Last week, Lars asked me if I’d like to try out the Indoor Kitchen Composter in my apartment. Since I’m curious about how well it works, I took him up on the offer. My only condition is that we document its success or failure for everyone to see. So, each week I’ll post a few pictures about how the composter is working and jot down some notes about the process.

First things first - allow me to introduce the Indoor Kitchen Composter. It’s about the size of a 10 gallon bucket, and is made of black, heavy duty plastic. There’s a spigot on one side for extracting the compost tea, and a sifting tray to keep solid waste from clogging the spigot. The composter has an airtight lid that makes it perfect for indoor use. It also came with a bag of Bokashi - a microorganism rich mix of molasses and wheat bran. The bacteria in this mix will survive in the absense of oxygen and break down a wide variety of organic matter, including waste paper, kitchen scraps, fruit rinds, and even meat.

At least, that’s what the people who make the Bokashi composter say. I have some doubts - after all, most of the articles I’ve read about composting encourage you to keep your compost well aerated and warn that anaerobic bacteria are a very, very bad thing. I’ve also been told that putting meat into a compost pile is asking for trouble. This anaerobic composter seems to do everything that the experts warned me not to do - I like it already.

I’m also a little bit afraid. If I fill this up with compost and it starts to smell, my girlfriend is going to KILL me.

So, I tear off the plastic wrap and unpack everything. Following the instructions, I tear open the resealable Bokashi mix and sprinkle some into the bottom of the composter. Then, I add some kitchen scraps and pour another layer of Bokashi on top. After everything is well covered, I carefully press down the lid and find a place to store the composter. Total setup took about 5 minutes and most of the time was spent clearing some space by the door.

The Bokashi mix itself has a pleasant, faintly exotic scent. It reminds me of garlic Terriyaki sauce. The mix is easy to pour and has about the consistency of sawdust.

After setting up the composter, I double checked that the spigot at the bottom was tightly closed. I also noticed that even though the lid is easy to close, the areas near the handle need special attention. It’s easy to overlook them while sealing the lid, and that would probably disrupt the anaerobic composting process.

So far, here’s what I’ve put in the composter:
Some paper napkins
3 pumpkins worth of pumpkin goo (left over from a Halloween carving)
A pint glass full of old cherries
2 pear pits
About 1/6 of the bag of Bokashi

Here’s what the composter has produced:
No compost tea (since it just started)
No unpleasant smells.

Click here to see how Week 2 went…

The Indoor Kitchen Composter is available for sale on the Clean Air Gardening web site. $69.99 including the composter and 2 pounds of Bokashi mix.

Click here to see it.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 5:08 am and is filed under Gardening Products, Products We're Using. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.