Biochar with bokashi

As Elaine Ingham and Bryant Redhawk have mentioned, we want oxygenated soils, because that's how we have soils dominated by microbes that help our food plants.  This includes mushrooms.  

Bokashi, as I understand it, is a fermentation process, without oxygen.  There are useful places for that process, like decomposing animal flesh and preserving vegetables (sauerkraut and kimchi).  Even adjusting some nutrient dense organic material might be optimally used with bokashi.  However, I think it's a temporary way to create a limited amount of compost or bioavailable nutrients.  These nutrients would optimally be oxygenated before being introduced to the soil in any sort of large way.  We don't want to introduce a large number of pathogenic microbes to our crops.

The original terra preta biochar makers may have made these particular distinctions, but we have no records.  When you kill off the storytellers, you don't get their story, so you lose.

John S
PDX OR

John, I recently listened to an interview with a person that practices spagyric medicine and was working on adapting those.principles to use in agriculture. He made an interesting comment about the value of anaerobic ferments in our gardens. He described their benefit as populating the deeper recesses of our soil with the microbes that could thrive down in the oxygen starved strata below our top soil. It was an interesting concept that I had never considered. I have always aerated any anaerobic ferments I've made before application. Just some food for thought.

I guess we could split this thread into one on bokashi!   I googled "bokashi effect on soil" just now.  Came up with lots of positive sounding results.  Here's One study done on organic spinach with bokashi facing off against vermicompost and thermophilic compost and a control  

Roberto pokachinni wrote:I guess we could split this thread into one on bokashi!   I googled "bokashi effect on soil" just now.  Came up with lots of positive sounding results.  Here's One study done on organic spinach with bokashi facing off against vermicompost and thermophilic compost and a control  

Haha didn't mean to hijack the thread! What is interesting to me about bokashi and other anaerobic ferments is the idea that they are offering diversity of micro beasties, and that these anaerobic friends can be, well, friends.

I don't have a ton of experience with biochar and it sounds like you all are finding a lot of success with aerobic inoculation (which, outside the "biokashi" example, is the only way I have seen it done as well). I wonder if there is value to having some inoculated both ways? Maybe an anaerobic inoculation that would be something you might turn in to a brand new field or bed at a deeper layer and then the aerobic inoculation that would be applied as a top dress or in light tillage?

THe concept of deep soil inoculation with bokashi is a really interesting one.  I have mostly focused on the top foot of the soil, where it should be aerobic.  I can't speak on Elaine Ingham's nor Redhawk's ideas about deep soil and anaerobic amendments.  Kind of intriguing, really.
John S
PDX OR

John Suavecito wrote:THe concept of deep soil inoculation with bokashi is a really interesting one.  I have mostly focused on the top foot of the soil, where it should be aerobic.  I can't speak on Elaine Ingham's nor Redhawk's ideas about deep soil and anaerobic amendments.  Kind of intriguing, really.
John S
PDX OR

Ya the more I think about I could imagine it being a very useful tool in areas with heavy clay soil. You might rip some lines as deep as you can and drop anaerobically prepared char down there and then proceed with working the surface. Definitely an area of interest, I've never actually heard of anyone doing it so maybe its genius, maybe its just a whacky interwebs idea