How to make bokashi serum (for free!)

There are plenty of good suppliers of EM1(TM) microbes, such as TeraGanix, but to start with I made my own serum from scratch. I got the recipe from Hawaiihealingtree.org but the link is now gone.  Blessings on you, healingtreehawaii.org, I think you have helped a lot of people.

Week 1…
Assemble these ingredients:

• 1/4 cup rice
• 1 cup water, dechlorinated
• Quart glass jar with lid

Put the rice and water in the jar and shake vigorously until the water is white and cloudy.  Strain off the rice. Leave the water in the jar with the lid on loosely.
Leave in a dark cool place for 5 – 7 days

Week 2…
Assemble these ingredients

• A little less than 1 cup of the water, strained
• 1/2 gallon (8 cups) milk
• 1 gallon wide mouth jar or container with lid

Mix the water and milk in the jar.
Leave the lid on loosely, !very important!, it can explode otherwise
Leave in a cool dark place for 5-7 days

Week 3…
Assemble these ingredients

• 1 tsp blackstrap molasses
• Smaller jars to store the serum in, ~1.5 quarts

The milk should have separated into a curd on top and a clear yellow liquid below.  A little white mold is okay on the curd but black mold is not okay.  Toss it if you see black mold and start over.

Remove the curd – you can feed it to animals. Strain out the yellow liquid — this is the serum.

Dissolve the molasses in the serum.

The serum can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a year (label it!).  The serum has other uses as a foliar spray or soil drench. More on this in a future post…  We don’t know if this recipe results in the same mix of microbes as EM1(TM) – we assume it does not. However we’ve tried both, and they both seem to work fine for making bokashi bran and the worms seems equally happy with both.