Growing veggies when the economy goes to hell

This morning I read an article in our national paper on Greece. Yes, they’re throwing firebombs at one another and protesting up and down in Athens but — one woman’s quiet voice made itself heard. From her balcony. Where she’s started growing veggies outside her parents apartment to feed the family.

Her plan is to expand her patch of lettuce, carrots, onions, coriander and spinach from the balcony to the roof in due course. The way things are heading in Greece many more will have to do something similar to make ends meet.

And Greece is just one country. Admittedly it’s well and truly in the news but it’s far from being alone when it comes to people having to face facts. That food is expensive. That money is short. And that growing your own food is the only rational way of helping to make ends meet when the housekeeping budget goes the way of the national budget.

The article (sorry it’s in Swedish) also describes how a local organization called something like “Gardens in the City” is involved in helping people get started. As we all know, there’s usually a ton of trial and error before your first carrots look like the ones on the seed packet, but once you get the hang of it it’s all astonishingly easy.

Which is where we have to help one another out. Gardeners who “can” help gardeners who want to learn. Generation to generation, neighbor to neighbor. I know I’m an optimist but this is hardly rocket science. And we all, deep down, want things to be good. At least that’s what I believe.

Now this article doesn’t say a word about Bokashi. Chances are they don’t even know about it yet. But it’s the obvious missing link and in due course things will fall into place.

Meanwhile the most important thing is to get the first little salad patch going on every balcony and every rooftop. In Greece and everywhere else. And then give your neighbor a hand with theirs…

What more could a gardener wish for?

Great blog post here from Bokashicycle in the US, really worth reading. Get yourself a coffee first and take your time — here you’ll find a lot of answers to a lot of the Bokashi questions that people ask. A real deep dive into the subject.

You may even need a second cup of coffee. Enjoy!

White Christmas…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

So if you were dreaming of a white Christmas this is how it would have looked! Pure unspoilt paradise, but so unbelievably cold.

Hope you all have a wonderful New Year — and may it be green start to finish!

Bokashi experiment on the go in Edmonton

Just got a comment on our “about” page from Mike in Edmonton, I wrote about his Bokashi startup a couple of months ago and he’s got right into it since then.

So much so he’s  running a cool experiment in mid-winter Canada. To round up a bunch of people to test Bokashi where they live. In houses, apartments, condos (can someone please tell me what is a condo actually is?) — families, singles, flatmates.

The local Bokashi supplier is backing him and he’ll track the various outcomes. Needless to say I’m dead curious to see how it turns out. Midwinter Canada? Sort of sends the same sort of arctic chills up your spine as this place. So the perfect test in other words. If we can get Bokashi going in these climes (and belive me, we can!), then it’ s got to be a piece of cake down in the tropics. Which is basically everywhere south of the arctic circle…

So, know anyone who lives in Edmonton? Get them to have a chat with Mike!! And let us know how you get on!

More info here>>

Bokashi composting when its minus 24. Celcius.

I have to admit it resists a bit. It doesn’t come naturally to be running round in the garden with compost buckets when it’s -24 out. Tomorrow is another day. Maybe it’ll be warmer then?

Or maybe not.

So I thought I’d write a bit about how we fix it here in the getting-more-arctic-by-the-minute backwoods of Sweden. Having grown up in it, I’m fully aware of the fact that there is another hemisphere. One that is warm. That has summer now. One that people actually do things like take off their clothes and go swimming.

The thing is, it’s just a bit hard to believe.

So this is how I’m planning to tackle the compost thing this winter:

1. Glasshouse. Great storage space when there’s nothing going on. And come spring a warm place for soil production. I’ve lined up a number of sacks, bags and bins in the glasshouse, some already filled with autumn leaves and/or leftover soil from last summer. I’ll empty the occasional Bokashi bucket into them and leave nature to do it’s work. (They don’t need to be airtight, but if I have a lid or a string to tie the bag I do that.)

2. Indoor soil factory. This is a great way of producing some soil for late winter planting — tomatoes, seedlings that need replanting, potplants that are due for fresh soil. The sort of thing you do as indoors as possible, at least here. Basically it’s a big plastic bin with a lid, layer potting mix and Bokashi as you see fit (maybe 50:50) and put in the warmest spot you have. I jam mine up by a radiator, I have a friend who has hers on the heated floor in her (very nice!) spa-bathroom.

3. The trusty old hot compost. It’s good to get the odd bucket in here to keep things going, to some extent at least. If your compost bin is full from the autumn’s garden clean-up this is a good way to give it a kick start. (OK, I admit you can’t kick start anything at minus-twenty-whatever, but the principle holds.) I usually carry out a bag of paper scrap from the kitchen to tip over the Bokashi, it’s a nice easy way of fixing the carbon-nitrogen thing even in mid-winter when you don’t have anything else to use.

