I have used diluted urine on my lawn for many years. It produces a lush kind of electric green color. A number of passers by have made complimentary remarks and have asked about it. I advise I simply use close to home freely available organic materials.
When I was growing up in the country ,we had no town sewage and use an outside toilet. My father would always have a fallow part of one of the garden's and would dig a farrow along its length and this is where the can was emptied everyday . The waste was covered with soil everyday as he worked his way along the row. It was planted out after a couple of months. We always had healthy soil and great vegetables. It's no different to using cow, horse, sheep or chicken manure.
Well, you have some risk of pathogens with feces from carnivores. It also smells worse. Ruminants have a process where their digestive system ferments the food, cultivating many beneficial bacteria for the soil. It's actually pretty common that the sewage system ends up composting our feces, but they do heat it up at high temperatures to sterilize it, then hold the compost for years before it's applied to usually ornamental gardens or non-food crops.
I try to rely only on my own property for garden resources, including fertility. In my case, I don't have a plentiful plant source of nitrogen, so I use urine primarily in my compost, which is mostly hay and leaves. This way, about a year has passed before any urine associated material actually enters the garden soil. Even so, I keep this fact to myself when discussing the garden with most of my friends and family. At this point, I've been growing in the same beds for seven years without additional outside fertility, and am pleased with their productivity. Plus, my own body helping to feed the plants I eat makes me feel more directly connected to the life cycles in which we all participate, regardless of how much we are aware of the fact. Thanks for the straight talk, Bruce.
I once read in some study that the nitrogen fertilization from a person's urine can lead to yield improvements equivalent to 70-100% of the food for the person. Quite impressive what our bodies can do. Or in other words, what a wasted resource urine is in modern society.
@@djazt.8053 A challenge I have set for myself once I retire (not that far off, these days) is to live for a full year eating only food I've grown myself. Well, I probably won't turn down Christmas dinner with the family, but you know. I think that would be tremendously satisfying, and after having accomplished it once, it would be relatively easy to keep that percentage pretty high and keep me active and strong. Plus I'll be able to keep a few chickens when I'm around most of the time, which would help a lot.
@@troutslayer-yv3dx I've read various claims about this, too, but never seen the hard numbers. Bruce's math comes pretty close to the one I've read; that one person can provide all the additional nitrogen needed to grow enough food to feed themselves. Based on Bruce's estimates and the size of my own garden, I'm pretty sure I could feed myself with it and produce enough pee to keep it happy, if I were to be more methodical and dedicated. There are probably a lot of homesteady types that have done the math as far as square footage needed to feed one's self, and from there, it should be easy to calculate.
It is interesting how we hide these perfectly natural practices from other people. This video is my first real public outing of the issues, and it will be interesting if people in my own community have issues with it. I hope I have a good enough reputation around here to get over the potential resistance. But I would not be surprised if a few people stop eating the vegetables we grow.
@@REDGardens I'm a little torn by not telling them. It's a bit selfish, I suppose, but I really enjoy sharing what I grow with others, and I think it's perfectly safe. If they knew what they are eating gets part of its nutrient from my pee, they might not want my gift, or even worse, accept it then throw it in the trash so as not to hurt my feelings. I appreciate you sharing this video that explores the topic in significant depth.
This is such an important subject and I'm glad you brought it up. It's insane to flush valuable resources down the toilet and import replacements for them from Morocco.
It is insane to flush it all away, then import more from places and factories far away, and also to use huge resources to try to remove the nitrogen and P and K from the urine before we dump it into our rivers.
Female here. In the summer I keep a 5 gallon bucket with a slitted pool noodle as a seat as my outside potty. Saves going through the house and I use the urine in my garden. Thanks for this video!
Used the pool noodle seat on a campout for nighttime. Sleeping in car, opened front and back doors, bucket between doors, facing away from the rest of the campsite, towel clipped to doors. Using a bedside commode while caregiver for elder family, collecting my unmedicated urine for dousing the leaf pile, coffee grounds and kitchen scrap compost . Only turned twice since Nov to Feb. It’s almost ready! Starting new pile of scraps. This is a first for me! No more critters digging in the compost since I resumed collecting urine for it again after a break!
This is an excellent idea. I’m a female who has recently purchased a homestead and is living alone and trying to save money and build a wonderful garden. Living alone makes it very easy to hide any weird urine collecting! For the last 8 months since I came here, I’ve started just squatting in the garden to pee, even going outside at night to do it. Mostly because I’ve realised I save a lot on expensive toilet flushes! But now I realise it could actually be used to fertilise, I’ll do your bucket/seat idea and dilute for use on garden.
I've collected urine in a bucket, added weeds and rotten wood chips . I used it to inoculate my fall leaves I collected in large garbage bags. About a litre to each bag. I then set them behind the garage for a year. These bags produce the most beautiful leaf mould. Pure gold for my gardens.
As a permaculturist absolutely opposed to the notion of putting any sort of biomass into the wastestream, I am very excited to see this excellent video and all the wonderful notes provided below it. This is a treasure trove of information here!
Thanks for sharing that bit of math ! I have had huge success adding urine to a mound of orchard prunings and soil . Over the course of a year I added all of my urine diluted 5 to one with water to a six foot tall pile that was sort of like a hugel mound . This resulted in a fungal dominant slow compost that yielded amazing worm rich soil in about two years . One year adding urine ,and one year inactive.
Oh my goodness, YES! In a pile of mostly sawdust, with a bit of rabbit poop and kitchen scraps, our daily dumping of PP, the worms LOVED it. They were fat and shiny and beyond numerous. We've never seen so many worms in a regular compost pile.
The grass fed by our sceptic tank leach run-off system is ALWAYS the greenest and best grass on the farm. All household human outputs are diluted by all other water used within the household. Solids remain in the sump of the tank (being removed via suction tanker once every year) and the run-off overflow exits the tank at the top of the tank and is soaked away underground into our bottom paddock, feeding grass and some trees there. Both are the best on the farm by far! Great video and an excellent experiment to undertake. Thank you for sharing! 👍
My great grandfather owned a small mail order nursery business back in the early 1900s. He included a pamphlet on how to plant and fertilize the trees and vines he sold. In that he mentioned that urine was good fertilizer for grape vines. I live in a rural area and selectively pee outdoors, according to what needs fertilized. I can attest that blueberries are much sweeter when fertilized with fresh urine.
This is good stuff. The thought of using my urine on my plants makes me want to puke but this video helps me see that i have been conditioned to think this way.
