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kimbledawn
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It's interesting that you started this thread because I have been reseaching EM for about two weeks now. I read a post on another site where a person was making KWAS/KVAS and comparing it to EM as a means of producing your own mother culture instead of buying it.

KVAS is the base for sourdough bread. Anyway, I started reasearching the benefits of EM and bokashi and compared it to Kvas and compost tea.

Needless to say this is very exciting to me. I found two recipes online to make your own mother culture of EM( time consuming) and I have made two bottles of KVAS and I have been testing it around the house.

I haven't used it on plants yet but it has worked on elimination bad smells from our dog and the sink drain.( see benifits of EM in household and environment)

I want to do a test run of my own mother culture and compare it to the one you purchase and I also will be adding those microorganisms to my garden and my compost tea this year.

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It's a bit confusing because all EM contains lots of lactobacillus.

But EM is supposed to be more than that.

That said, most of the practical benefits and uses of EM can be had from a lactobacillus serum made with not too much effort in the home.

I drink the stuff, so I try hard to get it right.

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applestar
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Sorry to nudge, toil, but I know sometimes last post on the 1st page gets overlooked, so in case you didn't see it ... do you think I *should* add some bokashi and expose the bottle to light? How much?

Kimbledawn, welcome to the club! :() Keep us updated on your progress. We'll compare notes! :wink:

The Helpful Gardener
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Kvas, soudough, EM, AEM...

A rose buy N E other name...

Pickles is pickles... :wink:

HG

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applestar wrote:Ah, I was wondering about that. Initially, I read that some said light! lots of light! and others say like 3rd day, and yet others say no light necessary. Then I forgot all about it. :oops: So no, it's mostly been in the dark except when I take it out to examine it and swirl it, and croon over it :wink: and change the water and all that. I was going to leave it out in the sun the NEXT morning a couple of times, but well, first time I thought to do that, it snowed the next day, ... and so on, so I forgot. :roll: Yesterday, I was thinking I *could* put it in my new Mushroom Room but then was concerned about contams to either culture, and decided to think on it some more, so it's still in the dark. Bad?

I was thinking I could add another TBS or so of bokashi and put it out in the light if necessary.... (this is getting way past precise measurements though :roll: )
overthinking! by bokashi, do you mean EM-1? Your brew will be fine. Just get it down to a pH of at least 3.5 The reason for the light is to encourage photosynthetic bacteria to reproduce. It's not a big deal really, just get some successful brews, then tinker with it when it will actually give you pleasure to do so. At first, KISS. In my brew for ingesting, I add some more EM-1 after it settles, and some food too. It gets super duper strong. I used grape juice, rice bran, and azomite this last batch, and it is grapey but bright and dry with a clean finish.


HG, I sort of agree. EM is supposed to be a consortium consisting of certain functional groups that clean up each other's messes. I am still not educated enough to explain that well or understand it.

You won't find phototrophic bacteria like R. Palustris in any sourdough, or wild cultures, and probably not Bacillus subtilus either.

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applestar
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Well, I may get to the point of drinking the stuff, but for now, I'm still in the rough extended EM (or) activated EM (or) EM activated brew concocting phase, the primary purpose of which is to generate my own "bokashi" as in the dried stuff that comes with bokashi composter WITHOUT first getting the mother EM-1.

While the internet abounds with instructions for doing it in the straightforward manner, EM-1 --> EMA --> bokashi, I was hoping to revive and cumulatively grow what is in the dried bokashi until I had sufficient activity going to ferment kitchen scraps, period. So even if EM-1 originally comes with phototropic BM, in the end use inside the bokashi bucket, they rarely see the light. In fact, the instructions for culturing your own bokashi from EMA, molasses, salt+mineral/clay/whatnot, water, and bran always exclude air and most of the light. One guy was making them in metal drums, the other one in a translucent storage tub, but top of the bran mixture was covered with black plastic and I don't think he said to keep it in a bright location, in fact he might've said to keep it someplace dark (I'll have to go back and check.)