4. I do most of my growing these days in long raised beds. (The picture above shows how they look at the moment, not much to see under the snow.) So if it’s not all too hard I’ll add a bucket or two into the beds now and then, tucked in under the cover of leaves and hay I added in the autumn.

5. Then there’s the experiments: I have a couple of big outdoor clay planters I’m testing with Bokashi. Plonked them down in a garden bed and filled with a couple of buckets of Bokashi. Topped up with leaves. And a sheet of plywood to keep the dog out. It’s one big frozen clump just now, but I would expect it to be a thriving worm farm come spring.

Another experiment is an old metal-grid rubbish bag holder I found in the shed. I plonked that down in the rhubarb patch for the winter. Into that I’m putting paper sacs filled with Bokashi. I’ve also been tossing in some leaves (when they were still accessible). The grid is rat-proof and my idea with the paper sacks is that they would keep the flies off long enough for the Bokashi to turn to soil. Obviously all rather theoretical under the circumstances but worth a try anyhow.

6. Then of course it’s possible just to put the buckets out in the wood shed and let them freeze. I have a lot of buckets so that would be no problem, and if the winter goes on long enough and I get fed up enough I may do just that.

So, that’s my plan. What’s yours? Or are you just lucky enough you don’t need to resort to these desperate measures? Although whichever way you look at it, it’s good to have options. There’s many ways of making soil and the cool thing is I’m pretty sure we can all do it, regardless of which end of the planet we live on.

Greenhouse Bokashi — also a hit!

This is the result of another of winter’s Bokashi experiments. Super success and well-worth trying for anyone with a greenhouse. And with a winter season to deal with…

We grow tomatoes in buckets in our greenhouse and at the end of the season there’s a lot of tired soil to get rid of. Plus all the other end-of-season plants and pots to be emptied. Quite boring to be honest, and come spring you have to turn around and bring in a lot of sacks of “new” soil.

But since when should soil be “old” and “new”? It doesn’t get old out there on the field or in the woods, it just gets topped up with new organic matter and the soil microbes keep it alive and thriving.

A greenhouse isn’t a field and the potting mix we buy at the garden centre is hardly thriving with microbial activity (more often than not it’s actually sterilised!).

But by using Bokashi in a new way to “renovate” the soil we can give it another chance. And another. And another. Nature at its best.

Here we’ve used the blue plastic bags they provide at Ikea for bringing home your stuff. Good and sturdy with strong handles. Toss in a tomato bucket, toss in a bucket of kitchen-fermented Bokashi, toss in another bucket of soil or whatever. Probably a good idea to lay a newspaper on top to keep it moist.

That’s it. Line up a few bags like this and when spring comes you’ll have fresh new soil to work with — either for replanting or as top-up soil for the garden. I’m not sure I want to replant tomatoes in the same soil even if its “renovated” but it will be great for filling new planters and top-dressing old one. Snail-free into the bargain (which unfortunately soil from my compost bin isn’t).

The heat from the glasshouse will help start the Bokashi process nice and early in the spring, even if your bags have been frozen clumps all winter. There’s nothing much else you can do with a glasshouse in the winter anyhow, so you might has well have it working for you. It’s a true luxury to open it up now in the spring and have so much brilliant soil ready to use.

Just to dig in and enjoy!

Summer dreams — in a store nearby!

W’ve had a bit of a winter pause on our blog here, sorry about that — we’ve been snowed under on all fronts it seems. But life has returned to this stubborn part of the world and any day now the last scraps of snow will melt and we’re in the green. Relief!

On the Bokashi front things are happenning too. The message is spreading (gradually!) throughout Sweden as it has throughout so many other countries in the world. This is a real grass-roots movement, a message passed from neighbour to colleague to sister-in-law and one of those few real things you can do in a small way in a small life to make a difference.

Like in so many other countries there’s also a huge resurgence in interest in growing your own food. The novelty of home renovation, marble bathrooms and designer kitchens is (maybe? hopefully!) starting to wear off in favour of real things like growing your own food in the backyard.

Only the thing is, we don’t want to do it like our grandfather did. God help us, we don’t have the time. And most of us don’t even know how to do it anymore. And we don’t have a spare field.

I think Bokashi has a role to play in this: it makes life easier. And better. It makes it easy to fix really REALLY good soil so you can grow your own stuff and watch it thrive. There are lots of other new ways of doing things too, like growing veggies in raised plank boxes. No digging, no weeding. Quite a bit of work up front building them but then once it’s done it’s done. Fill them with Bokashi (from your own kitchen and that of your neighbour!) and anything else you can get your hands on and you suddenly have a fantastic little organic garden outside your kitchen window.