I have been using my urine for years and feel bad if i'm somewhere I have to flush it lol . A couple of years ago I grew a patch of corn just using urine and it did really well. . Like you were saying you will never have enough to do a big garden but you can use it on one section or a few plants . Thanks for sharing !
Flushing the toilet every time you pee rather than going in a gardening can is a waste of resources actually. Most people flush fresh, treated water Whatever you fertilize with urine, also add wood ash in the early spring and it will balance out everything else the plant needs other than nitrogen. The issue with wood ash is that it is alkaline so don't use it around blueberries and some raspberries.
My newest use for liquid gold is tinkling it on my numerous bags of Fall leaves to hopefully add a bacteria component to the fungal dominance of leaf mould. And hopefully speed decomposition of them. Another fantastic topic! Well done & Thanx
I started using pee when I learned it helps compost grass clippings. After a month I saw how much water is wasted on flushing pee. Now it seems ridiculous to flush water down the drain to flush more water down the drain (pee). A side benefit involves my ability to monitor my liquid intake. I also see the color of my pee. That can help me determine my nutrient level in my own body. My grass clipping compost is my best soil or potting mix. Using pee is a win, win.
Put it in your compost pile, it really works to speed up the process. A liquid laundry detergent bottle with its spout removed is a convenient collector.😁
It really depends on the compost ingredients and the size. If there is a lot of brown material a pile can absorb a lot of urine. But if the pile is smaller and less high carbon stuff, adding urine can make the pile wet.
Thanks for the video, we all talk about circular agriculture, this is only possible by using our own excretion as well. Great that you brought up this topic. I have the vegetable garden 20 meters from home, and I pee on plants that can use it. Despite the pure form, I see no damage and never have enough pee.
That is interesting. I think a lot of the possible damage comes from situations where the same plant or spot is regularly peed on, like outside pubs! It also probably depends on the amount of water you drink.
I started using my urine after I noticed the fertilizer I was buying had uric acid for the nitrogen content. That led me to learn what fertilizer was actually made of.
Urea and uric acid are very different things, but give them a while and they will both break down nicely. PS. If it's uric acid you want, get a salamander or a dalmatian to piss on your compost. But any other mammals, birds and reptiles expel nitrogen in the form of urea salts.
So glad you covered this topic. This is a big one for me when the topic of fertilization of the soil is brought up. I have used urine in making compost with carbon rich material, like wood and sawdust. It gives the urine time to breakdown and helps with the "Yuck" factor.
You have spoken of a subject (nutrient source) that was and still is a commonly used plant nutrient over many areas of the world and also used in the west more often than confessed. Waste not want not.
Hell yea brother, thanks for having the courage to come out of the urine closet! I have been using it for a couple years now with impressive results, but am reluctant to share my secret. That may change, great channel by the way.
My Jerusalem artichokes/ sunchokes grew to 14 foot tall last autumn. I also made bonemeal from chicken bones, and calcium acetate from toasted eggshells and vinegar.
Thanks for covering this topic and explaining your application. We started using urine last spring and believe it is a valuable free resource. We placed one of our gardens directly over the drain field of our septic system and it flourished. We are currently fabricating a 5ft x 5ft stainless steel compost tumbler drum that will be driven by a gear box with auto timer. I plan to use urine in the mix to help accelerate the process. Happy growing!
I use recyclable environmentally friendly Cat litter (recycled compressed paper). The poops go to the toilet but the litter goes into the garden or compost bin. After I change the tray there are suddenly hundreds of thousands of works in the disposed material. Cat wee is great for works and the garden.
My cabbages get the occasional tinkle when they are still developing. the family is always impressed by the size of the cauliflours, broccoli and sprouts...
Thank you for discussing this. My grandfather burìed urine and faeces from our outdoor can toilet years ago in the garden. it breaks down and you cant even tell its in the soil after a few months. He grew carrots and potatoes in it.The carrots tasted pretty nice to me . He lived to 90. This all makes sense to me ,it means nothing is wasted and means most food is free The nutrients are just going round and round .in the food chain. Bury it all under a fruit tree if youre dicy about it. I hadnt thought about drug residue. I thought everything just returns to its basic minerals and chemicals.
@@chriswalford4161 agreed, hot composting it would be what you'd want to do, even if it's your own feces, solid waste has some nasty stuff in it, and it WILL splash up onto plants when it rains so best to prevent a potential issue, plus it breaks it down faster
@@chriswalford4161 That would make a lot of people feel safer. I am not sure there is much risk with burying faeces, and then growing a crop on the ground the next season. The length of time, and the soil organisms dealing with a lot of the pathogens, and then the filter of the plant greatly reduces any risk in my opinion.
It has been shown that bacteria can even break down heavy metals in compost, but obviously we don't want to give them extra work to do if not necessary 😊
Great video. Tomatoes are often ideal as we prune the leaves away from the soil anyway, and their top nutrient needs match that of urine. Interesting to think about - though, we use it most directly in leafy compost and wood chip walkways.
After seeing this video. I gathered the courage to ask my family to keep the P. I have been using my own for a couple of years now. But now it is a different ball game.
Composting toilets provide humanure compost that l, after high temperature thermophilic processes are done, provide something that looks and smells like good old soil. With something like JLF, urine can be incorporated into the mix too... Possibilities are unlimited. I haven't used "completed" dry toilet material for vegetables (and I probably won't) but for trees and such, it's gold. Just take care of dilution levels. Overload on N and aphid infestation is a thing from what I could find 😂 Excellent, realistic and needed video, Bruce.
Thanks! I don't have an issue using well composted material like that around vegetables, as I figure that anything really problematic won't last the process or time, and we wash everything before eating it anyway. Too much nitrogen can be an issue, but in many cases it is a limiting nutrient.
I store in a 55 gallon container over winter along with soaking char in another 55 gallon container. Great results. Thanks for spreading this information. These fertilizers these fertilizers where used by our ancient ancestors for thousands of years. It supersizes me that the squeamish often don't mind animal dung in their gardens. Chicken manure, bovine dung and the like are most common. Most pathogens of solid and liquid human excreta die in a 6 month period. One does have to consider vectors like slugs and snails when dealing with liver flukes.
@@REDGardens For sheep, cow, horse (etc) manure I think it is due to the herbivore factor, which is likely to contain less pathogens. My older Border Collie will even consume raw, fresh wallaby scat occasionally from around my property. Whilst fresh it still has gut microbes from the marsupial contained within, but I'm sure he would also go for deer scat.
