Does bokashi kill pathogens?
I want to
compost pet waste (
wood based cat litter and
chicken manure with sawdust/shredded paper bedding) in a way that destroys pathogens and parasite eggs. I've tried hot composting but everything I have to add to a composter is carbon-heavy, and I don't have anywhere near
enough quantity (I've only got 2 cats and 4
chickens) to get a hot-heap going. I was considering this for small-quantity hot composting, but the price puts me off:
http://www.hotbincomposting.com/.
I have a wormery- a purchased one, plastic trays. Whilst everyone raves about vermicompost I don't seem to manage mine right, and it's rubbish. The worms are only active half the year, the bottom tray keeps flooding and I create hardly any compost. The unit is nowhere near big enough to add chicken-waste to, and the cat waste in it breaks down incredibly slowly. I don't think it does anything to any pathogens/eggs.
I have been recommended bokashi (by the company who sold me the wormery) as a step before adding to the wormery, to speed things up. They say that pathogens and things can't live in bokashi because it is very acidic, but don't sound very sure that is definitely kills them or does anything to parasite eggs.
Any other ideas? I have no nitrogen-heavy waste to add, some leaves and cuttings in summer but that would be it. No
lawn, no kitchen scraps (that's what
chickens are for!).
Urine is nitrogen-rich, but my garden and chickens are not at my house but in a community garden, don't really fancy bottling urine and carrying it round all day at work before I go down to the community garden on my bike!
I'm also wandering of bokashi has any benefits for the soil, other that faster decomposition? Do the EMs hang around to colonise the soil? If you hot-composting after bokashi then this would destroy the EMs and any of that benefit? Would hot-composting deal with bokashi-fermented matter faster, or does a properly hot compost pile just not care?
Thanks for any ideas! Charli