But EM-1 -> EMA instructions generally say exposure to light, and I believe the Japanese method is always lots of light. Hence my confusion. :? Maybe the phototropics keep down, destroy, or eliminate the baddies? (In which case, it may be too late for my current batch... :| )

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Exposure to light would favor phototrophs and wack most everybody else, so it would reason you could expose it to light now and rectify things.Toil, what do you think?

(And I was just being ornery about the pickles; I know the store bought brand has got extra goodies, I've used it). :wink:

HG

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applestar
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Oh, another thought:

With bokashi, they say that for long-term storage it's best to dry it. Faster dry time the better they said. And there was a video of how they dry the metal drum-ful of bokashi, raked and spread out on a tarp, in the sun. That seemed a little odd to me since I thought the UV as well as the extreme heat would be detrimental to the BM?

It might also indicate that the BM in dried bokashi would be far gone and a pale shadow of EM-1. On the other hand, if I can revive them to a decent level of activity, then using freshly cultured bokashi, undried, would more than suffice to pickle kitchen scraps?

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Here's where I get confused guys. Apparently R. Palustris (in my EM, yours may be different) is able to make it's own food from light and CO2, and also able to eat stuff with or without needing light or even CO2. It has four distinct metabolic possibilities, as opposed to your one. :shock: How can I even begin to predict how these bad boys work? The more I learn, the more confused I am.

So should I go with the accepted practice?

Apple, if the liquid smells ok, and goes down to 3.5, I bet you it will make bokashi. I really wood buy a bottle though, and if it's just for bokashi, get the agricultural grade mother.

HG, you might be ornery but you are really damn close to the truth. There is much exaggeration from the EM camp. Hard to sort it out.


you can definitely use fresh bokashi. Drying is for storage, and if you have liquid or wet scraps it's nice to be able to sop it up.

I dry my bokashi in the attic.

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R. palustris is swamp rose in my book, toil (adding to the confusion).

Can you get me a genus?

And yeah, I think it's mostly about the lactobacillus, gut reaction... but this other swamp bug you are talking about is fascinating. DO tell more...

S

Toil
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Rhodopseudomonas palustris.

It's one of the purple nonsulfur bacteria. The genus has been nicely described in a wiki created by some students.

[url]https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Rhodopseudomonas[/url]

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Excellent link, toil! Nice!

HG

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;)


I'm no chemist, but the diagram on the microbe wiki shows that both light powered metabolic approaches use N2. In other words, nitrogen fixing!

And when I looked into legumes, I found out those bacteria are facultative anaerobes as well! The whole point of growing those bacterial nodes is to create little anaerobic pockets for them to live. Cool!

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The side of the nitrogen fixing bacteria that we all seem to forget is that bacteria are really stingy with nitrogen (that 5:1 C:N ratio is really low, so very nitrogen intense).

So until the bacteria die, they give up very little excess nitrogen (just enough for the plant they live in really). So the secret to releasing all that stored nitrogen?

They must die. :evil:

So if you don't start to outcompete the nitrogen fixing plant, or mow it down or do something that rots that root system down, the nitrogen there is POTENTIAL energy, but not helping us out just yet.

toil, the palustris at the end tells me this is a swamp dweller; how much you want to bet we could find this genus in any good rich swamp muck? In any stretch, it is a fascinating organism and one I would be happy to have in my pile or soil under any circumstances

HG

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yeah, seems to me "palustris", other than meaning swamp, seems to imply that an organism is tough as nails and can live anywhere. Sun, no sun. Wet feet, drought. whatever.

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:clap: It looks good :clap:
!! More than 3 but also definitely less than 4 !!
(I have to get narrower range pH papers -- currently working with the LEAST expensive [url=https://scientificsonline.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_3021313]Edmund Scientific litmus testers[/url] that I got even cheaper on sale. :wink: )

Not bubbling today, so I think it's time. (Smells good too, toil) I'll also mix a significant amount of dry bokashi in with the new mix just to be sure of sufficient inoculation. :D

Verified with a commercial Organic Apple Cider Vinegar -- approx. same color, maybe a bit pinker (more acid) than the EMA.

