All Seasons Indoor Composter Starter Kit – 5 Gallon Black Compost Bin For Kitchen Countertop With Lid, Spigot & 1 Gallon (2 lbs.) Bag Of Dry Bokashi Bran – Made In USA by SCD Probiotics

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 Bokashi I 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. Improvements If 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.

I love this composter. It is large enough for plenty of kitchen waste, and when closed, there is no odor. I have two of them - when one is full, I let the waste "cook" while I fill the other one. I had one outside and a racoon tried to get into it, but was unable to open the lid. I have never had a problem with fruit flies or other pests. When my other ones burned up in a fire, I bought new ones. They are very sturdy and as I say. the lid fits so tightly that there is no odor, nor any pests.

I've had my composter for about 2 months now, so I feel pretty confident in giving a review. Here are my thoughts on it: - First off it's not really an indoor only composter. It's more of a holding/fermenting vessel. You still need space outside to deal with the final breakdown of the compost. What I do with great success is when I'm ready to empty the container I have a large pot that I fill 1/3 with potting soil, then the compost, then cover with soil. You have to then let this sit outside for another 2 weeks-month before you have soil you can actually use for your plants. Make sure to keep it somewhere where the varmints can't get in and dig through it. I still will find eggshells and onion skins after that time period, but that's it. I use that directly with my plants and they seem pretty content. - For one person it's a good size, but I could see if you had a family you'd be filling it up very quickly. I live alone and eat a lot of vegetables and fill it up every 2-3 weeks. - As other reviews have mentioned you go though a TON of the bran mix. I go through a bag of that in about a month. So expect ongoing expenses with it. I did a breakdown on expenses and it's still cheaper than buying organic potting soil. I have almost no garbage waste anymore which was more of my goal with it. - The instructions recommend pushing a trash bag down on top of the compost to keep it air tight. I've had some issues with mold due to it not being airtight with just the bag. What I ended up doing was cutting out a piece of plywood and wrapping that in plastic to use as an internal airtight lid. Since doing that I've had much better results. This is the only reason I've given it 4 stars rather than 5. - I haven't gotten any tea out of it, but I think that is more to do with the composition of my trash than anything else. - I haven't noticed any foul odors or flies. That's it! After making the one modification of building an internal seal I'm completely happy with it!

I'm very happy with this composter. I live in an apartment and wanted to compost my food waste without smells or mess. This is the perfect solution! The additive goes a long way and really does control the smell, even when the lid is off to add waste. The bin also fits nicely under my sink so it is out of the way and discreet. As for the leaky nozzle, it only leaked a little for the first week but hasn't leaked since (maybe once the decomposition starts to happen, it sponges up more of the liquids?). Anyway, no issues. I keep a compost jar on my counter for veggie waste and once or twice a week when its full I empty it into my bokashi bin. I've been using it for about a month and the bin is just starting to be full enough to leave for the two-three weeks it needs to fully ferment before I use it. I'm excited to add this to my houseplants -- it has to be buried, so i will be doing some up-potting of my houseplants and adding this to the bottom of the new pots so that the anaerobic bacteria survive. Apartment permaculture for the win! 10/10 recommend NOTE: if this it too pricey, you could do a bokashi bin in a 5 gallon bucket using the Bokashi mix, which you can purchase separately for much less. A little goes a long way!

Composting with bokashi is very easy and low maintenance 1. Put your food scraps in the bucket (in reasonably small pieces) 2. Sprinkle some bokashi on it and mix it in 3. Sprinkle a little more at the top 4. Cover it with a plate (or something similar) 5. Seal up the bucket 6. Empty the liquid that drains to the bottom every couple of days The great part about this is that you don't have to wait for the compost to be ready for you to have fertilizer for your plants. The liquid that drains from the bucket (aka bokashi tea) can be diluted roughly 100:1 and used to water your plants. I have done this and they all have started to grow very nicely. As for the smell, it does have a smell of something fermenting such as beer. If it smells rotten then it means you are not doing it correctly. Either you did not put enough bokashi or did not empty the water. I have found that emptying the water is a bit tricky. Water tension or something can keep the water from flowing from the nozzle correctly thinking you have drained all of it. Either shake the bucket or fiddle with the nozzle to make sure all the liquid is out. Depending on what you put in the bucket, you can end up with a lot of liquid. Keep in mind you can also pour them down drains to help clean it out. I have yet to notice a difference though. I highly recommend this product as I felt so guilty throwing anything I didnt finish, or just random food scraps in the trash. I now feel much better knowing I am putting that all to good use now. Also, you dont have to take out the trash as frequently since the food wont stink up the garbage.

This is a great composter. Odorless if left closed. Don’t open it inside.

I am fresh to composting and after reading all the reviews I was a bit worried that it would produce smell even with the lid on but the result after a week's experiment is fine for me. I received this item 2 weeks ago and I started saving food scraps and trimmed stems from my potted plants and kept them frozen. When I have saved about 5 containers I thawed them and put them in the bin, made sure the food scraps were evenly and tightly spread in the bin, then covered them with bokashi. Then I used the pressing plate thingy to press the whole thing down a bit more and left the plate in and closed the lid. Then I left it indoor for a week at around 70 degrees (about 20 Celsius). During this week I didn't smell anything around the bin. If I put my nose close to the seam between the lid and the bin I could smell a bit of sweetness but not sure if that's from the inside or the plastic. I checked it yesterday by turning open the liquid outlet and there were a few drops of the "tea" coming out which should be a good sign according to what I read online. The tea didn't have a strong smell. Then today since I have saved another 5 containers of food scraps I opened the bin to put them in. The smell inside was a bit strange but not unbearable. It smelled a bit like fermented tofu if you have had them before or a bit like rice wine yeast, which I guess is because most of my food scraps were plant based. I didn't have any meat or diary in there so not sure how those would affect the smell. I did have egg shells in but I guess the amount of egg white on the shells is small enough to not make the smell too bad. I opened the bin outdoors on my patio so the smell didn't linger. If you have to open this indoors I would recommend have your windows open first.

OK, it works, but who came up with such a POOR DESIGN? 1. The lid fits tight, like it should to keep the odor in, but it pulls off with a lot of work. Then the moisture drips off the lid unto the kitchen floor. Tab should be larger in both length & width to be able to peel it back to remove the lid. Better yet, a screw-on lid like on my 7 gal round whole wheat berry buckets that keep the berries sealed away from the atmosphere. 2. You need a small container to fit in the small recess to drain the liquid out, not a round measuring cup, another reason for a round bucket. Maybe SCD Probiotics should include a square cup with a handle that fits? We have to find something to use because none of our measuring cups fit. I had set the bucket up on the kitchen counter & used a small cup, as we had not followed the instructions to empty often, as this was our first time, and drained out about 12 oz. off. It is only about a 1/3 full so far. I'm thinking of making a wooden handle for the lid supported from the underside with aluminum or nylon fender washers & SS screws to afford easier removal. I consider this item difficult to use and not worth the work to recycle our plant waste two times a day. We prefer to live healthy and eat vegan. Where we live, we get about a 100 inches of rain a year and outdoor compost bins don't work well because they don't reach the high temperatures needed to compost. They do compost in time, a year? So, composting in the kitchen & then dumping it into the outdoor bin sounds like a solution. Can't go outdoors & bury the waste, it's wet.