-14 for a 50lb bag at the local feed store. I bought my em1 which was pretty pricey. Interested in making my own will definitely research that. Thanks for that tip

Anne Miller wrote:Hi, Sara

How do you feel about using milk, rice milk, or even molasses as a substrate? Will these work for Bokashi?

Milk or rice milk are two options I haven't encountered or thought of yet - more options to check out, thanks! I'm using molasses to supersaturate the LAB "whey" and it sounds like from Tereza's experience it's entirely possible to skip the bran and mix it right in with kitchen scraps.
I'll have to research more about the other two options, to explore whether they can be used as dilution or storage agents, too. Interesting!

Tereza Okava wrote:But when I don't have the bran, I just dump the serum in and mix it up.

Now that's fascinating. Good to know. Just to clarify for my understanding - when you say "serum" is that undiluted or diluted?
I think I still want to try a bran to have the experience, but I'll tuck this possibility away for future use. It would eliminate an input, a step, and the consequent storage requirement.

Sara Hartwin wrote:

Tereza Okava wrote:But when I don't have the bran, I just dump the serum in and mix it up.

Now that's fascinating. Good to know. Just to clarify for my understanding - when you say "serum" is that undiluted or diluted?
I think I still want to try a bran to have the experience, but I'll tuck this possibility away for future use. It would eliminate an input, a step, and the consequent storage requirement.

Sara, I'm using the whey after I strain out the solids (my process is rice rinse water fermented, then dump in a liter of milk, then strain out the curds)- I don't dilute it, dump it right into the bran (or sawdust). Any diluting would only be me mixing the bran/sawdust into more of that, kind of like seeding.

I would use bran, if I could afford it in quantity. It's not cheap here. I feel like it 'ferments more', for lack of a better way to put it. That may be because I'm used to making pickles with bran (nukatsuke) and just my own bias. Also, sawdust tends to dry out more.

Tereza Okava wrote:I don't dilute it, dump it right into the bran (or sawdust).

Okay, that clears it up for me; thanks, Tereza.

I have always used my own worm casting or Johnson Su compost tea instead of purchased EM. Any good compost will have the constituents of EM. I have also used beer wort instead of molasses. I have never used any other substrate than rice or wheat bran. I plan to try it with some old brewing barley, as well as using that for an IMO 1.

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.

Ben Zumeta wrote:I plan to try it with some old brewing barley, as well as using that for an IMO 1.

Forgive me; I am completely unfamiliar with brewing terms and techniques - does "old" mean "already used for brewing"? I'm trying to understand if this falls under "spent brewer's grain" or is something else entirely.

That was unclear. I had brewing barley that had an unsealed lid on it and mice got in and started storing other seeds that had gone missing in it. I never saw droppings, as it was likely a packrat making a seed cache, but decided not to use it to brew. During the most difficult times for birds in rare deep snow in the winter, when I get the wood stove and house too hot I have used boiling water and this barley to make a wort (barley tea used for the sugar source for yeast in making beer) that I strain off the barley. I give the barley, which retains most of its protein, as bird seed for our native quail and other over winterers. The wort, which is a great yeast food, and brewer’s yeast is a great soil inoculant, I use for compost teas and bokashi. If I were to make IMO 1 with it, I would use the malted barley prepared similarly to the  standard slightly undercooked rice. Anyone have thoughts on that?

Ben Zumeta wrote:The wort, which is a great yeast food, and brewer’s yeast is a great soil inoculant, I use for compost teas and bokashi.

Thanks! That makes sense to me now.

I have no practical experience with culturing IMOs yet, so I can't weigh in with any real input outside of theories - but hopefully someone else will.

I just found a copy of The Unconventional Farmer's content (apparently the original site is no longer online), preserved by someone named Clay. On the bokashi composting page is a relevant blurb:

The Unconventional Farmer wrote:Make the bokashi bran by mixing water, sugar, and a microbial inoculant like our lacto serum with the carbon rich growth medium. The growth medium is normally bran (wheat, rice, barley, rye, etc), but you can use any carbon rich source – sawdust, newspaper, groundnut cake, wood chips, etc.

That seems to cover a wide range of possibilities!