Dog poo + Bokashi = true!

You read right, dog poo makes great Bokashi. At least that’s according to Sarhn McArthur who lives in Sydney with a couple of dogs, a townhouse and a courtyard. And the courtyard, of course, gets scattered with dog poo at regular intervals.

You can read more about how she deals with it in her blog here, but basically she’s set up a special Bokashi bin for the dogs. A normal bucket with an airtight lid would do the trick. Line it with a newspaper torn in half to soak up any potential liquid (not necessarily needed). You could also line the whole bin with a biodegradable bag if you wanted to reduce the ick factor.

Fill the bucket gradually with dog poo, sprinkling regularly with Bokashi. Let it do its work. Then when it’s had time to ferment use the contents in your garden. NOT anywhere where food is going to grow. But its ideal as a bottom fertiliser layer in an outdoor planter, or when you’re renovating a patch of garden bed ready for replanting. Or whatever.

Sahrn makes it easy and judging by her photos it works fantastically well. She just fills the pot with fermented dog poo, scoops out a hole for the plant to go in, pops in the plant and covers over a bit with potting soil so it all looks nice. And bingo, you have a healthy fantastic plant!

Yep, I can understand this maynot be something that suits everyone but our dogs are going to do their business whether we like it or not. It certainly makes more sense to use it this way than filling a lot of small plastic doggy bags and sending them off to landfill. To throw away what is after all, a god-given fertiliser.

Cool idea Sahrn! Local recycling at best!

What to do with your Bokashi when you live in a flat

Bokashi works just fine in an apartment, you fill your bucket under the kitchen sink just like anyone else. But every two or three weeks you’ll have a fully fermented bucket on your hands and the question is what to do about it then.

I thought this thread was interesting for just that reason, a woman in Australia who has had her Bokashi going for a while and really likes it, but needs a Bokashi-mate to take over the full buckets from her. She’s used what she can in her balcony planters and now needs someone she can drop off the full buckets to.

Bingo! Seems like she got a response pretty much straight away from someone living in the neighbourhood. And if it worked for her I imagine it would work for thousands like her. And already is I’m sure, people are great at working quietly behind the scenes and finding simple ways of solving what is, after all, a very simple problem.

For a gardener its a godsend to be able to get hold of someone else’s Bokashi buckets. You just can’t produce enough of it yourself. So ask around, maybe you have a colleague at work or a neighbour, in-law or football club parent who’d love to team up with you and your bucket on a regular basis. Who know, maybe you’ll even get a bunch of fresh carrots in return!

And if the handover itself is tricky, you can always transfer the contents to a tightly-knotted plastic bag. Tip it into your neighbour’s compost bin yourself. Or they could keep a biggish plastic box with a tight lid in their garage/carport/back porch that you could tip your Bokashi compost into while they are out. There’s many solutions, I’d love to hear yours!