This time of year people buy a lot of seeds, we probably all know the feeling of hope when we stand there in the shop with the dream of the summer’s first carrots pulled straight from the soil. But no matter how many seed packets we buy the sad thing is that most of us just end up there in mid-summer with a lot of weeds and some skinny carrots that didn’t turn out anything like the ones on the packet….

Why? Could it be we’re trying to do it the way we remember our grandfather did, but without the patience and love he put into it? Probably without the knowledge either. Definitely without the time.

So it has to get easier, we have to find new ways of achieving that seed-package carrot dream! And good soil is the key to it. Bokashi is a fantastically easy and rational way of getting good soil. And if you combine that with smart raised beds, mulch growing and other new approaches. you can say goodbye to the worst of the back-breaking work your grandfather did. And spend time enjoying your juicy fat carrots instead!

Snow Bokashi?

See that black bag there between the doors? That’s my latest Bokashi experiment. Snow Bokashi…

Yep, you can see I’m getting desperate. Not just me but quite a lot of us up here in the frozen north, we have to find ways of making soil even in mid-winter. At the moment I can’t even find my hot composter under the snow. My indoor soil factories are full to bursting. And trekking over to the glasshouse through a metre of snow is beyond me. Hence this idea.

Compost in a bag. It’s a big black rubbish bag, quite thick plastic, with a standard kitchen bag clip to keep it closed. I’ve tossed in a pile of kitchen paper scraps (toilet rolls, cornflake packets, egg cartons, bits of household paper, all the usual) and a bucket of fermented Bokashi. Then another bag of paper scraps as I had a lot on hand. My idea was then to toss in a bucket or two of soil, but right now I can’t get hold of any for obvious reasons. If the snow holds until midsummer (which it certainly feels like at the moment…) I’ll go and buy a bag of potting mix and toss that in. Right now we have temps varying between -10 and -20 C most days so obviously NOTHING is going to happen in that bag other than we get a rock solid bag of Bokashi and paper. But it’s a sunny wall, and my theory is that if I go on filling the sack using the lasagne principle (bit of this bit of that) when the spring sun starts to thaw things out it will get cracking really nicely in there.

And in due course I’ll have a lovely bag of soil waiting for me outside the wood shed. Perfect for some spring planting to brighten things up!

What I’d really like to know is if this theory holds. If any of you living in warmer climes, but not too hot, would like to test it out I’d love to hear what you think. Ideally temps in the bag should be between +20 and +50 degrees C. Any hotter and the microbes will give out. Any colder and they’ll just hang around waiting. In a hot climate I guess you could do it in a shady spot, or leave the top open. As long as you have soil on the top you don’t need the bag closed, basically I’m closing it to keep the snow out and any potential heat in. A white bag could be an alternative if you live in a hot spot.

Another theory would be to put the bag right into the garden bed and build it up there. You could slit holes in the bottom to let in any curious worms. Then when the soil is ready just slit up the whole thing and let the soil flow out where you need it. Fantastic fertiliser! Any biggish bits that didn’t make it in time could always go into the next bag.

This whole idea is triggered by DS at BokashiSlope in Texas, she had a great idea a few weeks ago about doing this in paper sacks direct in the garden. The ultimate on-site soil factory — no digging, no wheelbarrowing, no nothing, it all just breaks down into fantastic soil by itself when it’s good and ready. Even the bags. Have a read of her idea, it’s just excellent: The Add-A-Bag Garden.

So what do you think? Is it worth a try? Love to hear what you think.

BTW, the mouse factor. I’m not the least worried about that although I’ll let you know. We live in the country, and this bag is right outside the woodshed so there couldn’t be a better location for a gourmet feast for post-winter starved mice. But the thing is with Bokashi that it’s so “sour” as we say here, low pH, rats and mice hate it. I did a test last winter just to be sure, put some 50l of fermented kitchen Bokashi in one of these sacks with a clip in the wood shed. Not a nibble.

But if you have bears that might be another story… Our dog Tim certainly thought there might be something interesting going on!

btw again… I took these photos before the weekend’s snow storm. Now there’s another half metre snow on the ground and I can’t see the bag any more. Getting very bored digging out the path to the wood shed…

Where has all the food waste gone?

I was thinking about this song the other day, you know the one: Where have all the flowers gone, Long time passing. Shows my age? No, honest, I think it was before my time.

Thinking how our concerns have changed focus but are infinitely more serious in a way. It feels like you couldn’t even try to write a song any more to express the worries we have for our future, for our planet, for our children and their future. But maybe that’s how they felt in the sixties too. So much good has come out of those worries, so much change and yet we now face concerns of such a dimension most are just doing an ostrich.

Today on national radio here there was a programme on food waste from supermarkets, and the big question is where on earth does it all go. The many charity organisations that could put any amount of close-to-use-by-date meat and vegetables to good use are not getting it. Nor are farmers, gardeners or others who could put it to use.