Did a backup verification with soil tester, filling the test chamber 1/2 full with EMA to compensate for the liquid nature of substance and got a darker color than the red-orange 4.5 which is lowest that the indicator shows.

Am going ahead. :()

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so how is it coming?

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Ack! Somehow it slipped my mind that this is the 21st day! :roll:
I'll open it tomorrow and take a whiff... er... peek. :wink:

It's been worrying me, though, because I haven't felt any discernible heat coming from the bucket. The Bokashi compost is always warm when I open it to add stuff, and I was hoping to be able to feel my home made bokashi cooking :?: (Well, I just tried touching the Bokashi composter bucket from outside and it doesn't feel warm either, so maybe it was just something that I *thought* I should be able to feel....) I didn't want to open it before it was was time and mess it up somehow (temp, air, etc.)

In a perfect world, I would've mixed up another bucketful -- I intended to, but I think I'm scattering myself (and my brains 8) ) too thin -- it completely slipped my mind. :?

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hmmm your bokashi should not be giving off heat. lactic acid fermentation doesn't do that as far as I know, or at least not enough to notice. Actually, the problem is keeping the temps up if anything. Everything about EM is way faster at 90F.

21 days is no big deal.

my brother just spoiled a batch of bran. he tried to dry it improperly and it took on a foot odor. So I'll remind you too: you have to lay it out thin on a tarp to dry it. otherwise it's like leaving a wet beach towel in your trunk in a bag.

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Aaaand it SMELLS delicious! :D

... although... the top surface is a bit drier on the surface than expected, and it doesn't smell as STRONG as I expected. Still has the pickled bokashi smell, however.

At this point, should I try spraying the top with warm boiled water, or should I just concentrate on drying it? I think I'll be doing this in small batches over the next week or two -- I don't think I can dump out the entire bucket.

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I do it in the attic...

Yeah, go ahead and do it in batches, but seal it up good. I would not spray anything on anything.

I love the smell too. It's just so nice. My "flavor notes" would be dough, distant cheese, and maybe an empty beer.

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Thanks, toil. I'll get drying! :()

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applestar
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Lunacy posted a link to an interesting site here:
https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=122859#122859

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I actually did read this thread before applestar......but it all pretty much goes way over my head :( :oops:
Can someone better explain where I get/how I would make the EM/EM1? I'm also gonna have a bugger of a time converting metric......

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doh!

I answered on your thread. can we merge the two somehow?

MielieMuncher
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Hiya.

I have been wondering. When the innoculant is drawn off from the bucket, can this not be used to make more Bokashi bran? From what I understand about EM's is that they multiply during the process. If this is the case then surely the innoculant must be loaded with EM's. I'll give it a bash and let you know what the outcome is.

Cheers

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I'm no expert but think YEAH! Of Course!

Let us know MM!

HG

Toil
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MielieMuncher wrote:Hiya.

I have been wondering. When the innoculant is drawn off from the bucket, can this not be used to make more Bokashi bran? From what I understand about EM's is that they multiply during the process. If this is the case then surely the innoculant must be loaded with EM's. I'll give it a bash and let you know what the outcome is.

Cheers
yes and no. if you are after more bokashi, and that's it, then you can use the runoff. but if you are after EM, complete with PNSB, actinomycetes, yeast, and LAB in a working consortium as described by EM people, then no, the garbage runoff won't cut it according to them.

Someday, I'd love to know the truth! But I don't stress, because EM is a very cheap product that is actually useful. So my savings from using trash juice would be maybe 5-15$ a year.

GregTraver
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This a website where you can get EM and more bokashi information. After trying a few of the do it yourself recipies around the forums, I found where I could get EM already made. That sure does simplify things a great deal. I have used it to make my own own bokashi starter, it was the easiest project I have done in a long time. This is a non profit sustanability website based in Memphis [url]https://www.agracycle.com[/url]



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