One thing we can do to reduce the ick factor (to a degree) is to use the urine in composting instead, if we have sufficiently carbonacious heaps. Gets it a little further removed from the actual veggies we eat.
Excellent topic and video, as always. I use urine all the time and it's a "huge" difference. I can't get manure so comfrey and urine really help. I was told to use it fresh on crops, but can't see what waiting a few days would make. It's great on leafy stuff like coriander. I heard it's good on the trace elements. Brave to mention the shit question. On the allotment I got some really harsh responses at even the mention of using it, or research. I have a feeling like how no dig might have seemed crazy years ago the idea of using human waste will change. I read the Bill Gates foundation was encouraging composting toilets or something in parts of Africa and it was having very good results.
You do, you experiment, you test, you try out, and you survive you keep pushing forward! And do not look back for very long, because you,we are curious animals!
Just rented a space to set up a huge garden and bought a Kampa Khazi camping toilet that comes with a bucket which I intend to use as a compost toilet for urine only. Contents will go in a thermocomposter but, thanks to your video, I guess I will also collect urine to fertilize my plants in a more direct way ;)
Use of waste (of all kinds) as a resource for or by something is the topmost subject of interest that matters to me. Given everything cycles, the best practice when growing any system is often forming some management practice that mimics nature. Looking at where and at what point a waste becomes a healthy resource rather than pollution. Any waste is simply an unused resource.
Thanks again Bruce for a very interesting video. I like the idea of the Venturi pump. I use urine as a compost accelerator but plan to feed my potatoes after watching your earlier trials. I first came across using urine on the compost heap in the early 1980’s on Papa Westray in the Orkney islands when an old crofter to me that he peed on it. Crofters in the Western Isles have used it for fixing dye in cloth and the Romans as a dry cleaning fluid! Not sure what Roman house parties would smell like. I’ll watch this video again to glean more from it. I’m just about to head down to my allotment. Thanks again.
Glad you got some use out of the video. many of us are on that journey towards a more sensible nutrient cycling, but some of us are finding it harder to really start. Peeing on the compost is a really good base to work from.
Look at ancient Roman dry cleaners, all they used was urine to wash white togas clean because it breaks down into ammonia if left standing for awhile. Cheers
Another great video and yes, around where I live there is the same stigma regarding human urine. Initially this could be used on your lawn or added to compost, makes for nice green grass and you don't freak people out if you put it next to your plants. (although mice, birds and cats will do so anyway)
That stigma is so strange to me now, but using urine as you recommend is a good way to get around it. Using the urine on plants that will be used for composting offers two 'filters' or steps separating the urine from the stuff we eat.
Great topic. I have been using this on my fruit trees. On my chop and drop compost. My inground worm farms straddle important trees and use food scraps, cardboard, a little chop and drop, leaves. Moistened 50% 50% water with P. Brad Lancaster is a water saving , nutrient cycling master in this regard as well. He is so innovative and inspiring . Living on a dry continent with poor soils, every drop of moisture and soil nutrition is just so valuable….certainly no to flushing nutrients down the toilet to waste and pollute our streams and oceans.
I wee onto my woodchip piles quite regularly and I do it in the ground around my fruit trees. Never tried collecting it, but I've never wasted it when I'm outside. It always feeds the garden rather than me going indoors for a pee ;)
@@REDGardens I had a huge pile for 2 years after clearing a load of trees to let more light in. I used to wee on one side of the pile and when I eventually broke into it (last summer) I found that side (which was also south facing so I don't know if that played a part) was way further along than the shadow side that I couldn't get to to pee on.
I often pee directly into my compost piles. When applying urine to garden beds I dilute it about 10 to 1 with water and add a bit of liquid fermented seaweed fertilizer. Plus the other soil amendments in the beds - pelletized chicken manure, bone meal, alfalfa meal, compost. Basically right along the same lines as you. The urine amounts to a minor supplement over and above everything else, though, I think, more quickly available to plants while we wait for chicken manure and alfalfa meal to break down in the soil. Urine in a spray bottle, squirted at key locations as scent markers, can help deter certain pests. Deer and raccoons in my local context (Nova Scotia, Canada). Works better for the raccoons. Deer seem to become habituated to it after a few weeks. I would use more urine if I could get more, pharmaceutical free urine, than just what I can produce.
I also think it is more quickly available to the plants, and useful for young plants in the spring when the ground is too cold for a lot of active soil biology.
I always use urine on my shredded leaf mould piles. Nothing better to kick start the decomp process. I water those piles with a 5 to 1 dilution. I usually have a fine, well decomped batch by March or April. I add grass clippings too.
I had a house that I planted California Poppys to the entire front yard. Using Vitamin P in the yard made the poppys grow up to 2 feet high and the flowers were flowering incredibly. They were also heavily mulched w wood chips (from ChipDrop, local tree wood). People would take photos of my house, that’s how amazing the Ca poppys were.
It's only been a few hundred years since all human societies were using urine commonly for all sorts of daily processes (like washing and dyeing clothes, tanning leather and growing food). The habits have lapsed in certain countries for understandable public santitation concerns. Where you have a large mass of people, you have to be careful how human waste interacts with your water supply water table, and food sales, for example. Similarly with human and animal carcasses, are also a great and necessary supply of nitrogen and micro life for the continuing growth cycles but managing the use of these resources can be difficult en masse.. Now that we know more about how to manage water supplies, understand the dangers (such as spreading cholera) and can track pathogens, hopefully we can carefully learn how to re-integrate human waste back into standard growing cycles for larger communities. I would note that, as with the dangers that can come with bottling, canning and preserving foods, (and burial) the potential risks are not to be understated or dismissed as hysterical. Botulism, cholera and ergotism were common causes of death for millions of people and should be respected. We move onwards and upwards with our learning, not backwards. All best wishes.
it is such a shame that we developed the systems for just flushing or disposing of anything that caused problems, before we really understood what the issues were, and how they can be avoided in much more appropriate ways. We have centuries of sewer construction, and public perception to undo.
RUclipsr Project Diaries did a video about 5 years ago about urine which I also found to be quite imformative and iv'e been using it in my garden since then.
Weird that you should post this today. I was just trying to research this yesterday! A problem I find is that if not used fresh, it can become smelly. I wanted to find out if it keeps or whether the efficacy of this fertiliser degrades over time. All I could find on the topic related to urine testing but it does appear the chemical content does significantly change over time. As far as I can tell the nitrites increase over time but there's little useful research on its use as fertiliser. Thanks for yet another great video. Yours is by far the best gardening channel on RUclips.
