‘Yogurt for dirt’

If you’ve been to the Saturday downtown farmers’ market in recent weeks, you’ve likely noticed a table at the east end selling bags of something that looks an awful lot like coffee grounds that is called “bokashi,” as well as large beige buckets with green lids called “probiotic bokashi food waste composters.”

Bokashi? Probiotic?

Bokashi, according to CompostGuy.com, “is a Japanese term meaning ‘fermented organic matter,’” and “probiotic” (the opposite of “antibiotic”) means “a preparation … containing live bacteria … that is taken orally to restore beneficial bacteria to the body,” according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. In the case of bokashi, the preparation goes into the “body” that is the compost bucket or directly into garden soil in order to add beneficial micro-organisms.

As it turns out, the business behind the table is AAG (pronounced “ag”) Biotics, a 2-year-old company located in south Chico that specializes in making bokashi—as well as liquid probiotics—for use in composting and amending soil.

“It is a soil amendment,” offered AAG Biotics’ Mark Conry, speaking from the office he shares with his business partner (and AAG founder), Craig Alger, a former high school biology teacher, and microbiologist Chun Chang, who mans AAG Biotics’ farmers’ market booth. “But it’s not technically a fertilizer—there is no nitrogen, no potassium, no phosphates; it’s a catalyst through which the nutrients and water get to the plant through the rhizosphere.

“Bokashi is full of beneficial microbes that assist the plant [growing in it]. The microbes assist the plant in nutritional and water uptake—it’s like yogurt for dirt. … I added some to some tulip bulbs [in the garden] and they’re like tulips on steroids!”

Bokashi was “discovered” by an Okinawan professor named Dr. Teruo Higa in the 1980s while conducting research on nonpathogenic micro-organisms, according to BokashiComposting.com. AAG’s version is made from wheat and rice bran, organic sugar-cane molasses, lactic-acid bacteria, purple non-sulphur bacteria and yeast. It is “brewed” under controlled temperatures inside a sterile, 1,000-gallon brew barrel, then allowed to ferment for 25 days inside a “hot box”—a shipping container with an interior temperature kept between 95 and 98 degrees Fahrenheit—before undergoing a precise drying process.

“The microbes go dormant…but they’re ready to go when you put them into the soil,” said Conry. “When these [normally] naturally occurring bacteria are applied to particularly depleted soil or leeched soil or soil stressed from maybe too much fertilizers, fungicides or pesticides, they help to regenerate and rebalance the soil.”

To compost with bokashi, sprinkle a little into the composting bucket over each layer of food scraps thrown in. The result is a “pickled,” nonstinky mass of food waste ready to be added to the outdoor compost pile, full of thriving anaerobic bacteria just waiting to dig in and turn it into fertile dirt. Add bokashi straight to an outdoor compost pile and it acts as a composting accelerator due to the action of the micro-organisms in it.

In the case of AAG’s composting buckets, a spout at the bottom releases a liquid—“bokashi tea”—that has escaped from the fermented kitchen waste, which is also meant for use as a garden nutrient.

As CompostGuy.com explains it, composting with bokashi “is actually an anaerobic fermentation process, resulting in a much different end product than that produced via composting. Many people like bokashi because it is very easy, and generally (bad) odor-free.”

“Unlike more conventional composting systems, bokashi systems can break down heavier items like meat, fish and cheese,” according to BokashiComposting.com. This is a point that Conry emphasized as well.

“The process is very fast and usually takes less than two weeks,” the website continues. “The finished product will have a sweet, pickled odor and you will often see white mold mycelium coating the surface. Once the fermentation has completed you can add the scraps to a worm bin or bury them directly in the soil. They will take anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks to fully integrate into the soil depending upon your local soil biological activity and local climate.”

“One of the unique applications that we are testing is rice-straw decomposition,” said Conry. AAG Biotics is currently conducting several trials at local rice-farming operations. “Since rice straw is dead, organic material, the microbes ‘eat’ it as a food source, and because rice farmers are limited as to what they can burn now, rice straw decomposed in this way can be tilled back into the soil easier, using less fossil fuels [than making several passes with a tractor to bury nondecomposed straw]. If it’s a ‘black goo,’ it’s easier to till into the soil.”

Scott Murphy, who has maintained a small organic orchard locally for the past 14 years, is excited about the bokashi he bought recently. He plans to mix it with regular compost and add it to the soil in the raised beds in his back yard.

“It will make a super garden,” said Murphy, “because the anaerobic micro-organisms … will break down the organic matter already in the soil and make it more available to the plants.”

Murphy has “learned about the importance of micro-organisms in the soil and how it relates to the health of the soil. … This stuff ‘fixes’ the soil. Many gardeners don’t understand the importance of fixing the soil, having all the beneficial micro-organisms in the soil. Many people just think ‘dump chemicals on it, and fertilizer.’ You sure don’t want to dump poisons on it … because that wrecks the whole ‘soil community.’” As for fertilizers, “you put too much of one thing or another on the soil and it throws everything off balance, and you are endlessly putting stuff on it instead of building a healthy soil.”

The soil in certain parts of Chico is either depleted or “was never good to start with,” said Murphy. He recently bought some bokashi for a friend of his to use to amend the soil in his east-Chico garden: “You can’t even call that stuff soil—it’s absolutely terrible!