All Seasons Indoor Composter Starter Kit - Two Family-Sized Composting Bins for Kitchen Countertop and Bokashi Bran Starter 5 lb (2 gallons), Easily Compost Food After Every Meal, Odor Free

I've used bokashi quite a lot over the years and after moving across the country our last composting set was left behind. I bought this starter kit because it seemed to be the best value for money.Bokashi is a pre-treatment for your food scraps and we use this mostly for pre-treating meat, fish, or dairy. I add my food scraps, press the air out using an old potato masher, then sprinkle about 1-1.5 cups of the bokashi bran.The anaerobic bacteria kind of pickle the food scraps making them less attractive to pests but it also makes them really fast at breaking down.What I Love:- The buckets are much bigger than the kit I had before. I have the buckets inside next to the kitchen to top bucket is being filled whilst the bottom bucket is fermenting/pickling for 4 weeks.The bigger size means that much more food scraps can go into the container and I'm not filling up so fast whilst the other bucket it full.- The lids are easy to open and are flexible. Bokashi needs a low air/low oxygen environment for the anaerobic bacteria to work best so a well fitting lid is a must but the lid needs to be used friendly to be able to take off to add food scraps.- Easy to clean. The parts are easy to take apart to wash with hot soapy water.- The buckets have handles that are comfortable to hold when they are full.- The containers have a false bottom that allows water and liquids to fall through and not the food scraps so the spigot doesn't get clogged up.- The bokashi juice or leachate is easy to harvest using the spigot.- There's no smell. I have 5 dogs and my Irish wolfhound cross is very smell orientated and would get into the compost container at every opportunity. Not with these! They are on the floor in a high traffic area and he's not interested!- You get 2.2 gallons of the bokashi bran in this kit which is so much more than I expected to get.How I Use BokashiI add the leachate from the composter by diluting about 1/2 cup to 3 gallons of water and use in my vegetable garden.I add 1/4 cup of leachate to a 1 gallon mixture of water, Neem oil, fish emulsion, kelp, and a touch of Castile soap to make a spray for my fruit trees and other plants in the vegetable garden.Dilute 1 cup leachate to 3 gallons of water and use to water a dry compost pile after turning. Works as a great compost activator.I leave the full bucket to ferment for 2-4 weeks then I empty it. This part can be smelly and messy.I mostly use the treated food scraps by turning my compost so that I have the top half now on the bottom against the ground. Then I empty the bokashi into the middle of that pile. Next I add the bottom of the compost over the bokashi food scraps so the bottom of the compost is now the top. I water everything with the diluted bokashi leachate and leave it for about 2 weeks.The compost will heat up fast so I turn everything again and I usually have a good amount of compost I can take and use around the garden.This also is good to add to a trench compost where you bury the treated bokashi food scraps and it will break down in about 2-4 weeks.It is a little acidic so works great near those acid loving plants. Since we have wood burning fireplaces to heat, the bokashi helps to rebalance our compost with the higher pH from wood ash/lime.I would recommend this to a friend and I would even get another set so that I can compost more in winter when everything is frozen solid outside.ImprovementsIf I could ask the manufacturer to make an improvement it would be that the bokashi bran is OMRI listed or able to be used in organic farming. Bokashi is a great way to use more food scraps in the garden and on the farm so having options that work for organic practices would be great.

It works. You can put *everything* in it. It constantly produce a very easy to use, "ready-made" liquid fertilizer. It keeps the mold out of your compost (too much mold is not good to have around, for plants or people). I've had compost turn incredibly toxic with mold, whereas this is a controlled fermentation - I almost think of my bokashi bucket as a "pet" and look forward to feeding it. It doesn't really smell bad (kind of a sweet pickle smell, if all is going well). You can keep it inside or outside (I would advise a cool, shady spot if outside). Here's something to consider: you can make both the special "draining bucket" and the bokashi probiotic mix yourself. (Look it up online for tutorials, if you would like to save some money.) However, if you need a quick compost solution, you can just buy this kit, or better yet *two*, so that when one fills up and needs 2 weeks to sit and "finish," you can leave it alone and use the other one. It's just a brilliantly simple and easy composting solution. I actually have space for a "real" composting operation, but I prefer this.An extra and unexpected bonus found in the instructions: you can add this to your cat litter. I was pretty skeptical, because I live in a very damp/humid climate that tends to encourage litter odors, but it really did help. Huge difference.* * * Edit 04/22/16: Just wanted to add that I still find this solution to be a very good and easy one. Plants seem to love the stuff. You DO have to follow all instructions to the letter to get the best results (don't mix already rotting food into your bokashi, stir and layer well, press down and cover with paper plate or a piece of cardboard). I have had a couple batches go "bad" on me because I tried composting already rotten scraps. Otherwise it works like a charm. Compost can be a very nasty business. I've worked with compost that made me dizzy and made my eyes sting. Bokashi, done right, comes out smelling slightly sweet, or bit vinegary. It really makes it a pleasure to work with, especially if you have allergies or are sensitive to strong odors.