The smell of aged urine is from ammonia. Which is volatilized nitrogen. So it should be expected that the effectiveness as fertilizer decreases as urine ages. Then again, the smell decreases a lot when diluting the urine before aging it. I think this is because ammonia is well soluble in water up to a certain concentration. So this could be a way to preserve the effectiveness as fertilizer when aging for 6 months, as often recommended as a sanitizing pre-treatment when using it in communal gardens. (No sources, sry. Just a brain dump from from memory and experience.)
I agree with @Djaz T., the smell seems to be mostly ammonia which is being released to the air, which means that some of it is lost. I think if the lid is kept on the container only a small amount will be released in storage. Apparently the urea has to be converted to ammonia, before it can be converted to the nitrite/nitrate forms that are useful to the soil and plants, so the smell is probably just part of this transformation process that has to happen anyway.
@@REDGardens Have traveled to some third world countries; Madagascar and Tanzania' where they do not have public restrooms and people urinate practically everywhere. The smell remains for quite a while.
Hats off to your courage for openly tackling this topic. Completely agree with every point made. I heard from a different gardening channel of only one case where it was too much. The gardener's husband heard it was beneficial so he would pee directly on the base of the same fruit tree once every day, and it wound up with an aphid infestation.
Yes a great summary and helpful suggestions to the home gardener .not sure how long I can leave urine in big container wit h fresh water added And rain water added ...does the chemistry of the urea get changed and become ineffective ?
I appreciate your videos. I use urine on my leaf/yard waste compost since it's carbon-heavy. It really speeds up the decomposition. I also use urine when I overwinter garden beds. Water the soil, then cover with a thick layer of raked leaves. It provides a warm home for insects and worms and by spring the ground is rich and ready for planting with little to no effort.
Little and often is a pretty good rule to go by, it's been working for me when I'm trying to get new beds filled with municipal compost established. Thank you for showing the siphon! I've been wondering how I could "inject" teas into my drip lines and this seems to be a good solution.
Yes, I am looking forward to being able to 'inject' all kinds of liquid fertility into the drip lines, as it makes the whole process of using large batches of nettle/comfrey/weed tea a lot easier. Spreading that stuff by hand with a watering can is not an easy job if I want to keep the smell off the plants!
just don't pee at the roots of a smaller tree too many times a year or you might start affecting the balance. Unless it's in a spot where you don't want it, we used to kill tree saplings for fun with my brother when we were kids by directly applying a few days worth from two boys on a single sapling...
I have friends in Florida who swear by Vitamin P for their gardenias. The father of the house uses it freely and they have 5 foot high gardenia plants covered with blooms.
I will have to try this, ive heard about it before. We only have one restroom in our home, so, sometimes we have to go in a red solo cup when someone else in in there and we cant hold it. Maybe next time, ill just use it on my garden. I know what i and my family intake and am fine with it. Thanks for a very informative video!
If you have a high compost bin and a garden with some privacy, you could use a pee funnel and pee directly on the compost. Using the compost bin as a spare bathroom!
There are lots of options, though some of them are easier for people with a penis! If you are already ok with peeing into a cup, then you are already a major step along the path of developing decent nutrient cycling!
Interesting video. I especially like your advice about using urine right away, or, as some here in the comments have mentioned, mixing it with other things and/or composting it. While it 99.9% sterile, E coil is the most common pathogen found in it. So not giving that germ a chance to multiply, diluting, or composting would be safe. My spouse pees on our hugelkultur bed, as I know it needs nitrogen. I think the movie The Martian should have disabused most people regarding their, uh, crappy attitudes toward human waste.
Yeah, it makes sense to me to use it before something has a chance to really colonise the urine, but perhaps that happens within a few hours or days. I also wonder how public perception of about using human waste did change because of that movie. I suspect it introduced a very new idea to a lot of people, which is a start. I don't think anyone would suddenly think about doing it themselves based on that movie, but massive social change does take a lot of little things.
Thank you for this video. I think it is an important subject for the reasons you have outlined so well. With urine, there's one challenge though which I'd like to mention: Urine contains a lot of salt (sodium chloride). In order to not ruin the soil in the long run it is nessecary to wash out the salt from time to time. While washing out nutrients may seem a negative thing at first it is actually nessecary to get rid of the salt load that urine brings.
Let`s not forget when nitrogen breaks down it converts to ammonia so I personally never use old urine unless it get dumped onto my compost pile which mostly gets fresh ish urine...2 days old tops. Good video Red.
Been collecting my urine for about 2 years now. When I don't need it for crops I fertilize my lawn (At night, when no one's around). I then collect grass clipping which I mix in my compost pile. Great for tomatoes in the late season when the compost gets low on fertility. My biggest problems come from winter, they are 3-4 months of snow here, and my compost pile is too small for that amount of urine.
My neighbors multiple dogs have pee'd in one spot of their fenced yard for years. On the downslope side of the pee spot, a 25 foot long section of grass is always dark green & healthier that the surrounding grass- even during the winter months.
Much appreciated your deep dive into the subject, just wondering even if people are on pharmaceuticals, after an earthworm has eaten the compost with urine whether it would still be toxic. Maybe that's a study which still needs to be done.
Generally speaking, pharmaceuticals will decompose in earth better than in water. So it is better to put such urine onto a non food growing part of the garden, than to flush it down the toilet.
Also, seeing as the best form of fertilizer available to plants on planet earth is the nitrogen formed by lightning (NO3). Have you considered aquiring a long lightning rod for the garden to test if there is a measurable improvement during stormy seasons?
Umm, no. We don't get a stormy season around here, very rarely any lightning, but that isn't the main reason for not doing that! 🙂 I prefer to stick tot he ways of getting nitrogen tat are much see exciting!
A very small amount of potassium hydroxide will raise the pH enough to stop the bacterial conversion of urea to ammonia, and thus prevent it becoming smelly. An excellent source of potassium hydroxide is wood ash. Thus you can transport large quantities from cities to fields without worrying about smell.
The worst part about using urine is when you realize that it's free, provides a lot of nutrients but you really just don't pee enough to feed yourself.
We in Iraq have been cleaning the waste of cows, sheep, and human waste for plants, especially in winter, by diluting it with water, and the results are very impressive.
For hundreds of years, the Chinese have used "night soil" as the ONLY fertilizer that made all the vegetable growth available for the gold rushes across the world. The classic Chinese vegetable garden as seen in artwork from many gold rush in Australia, the USA and elsewhere has become so common we have forgotten the essential part played by the non-mining peoples that appear in every historical mining site. "Night soil" is, was and continues to be used as fertilizer in vegetable and other gardening systems.
