I wanna add my $.02 here and hopefully won't step on toes, hijack or whatever and this will add to instead of negate the thread.
In light of the terms "Organic" in the nerd chemistry world,
- organic soils are defined by
- organic matter content over 35% organic matter >15%occ
- these soils trend towards acidic [most plausible reason that people chuck pH meters in the world of organics] and
- mineral soils [inorganic, not carbon nutrients]
- are less than 35% organic matter and
- 10-12% organic carbon content
- inorganic soils trend towards alkaline
In theory, your Roots Organic should minimally conform to those standards but the inorganic add-ins may also override organics in cation exchange and raise the pH. [ Like
Aluminum]
Bokashi is everthing Hilo stated plus more.....like he said it is anaerobic composting.
I like to think of it as
pickling your kitchen waste, essentially buttermilk, yogurt, pickles, kim chee, tofu, methane, biofuels etc, etc. are made chemically in the same way. Different strains of yeasts, different actinomycete profile, but same chemical process.
Aerobic composting generally has an anaerobic stage as well, just before cooling back down to aerobic. Compost also starts from aerobic, but loses oxygen as the pile heats up creating anaerobic conditions for while. [
This is another difference in my opinion between aerobic and anaerobic profiels, the faculative organisms[those that can survive both aerobic and anaerobic environments....yeasts, acto's, etc.
Now the cool thing about anaerobic composting is that it uses far less energy than aerobic composition.
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/biology_anaerobic.htm
[SIZE=-1] only about 26 kcal of potential energy per gram of glucose molecules is released compared to 484 to 674 kcal for aerobic decomposition.[/SIZE]
Bokashi, technically does
not have to be composted after it is finished. If done correctly, the organisms have metabolized minerals from the organic matter.
Bokashi and Compost are naturally metabolizing nutrients to inorganic forms that plants can uptake vs. synthetic metabolizing of commercial ferts.