An interesting article at Modern Farmer reviews the current usage of human urine as fertilizer:
Jay Bailey, who owns and operates Fair Wind Farms with his wife Janet Bailey, volunteered a few hay fields for the initial stages of the project in 2012. He spread a urine solution from the Brattleboro volunteers over the crops from a horse-drawn applicator and, come harvest time, observed that urine-treated fields were twice as productive as unfertilized controls. The success earned Rich Earth a $10,000 SARE grant from the USDA to expand the trials at Fair Wind in 2013. This year, urine will go to three farms for collaborative trials...More discussion at the link, including the potential problem of pharmaceuticals excreted in urine. And see my 2009 post on urine-diverting toilets.
A study conducted by the Stockholm Water Company in the late 1990s diverted urine from four housing projects to a grain farmer outside the city. The scientists concluded not only that urine could replace quick-acting mineral fertilizers, but also calculated that one Northern European adult pees enough plant nutrients to grow 50 to 100 percent of the food requirement for another person...
But even if there is minimal risk to personal or public health, Nace realizes that only a chosen few will ever be willing to collect their own urine with jugs and funnels. A much more realistic option is urine-diverting toilets, which again the Swedes, masters of pee, have reliably engineered...
Those who wish to try this in their own gardens should take note of the brown "burned" spots in lawns created by dog pee and then follow this adjustment noted in the Wikipedia article on the subject:
When diluted with water (at a 1:5 ratio for container-grown annual crops with fresh growing medium each season, or a 1:8 ratio for more general use), urine can be applied directly to soil as a fertilizer.Modern Farmer article via The Dish.
My mother, born in Edwardian Ireland, said that women of the generation prior to hers would use their urine as a hair conditioner.
ReplyDeletePer Wikipedia, urine is typically sterile. We are taught a distaste for it when young because the other stuff which comes out of our nether regions is disease-carrying, and urine, being strong-smelling, can make out clothes smelly and hence unacceptable in polite company.
Swedish company Guldkanna makes the Towa, a watering can crossed with a chamber pot for collecting urine. Once one has drained one's ballast tanks, just dilute 4 or 5 units water for each unit urine and pour on your garden!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guldkannan.se/english.aspx
I wish her success marketing her product. Tx, William.
DeleteBack when I worked a small ranch, the best mint grew in the toilet area of a field where the horses peed. I didn't always tell dinner guests when I used mint in the cooking!
ReplyDeleteDo horses in fenced areas typically all urinate in a given area? Just curious...
DeleteWhenever convenient, I urinate on my compost heap, and I don't this is uncommon. I didn't think this up myself but I don't remember where I got the idea. My compost tends to be more brown (leaves) than green and the extra nitrogen seems to make a nice difference, my compost is great. People rave about my tomatoes and ask how I do it. I tell all, almost.
ReplyDeleteI can testify, straight up urine will kill dandilions and the grass areas surrounding it! just sayin'!
ReplyDeleteI go through fits and starts of peeing in a bucket and lugging out to the compost heap. Also have friends who have no indoor plumbing (choice) and used to do the same thing until one of them stumbled at the top of the stairs with a brimful chamber pot: they now leave the bucket right by the back-door. There's a little more http://url.ie/lpcm on the microbiochemistry of the process including a note that salt is a major component of most urine and that's another reason to dilute it 1:5 or 1:10 before applying to veg. In Crowdie and Cream and Crotal and White, Finlay J MacDonald talks about crofting on the Isle of Harris in the 1920s. A tubful of urine was essential to a final treatment in the production of Harris tweed. You could be no more neighborly than to ask where was their pee-tub after accepting a cup of tea from the folks next door.
ReplyDeleteI'm probably being alarmist but what about any medications these people might be taking? Will those get into the system?
ReplyDeleteHm.
If so and if they're using the same meds as me, can I cut back on mine?! :D