I really like the way you circumvent the "iieeek" moments people may have as you explain how you use urine as a fertiliser. My grandpa kept telling to please pee in the vergetalble garden when ever we want... he had no second thoughts and would have otherwise used horse and cow manure and urine..:-)
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I've used my urine for years. for the most part Iv'e kept it a secret between me and my plants
It seems that most of us have been keeping it a secret!
Ditto
😂.... Secret's out!
pretty ebin bro
About 3 years now..😊
Vitamin P is still one of the best garden fertilizers in my mind.
-it's free
-it's effective
-most neighbors will only ask about your garden once
Haha, that last one!
The dogs always pee by our plants the chance they get, I think they know it's the right thing to do
Hehe you call it that too. :-)
Bwhahaha... all the way.
Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
I'm in - are you in?
I have used diluted urine on my lawn for many years. It produces a lush kind of electric green color. A number of passers by have made complimentary remarks and have asked about it. I advise I simply use close to home freely available organic materials.
I like that description!
Good one!
How much do you add to the lawn, I use a sprayer and dilute it to 2 percent. Some people say 1 to 10 but since it’s foliar, I am a bit scare.
@@MrHumberto2205 What kind of sprayer do you use?
Lol "close to home."
When I was growing up in the country ,we had no town sewage and use an outside toilet. My father would always have a fallow part of one of the garden's and would dig a farrow along its length and this is where the can was emptied everyday . The waste was covered with soil everyday as he worked his way along the row. It was planted out after a couple of months. We always had healthy soil and great vegetables. It's no different to using cow, horse, sheep or chicken manure.
I think that is the best and easiest way to deal with faeces if you have a big garden.
Well, you have some risk of pathogens with feces from carnivores. It also smells worse.
Ruminants have a process where their digestive system ferments the food, cultivating many beneficial bacteria for the soil.
It's actually pretty common that the sewage system ends up composting our feces, but they do heat it up at high temperatures to sterilize it, then hold the compost for years before it's applied to usually ornamental gardens or non-food crops.
For those that have a problem with urine in the garden, and you eat red meat, the flavor you enjoy from it is caused by the urine in the meat
I try to rely only on my own property for garden resources, including fertility. In my case, I don't have a plentiful plant source of nitrogen, so I use urine primarily in my compost, which is mostly hay and leaves. This way, about a year has passed before any urine associated material actually enters the garden soil. Even so, I keep this fact to myself when discussing the garden with most of my friends and family. At this point, I've been growing in the same beds for seven years without additional outside fertility, and am pleased with their productivity. Plus, my own body helping to feed the plants I eat makes me feel more directly connected to the life cycles in which we all participate, regardless of how much we are aware of the fact. Thanks for the straight talk, Bruce.
I once read in some study that the nitrogen fertilization from a person's urine can lead to yield improvements equivalent to 70-100% of the food for the person. Quite impressive what our bodies can do. Or in other words, what a wasted resource urine is in modern society.
@@djazt.8053 A challenge I have set for myself once I retire (not that far off, these days) is to live for a full year eating only food I've grown myself. Well, I probably won't turn down Christmas dinner with the family, but you know. I think that would be tremendously satisfying, and after having accomplished it once, it would be relatively easy to keep that percentage pretty high and keep me active and strong. Plus I'll be able to keep a few chickens when I'm around most of the time, which would help a lot.
@@troutslayer-yv3dx I've read various claims about this, too, but never seen the hard numbers. Bruce's math comes pretty close to the one I've read; that one person can provide all the additional nitrogen needed to grow enough food to feed themselves. Based on Bruce's estimates and the size of my own garden, I'm pretty sure I could feed myself with it and produce enough pee to keep it happy, if I were to be more methodical and dedicated. There are probably a lot of homesteady types that have done the math as far as square footage needed to feed one's self, and from there, it should be easy to calculate.
It is interesting how we hide these perfectly natural practices from other people. This video is my first real public outing of the issues, and it will be interesting if people in my own community have issues with it. I hope I have a good enough reputation around here to get over the potential resistance. But I would not be surprised if a few people stop eating the vegetables we grow.
@@REDGardens I'm a little torn by not telling them. It's a bit selfish, I suppose, but I really enjoy sharing what I grow with others, and I think it's perfectly safe. If they knew what they are eating gets part of its nutrient from my pee, they might not want my gift, or even worse, accept it then throw it in the trash so as not to hurt my feelings. I appreciate you sharing this video that explores the topic in significant depth.
This is such an important subject and I'm glad you brought it up. It's insane to flush valuable resources down the toilet and import replacements for them from Morocco.
It is insane to flush it all away, then import more from places and factories far away, and also to use huge resources to try to remove the nitrogen and P and K from the urine before we dump it into our rivers.
Female here. In the summer I keep a 5 gallon bucket with a slitted pool noodle as a seat as my outside potty. Saves going through the house and I use the urine in my garden. Thanks for this video!
That is a good use of a pool noodle!
Used the pool noodle seat on a campout for nighttime. Sleeping in car, opened front and back doors, bucket between doors, facing away from the rest of the campsite, towel clipped to doors.
Using a bedside commode while caregiver for elder family, collecting my unmedicated urine for dousing the leaf pile, coffee grounds and kitchen scrap compost . Only turned twice since Nov to Feb. It’s almost ready! Starting new pile of scraps. This is a first for me! No more critters digging in the compost since I resumed collecting urine for it again after a break!
This is an excellent idea. I’m a female who has recently purchased a homestead and is living alone and trying to save money and build a wonderful garden. Living alone makes it very easy to hide any weird urine collecting! For the last 8 months since I came here, I’ve started just squatting in the garden to pee, even going outside at night to do it. Mostly because I’ve realised I save a lot on expensive toilet flushes! But now I realise it could actually be used to fertilise, I’ll do your bucket/seat idea and dilute for use on garden.
NICE!!! Great idea.
I've collected urine in a bucket, added weeds and rotten wood chips . I used it to inoculate my fall leaves I collected in large garbage bags. About a litre to each bag. I then set them behind the garage for a year. These bags produce the most beautiful leaf mould. Pure gold for my gardens.
Excellent!
As a permaculturist absolutely opposed to the notion of putting any sort of biomass into the wastestream, I am very excited to see this excellent video and all the wonderful notes provided below it. This is a treasure trove of information here!
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Thanks for sharing that bit of math !