Most is simply wasted. Or used for energy recycling as they so euphemistically call it here. Which means burning it up in a huge modern mill and shipping out the energy onto the local district heating grid. Good in that at least some of the energy value in the food is put to good use. Bad in that none of it makes its way back to the soil where it belongs. And roughly a quarter of it ends up as a form of indescribable slag that even the rubbish tips can’t deal with.

Another hot use is biogas. Also an industrial, my-factory-is-bigger-than-yours solution. Generating much in demand biogas for running cars, buses and trucks. But also generating a sort of compost that has a quality often best suited to landfill. Unfortunately. Let’s hope the soil component turns out to be done well at some stage so at least some of it has the chance to become new food in the future.

The homeless generally don’t get much of a look in. The reason apparently is the stores are scared of generating a black market which would undermine their brands and possibly even cause a health scare. I’ve heard of stores that have all their food waste picked up by farmers, who then give it to their pigs. Which must be a good thing! But I’ve also heard that one of the big things stopping this sort of thing is all the plastic, a million small packages that have to be picked apart each day to separate the food from the packaging. Blah.

I been trying myself for a while to find a good second-hand food supplier. I’d like to start a small soil factory here, nothing extravagant, but a sort of demonstration setup to show how food waste can be simply and efficiently be recycled on quite a small piece of land using Bokashi and imagination. But so far I haven’t got hold of a supplier (which doesn’t mean I’ve given up, far from!). The local supermarkets won’t give me anything (but won’t say where their waste goes), a corner shop in town already has a deal with a guy who’s feeding wildlife (right or wrong I can’t say), and more institutional operators such as homes for old people require collection logistics on a scale I can’t handle. But there’s also fear and tradition to take into account; people are quite simply not good at doing new things.

But a bright spot! A Bokashi-colleague and friend is running a worm-farm in her garage (yep, you read right). She’s been collecting food waste from friends and cafes to feed to her worms. Time-consuming and delightful, but talk about putting food waste to a good cause!

Make your own “soil factory”!

…and as you can see, it’s not in the least complicated!

This is a great way of putting your fermented Bokashi to use without having to dig holes or mess around with compost. Best of all, it’s really quick and easy and you won’t get your hands, clothes or shoes dirty.

You’ll need a plastic storage box of some kind with a well-fitting lid (doesn’t have to be completely airtight). A plastic boat scoop like I’ve got here is also good to have.

Put a couple of scoops of plain old garden soil in the bottom of the box. Tip in a bucket of fermented Bokashi food from your kitchen. Add a bit more soil and mix and stir a bit so the food gets reasonably coated with soil. Put the lid back on. That’s it!

When you have a look in a couple of weeks you’ll see there’s more soil and less food. Your soil factory is doing its work! The nutrition and carbon in the Bokashi-treated food is being absorbed by the “start-soil” and what you end up with is “super soil”, an excellent soil improver to spread around your flower beds, use in planter boxes or outdoor pots, or sprinkle around plants that need a vitamin boost.

You can run your soil factory more or less forever. Just scoop out the soil you need for the garden and leave some in the box to mix with your next Bokashi bucket. If you have too much soil, you can start another box or scoop over some of the ready soil into black garbage sacks to use later — or give to your friends!

Some tips and ideas (and a couple of things to watch out for):

- You can “renovate” the soil from potplants that have had their day. Just add it to the box! This is also a good way of diluting the soil in your box and adding structure.

- Soil fresh from your soil factory may have a low pH for a week or two, depending on how long it’s been in the box. Experiment until you get used to it. It’s also extremely nutritious, so you might want to mix it with potting mix before planting in it.

- Chances are you’ll get some white mould forming on the top of the soil. GOOD! Just as it is in your Bokashi bucket, that’s a sign that the microbes are doing their work and colonising the soil. Mix it around if it bothers you, otherwise just leave it.

- Leaves are great! Toss a few handfuls of autumn leaves into your box and watch them disappear. They’re a good resource and good for the soil structure, handy if you don’t have enough garden soil to use in your box.

- Soil like this is nature’s own product. It will last forever! The sooner you get it onto your plants the sooner they can benefit from the nutrition and microlife in it, but otherwise it’s easily stored until spring or whenever you need it.

- Temperature. Warm is good! Not so hot you kill the microbes (keep it under 40 degrees C), and not so cold nothing happens (less than +6 degrees C). In a sunny spot by the kitchen door is good, on the balcony if you live in an apartment, in the cellar by the boiler if you have one. In the wood shed, the laundry, the garage. It will all work, just test and see what suits you best. And it doesn’t matter if your soil factory freezes, the microbes will come back to life again in the spring and carry on their work.

So good luck! And let us know how you get on with your soil factory!