When Is My Compost Ready?

Compost made with normal kitchen and garden waste generally takes six months to a year to fully cure, depending on the time of the year you start – it’s much quicker in warm weather.

Compost made with matured bokashi generally takes six to eight weeks to fully cure, again depending on the time of the year you start. Add the few weeks it takes to fill and mature the bokashi bin, and you’ll understand why I prefer using this system – it produces good quality compost in a very short time.

Turning, or tumbling, will speed up the process somewhat if the compost is made with normal garden and kitchen waste. It does not have a noticeable beneficial effect on compost made with matured bokashi.

If you can still identify the majority of the original materials the compost was made from, it is not ready yet.
When the cured material looks like compost (nice and dark, and you can’t really see what it was made from), smells like compost (like a woodlands litter layer) and feels like compost (a nice crumbly structure like a sponge cake), then it is compost.

“My whole life has been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. That is what I had with my first compost heap”. – Bette Midler

Comments

[Katelin Mccaig]

It is quite amazing how garden wastes can be manufactured into good quality compost in a matter of weeks, all with the help of the bokashi bin system. It’s an indoor composting system that uses an airtight container filled with water and microorganisms to induce an anaerobic fermentation process. Through this process, one can identify how compost should look, smell, and feel like when it’s ready. It is easy to convert to an all-organic lifestyle, if only we take the time to understand how.