I have had huge success adding urine to a mound of orchard prunings and soil . Over the course of a year I added all of my urine diluted 5 to one with water to a six foot tall pile that was sort of like a hugel mound .
This resulted in a fungal dominant slow compost that yielded amazing worm rich soil in about two years . One year adding urine ,and one year inactive.
Nice!
Oh my goodness, YES! In a pile of mostly sawdust, with a bit of rabbit poop and kitchen scraps, our daily dumping of PP, the worms LOVED it. They were fat and shiny and beyond numerous. We've never seen so many worms in a regular compost pile.
The grass fed by our sceptic tank leach run-off system is ALWAYS the greenest and best grass on the farm. All household human outputs are diluted by all other water used within the household. Solids remain in the sump of the tank (being removed via suction tanker once every year) and the run-off overflow exits the tank at the top of the tank and is soaked away underground into our bottom paddock, feeding grass and some trees there. Both are the best on the farm by far!
Great video and an excellent experiment to undertake. Thank you for sharing! 👍
Definitely a sign of high nitrogen!
My great grandfather owned a small mail order nursery business back in the early 1900s. He included a pamphlet on how to plant and fertilize the trees and vines he sold. In that he mentioned that urine was good fertilizer for grape vines.
I live in a rural area and selectively pee outdoors, according to what needs fertilized. I can attest that blueberries are much sweeter when fertilized with fresh urine.
The time to give your blueberries the most urine (nitrogen) is in the early spring when they are building their leaves.
@@-whackd
Thanks 👍
We are coming up to Spring here in Australia and I've got 9 or so blueberry plants in pots.
This is good stuff. The thought of using my urine on my plants makes me want to puke but this video helps me see that i have been conditioned to think this way.
Excellent!
I have been using my urine for years and feel bad if i'm somewhere I have to flush it lol . A couple of years ago I grew a patch of corn just using urine and it did really well. . Like you were saying you will never have enough to do a big garden but you can use it on one section or a few plants . Thanks for sharing !
Yeah, I feel strange too when I flush some down the toilet! Like a waste of resources.
No! He said he didn’t have enough to share!😂
Speak for yourself buddy, all I drink is water and coffee 😅
Flushing the toilet every time you pee rather than going in a gardening can is a waste of resources actually. Most people flush fresh, treated water
Whatever you fertilize with urine, also add wood ash in the early spring and it will balance out everything else the plant needs other than nitrogen. The issue with wood ash is that it is alkaline so don't use it around blueberries and some raspberries.
I love your honesty and this awesome idea 👍😍👍
Thanks 🙂
My newest use for liquid gold is tinkling it on my numerous bags of Fall leaves to hopefully add a bacteria component to the fungal dominance of leaf mould. And hopefully speed decomposition of them. Another fantastic topic! Well done & Thanx
I know a lot of other people do the same, and it seems to work well for them.
Excellent video, articulated well around social stigma aspects which tends to be the main barrier for general adoption.
Thanks. That is the big barrier, technically there are fewer issues.
I use it exactly the same as you and It works fantastic with my plants!! Hope more people try It
Great to hear!
I started using pee when I learned it helps compost grass clippings. After a month I saw how much water is wasted on flushing pee. Now it seems ridiculous to flush water down the drain to flush more water down the drain (pee). A side benefit involves my ability to monitor my liquid intake. I also see the color of my pee. That can help me determine my nutrient level in my own body. My grass clipping compost is my best soil or potting mix. Using pee is a win, win.
Put it in your compost pile, it really works to speed up the process.
A liquid laundry detergent bottle with its spout removed is a convenient collector.😁
How much and how often ?
It really depends on the compost ingredients and the size. If there is a lot of brown material a pile can absorb a lot of urine. But if the pile is smaller and less high carbon stuff, adding urine can make the pile wet.
Thanks for the video, we all talk about circular agriculture, this is only possible by using our own excretion as well. Great that you brought up this topic. I have the vegetable garden 20 meters from home, and I pee on plants that can use it. Despite the pure form, I see no damage and never have enough pee.
Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
That is interesting. I think a lot of the possible damage comes from situations where the same plant or spot is regularly peed on, like outside pubs! It also probably depends on the amount of water you drink.
Feed the soil, the soil microbes feed the plants. Thanks, another good video.
I started using my urine after I noticed the fertilizer I was buying had uric acid for the nitrogen content. That led me to learn what fertilizer was actually made of.
I had a similar learning journey.
Urea and uric acid are very different things, but give them a while and they will both break down nicely.
PS. If it's uric acid you want, get a salamander or a dalmatian to piss on your compost. But any other mammals, birds and reptiles expel nitrogen in the form of urea salts.
@@RichWoods23Have to admit I doubted you about Dalmatians, but you are 100% right! 🎉
So glad you covered this topic. This is a big one for me when the topic of fertilization of the soil is brought up. I have used urine in making compost with carbon rich material, like wood and sawdust. It gives the urine time to breakdown and helps with the "Yuck" factor.
You have spoken of a subject (nutrient source) that was and still is a commonly used plant nutrient over many areas of the world and also used in the west more often than confessed. Waste not want not.
I agree with you that it is likely used a lot more than people let on.
Hell yea brother, thanks for having the courage to come out of the urine closet! I have been using it for a couple years now with impressive results, but am reluctant to share my secret. That may change, great channel by the way.
My Jerusalem artichokes/ sunchokes grew to 14 foot tall last autumn. I also made bonemeal from chicken bones, and calcium acetate from toasted eggshells and vinegar.
My condolences.
14 foot, wow!
Did you tend to get more yield from them in terms of tubers from the added nitrogen? Or was it just leaf and stem growth
My late grandma used it to her flowers and they're the healthiest I've seen.
Nice. Been a useful fertiliser since we started growing things!
I am collecting 5lt every other day just by myself. Mixing all in wood ash I burn during winter time. Add them on my cold compost.
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LOVE how much conversation this is generating btw! And, so many liked comments...
It is great! A topic that a lot of people are interested in.
Absolutely, more and more people all the time. @@REDGardens
Great info. I've only ever used urine in compost. I thought it would be too strong to use on plants. Glad I was wrong
It seems to work diluted for quite a few growers.
@@REDGardens glad to hear it. I will try it this year for sure
I started using my urine as fertilizer a few weeks ago and my plants are growing faster than ever
Thanks for covering this topic and explaining your application. We started using urine last spring and believe it is a valuable free resource. We placed one of our gardens directly over the drain field of our septic system and it flourished. We are currently fabricating a 5ft x 5ft stainless steel compost tumbler drum that will be driven by a gear box with auto timer. I plan to use urine in the mix to help accelerate the process. Happy growing!
I use recyclable environmentally friendly Cat litter (recycled compressed paper). The poops go to the toilet but the litter goes into the garden or compost bin. After I change the tray there are suddenly hundreds of thousands of works in the disposed material. Cat wee is great for works and the garden.
That is cool.
My cabbages get the occasional tinkle when they are still developing.
the family is always impressed by the size of the cauliflours, broccoli and sprouts...
Cool, does you family know why?
Family must be kept in the dark
I have also heard that people get squeamish about using urine in the garden and on edible plants. I have no such feelings. This was a great video.
Seems there are two types of people out there!
Thank you for discussing this. My grandfather burìed urine and faeces from our outdoor can toilet years ago in the garden. it breaks down and you cant even tell its in the soil after a few months. He grew carrots and potatoes in it.The carrots tasted pretty nice to me . He lived to 90. This all makes sense to me ,it means nothing is wasted and means most food is free The nutrients are just going round and round .in the food chain. Bury it all under a fruit tree if youre dicy about it. I hadnt thought about drug residue. I thought everything just returns to its basic minerals and chemicals.
I think buried faeces in the vegetable garden is a really good option.
@@REDGardens: I think it should go through some safeguarding thermal process first.
@@chriswalford4161 agreed, hot composting it would be what you'd want to do, even if it's your own feces, solid waste has some nasty stuff in it, and it WILL splash up onto plants when it rains so best to prevent a potential issue, plus it breaks it down faster
@@chriswalford4161 That would make a lot of people feel safer. I am not sure there is much risk with burying faeces, and then growing a crop on the ground the next season. The length of time, and the soil organisms dealing with a lot of the pathogens, and then the filter of the plant greatly reduces any risk in my opinion.
It has been shown that bacteria can even break down heavy metals in compost, but obviously we don't want to give them extra work to do if not necessary 😊
I have a composting toilet, however I keep my urine separate and mix it wood ash in a ratio of 1 table spoon of wood ash to 1 liter of liquid.
I imagine that would make quite a good fertiliser.
@@REDGardens it seems to work okay, but I haven't done a controlled trial.
great video, thank you for bringing up this subject, nice to live with one less stigma for humans to live with.
Thanks. Yes, fewer stigmas to deal with would be great.
Good conversation, well presented, with a drop or two of humor.
🙂
Great video. Tomatoes are often ideal as we prune the leaves away from the soil anyway, and their top nutrient needs match that of urine. Interesting to think about - though, we use it most directly in leafy compost and wood chip walkways.
Yeah, tomatoes would be a good crop to use it on.
I recommend Carol Steinfield's book 'Liquid Gold' to explore this subject fully.
After seeing this video. I gathered the courage to ask my family to keep the P. I have been using my own for a couple of years now. But now it is a different ball game.
Awesome!
Composting toilets provide humanure compost that l, after high temperature thermophilic processes are done, provide something that looks and smells like good old soil. With something like JLF, urine can be incorporated into the mix too... Possibilities are unlimited. I haven't used "completed" dry toilet material for vegetables (and I probably won't) but for trees and such, it's gold. Just take care of dilution levels. Overload on N and aphid infestation is a thing from what I could find 😂
Excellent, realistic and needed video, Bruce.
Thanks! I don't have an issue using well composted material like that around vegetables, as I figure that anything really problematic won't last the process or time, and we wash everything before eating it anyway. Too much nitrogen can be an issue, but in many cases it is a limiting nutrient.
I store in a 55 gallon container over winter along with soaking char in another 55 gallon container. Great results. Thanks for spreading this information. These fertilizers these fertilizers where used by our ancient ancestors for thousands of years. It supersizes me that the squeamish often don't mind animal dung in their gardens. Chicken manure, bovine dung and the like are most common. Most pathogens of solid and liquid human excreta die in a 6 month period. One does have to consider vectors like slugs and snails when dealing with liver flukes.
It is strange that animal dung is fine but our urine isn’t, for so many people.
@@REDGardens
For sheep, cow, horse (etc) manure I think it is due to the herbivore factor, which is likely to contain less pathogens. My older Border Collie will even consume raw, fresh wallaby scat occasionally from around my property. Whilst fresh it still has gut microbes from the marsupial contained within, but I'm sure he would also go for deer scat.
One thing we can do to reduce the ick factor (to a degree) is to use the urine in composting instead, if we have sufficiently carbonacious heaps.
Gets it a little further removed from the actual veggies we eat.
That does seem to be more acceptable for many people.
Yes I have good luck with my garden i just piss in between the rows and the garden looks good
Excellent topic and video, as always. I use urine all the time and it's a "huge" difference. I can't get manure so comfrey and urine really help. I was told to use it fresh on crops, but can't see what waiting a few days would make. It's great on leafy stuff like coriander. I heard it's good on the trace elements.
Brave to mention the shit question. On the allotment I got some really harsh responses at even the mention of using it, or research. I have a feeling like how no dig might have seemed crazy years ago the idea of using human waste will change. I read the Bill Gates foundation was encouraging composting toilets or something in parts of Africa and it was having very good results.
Yes, things are changing, but slowly.
Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
Composting toilets are good but anything Bill Gates is apart of is bad. Evil.
You do, you experiment, you test, you try out, and you survive you keep pushing forward! And do not look back for very long, because you,we are curious animals!
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Just rented a space to set up a huge garden and bought a Kampa Khazi camping toilet that comes with a bucket which I intend to use as a compost toilet for urine only. Contents will go in a thermocomposter but, thanks to your video, I guess I will also collect urine to fertilize my plants in a more direct way ;)
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Use of waste (of all kinds) as a resource for or by something is the topmost subject of interest that matters to me. Given everything cycles, the best practice when growing any system is often forming some management practice that mimics nature. Looking at where and at what point a waste becomes a healthy resource rather than pollution. Any waste is simply an unused resource.
Yes! Focusing on the waste is a really good place to design appropriate systems.
Thanks again Bruce for a very interesting video.
I like the idea of the Venturi pump.
I use urine as a compost accelerator but plan to feed my potatoes after watching your earlier trials.
I first came across using urine on the compost heap in the early 1980’s on Papa Westray in the Orkney islands when an old crofter to me that he peed on it. Crofters in the Western Isles have used it for fixing dye in cloth and the Romans as a dry cleaning fluid! Not sure what Roman house parties would smell like.
I’ll watch this video again to glean more from it. I’m just about to head down to my allotment.
Thanks again.
Glad you got some use out of the video. many of us are on that journey towards a more sensible nutrient cycling, but some of us are finding it harder to really start. Peeing on the compost is a really good base to work from.
Look at ancient Roman dry cleaners, all they used was urine to wash white togas clean because it breaks down into ammonia if left standing for awhile. Cheers
I have done the same for over 50 years and add it to the compost bin to speed up decomposition.
That is a lot of fertility diverted!
Another great video and yes, around where I live there is the same stigma regarding human urine. Initially this could be used on your lawn or added to compost, makes for nice green grass and you don't freak people out if you put it next to your plants. (although mice, birds and cats will do so anyway)
That stigma is so strange to me now, but using urine as you recommend is a good way to get around it. Using the urine on plants that will be used for composting offers two 'filters' or steps separating the urine from the stuff we eat.
Thanks for the insights. I use a lot of what I learn/remix it a little for my garden projects. The knowledge is much appreciated.
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Was thinking about this for a while. Thanks for the video.👍
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Great topic. I have been using this on my fruit trees. On my chop and drop compost. My inground worm farms straddle important trees and use food scraps, cardboard, a little chop and drop, leaves. Moistened 50% 50% water with P. Brad Lancaster is a water saving , nutrient cycling master in this regard as well. He is so innovative and inspiring . Living on a dry continent with poor soils, every drop of moisture and soil nutrition is just so valuable….certainly no to flushing nutrients down the toilet to waste and pollute our streams and oceans.
Yes, definitely different in a dry context with poor soil.
I wee onto my woodchip piles quite regularly and I do it in the ground around my fruit trees. Never tried collecting it, but I've never wasted it when I'm outside. It always feeds the garden rather than me going indoors for a pee ;)
Pissing on woodchip piles is a good option!
@@REDGardens I had a huge pile for 2 years after clearing a load of trees to let more light in. I used to wee on one side of the pile and when I eventually broke into it (last summer) I found that side (which was also south facing so I don't know if that played a part) was way further along than the shadow side that I couldn't get to to pee on.
@@ashmash1934 Very interesting observation.
The most complete explanation on the subject that I have found. Thank you
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I often pee directly into my compost piles. When applying urine to garden beds I dilute it about 10 to 1 with water and add a bit of liquid fermented seaweed fertilizer. Plus the other soil amendments in the beds - pelletized chicken manure, bone meal, alfalfa meal, compost. Basically right along the same lines as you. The urine amounts to a minor supplement over and above everything else, though, I think, more quickly available to plants while we wait for chicken manure and alfalfa meal to break down in the soil.
Urine in a spray bottle, squirted at key locations as scent markers, can help deter certain pests. Deer and raccoons in my local context (Nova Scotia, Canada). Works better for the raccoons. Deer seem to become habituated to it after a few weeks.
I would use more urine if I could get more, pharmaceutical free urine, than just what I can produce.
I also think it is more quickly available to the plants, and useful for young plants in the spring when the ground is too cold for a lot of active soil biology.
@@REDGardens aha. Cool soil application. Good one. Hadn't thought of that. Will be employing that one.
I've been using 'recycled beer' as a means to add moisture to compost for years, especially when adding shredded cardboard.
I always use urine on my shredded leaf mould piles. Nothing better to kick start the decomp process. I water those piles with a 5 to 1 dilution. I usually have a fine, well decomped batch by March or April. I add grass clippings too.
That sounds great, to get compost from leaves so quickly, and an easy use of urine.
I had a house that I planted California Poppys to the entire front yard. Using Vitamin P in the yard made the poppys grow up to 2 feet high and the flowers were flowering incredibly. They were also heavily mulched w wood chips (from ChipDrop, local tree wood). People would take photos of my house, that’s how amazing the Ca poppys were.
It's only been a few hundred years since all human societies were using urine commonly for all sorts of daily processes (like washing and dyeing clothes, tanning leather and growing food). The habits have lapsed in certain countries for understandable public santitation concerns. Where you have a large mass of people, you have to be careful how human waste interacts with your water supply water table, and food sales, for example. Similarly with human and animal carcasses, are also a great and necessary supply of nitrogen and micro life for the continuing growth cycles but managing the use of these resources can be difficult en masse.. Now that we know more about how to manage water supplies, understand the dangers (such as spreading cholera) and can track pathogens, hopefully we can carefully learn how to re-integrate human waste back into standard growing cycles for larger communities. I would note that, as with the dangers that can come with bottling, canning and preserving foods, (and burial) the potential risks are not to be understated or dismissed as hysterical. Botulism, cholera and ergotism were common causes of death for millions of people and should be respected. We move onwards and upwards with our learning, not backwards. All best wishes.
it is such a shame that we developed the systems for just flushing or disposing of anything that caused problems, before we really understood what the issues were, and how they can be avoided in much more appropriate ways. We have centuries of sewer construction, and public perception to undo.
Thank you for sharing this... I have done this sparingly for years!!! Often on new beds or compost I am about to use......
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I think that if you use it over the off season like composting in place it is a good way to build fertility
Because it rains so much here in Ireland, I am hesitant to put it on the soil over the winter, as I figure a lot of it might wash away.
@@REDGardens even in the greenhouses?
@@victorybeginsinthegarden Yes, that would be a better option.
RUclipsr Project Diaries did a video about 5 years ago about urine which I also found to be quite imformative and iv'e been using it in my garden since then.
That is a good video, thanks for pointing it out.
Weird that you should post this today. I was just trying to research this yesterday! A problem I find is that if not used fresh, it can become smelly. I wanted to find out if it keeps or whether the efficacy of this fertiliser degrades over time. All I could find on the topic related to urine testing but it does appear the chemical content does significantly change over time. As far as I can tell the nitrites increase over time but there's little useful research on its use as fertiliser. Thanks for yet another great video. Yours is by far the best gardening channel on RUclips.
The smell of aged urine is from ammonia. Which is volatilized nitrogen. So it should be expected that the effectiveness as fertilizer decreases as urine ages. Then again, the smell decreases a lot when diluting the urine before aging it. I think this is because ammonia is well soluble in water up to a certain concentration. So this could be a way to preserve the effectiveness as fertilizer when aging for 6 months, as often recommended as a sanitizing pre-treatment when using it in communal gardens. (No sources, sry. Just a brain dump from from memory and experience.)
I agree with @Djaz T., the smell seems to be mostly ammonia which is being released to the air, which means that some of it is lost. I think if the lid is kept on the container only a small amount will be released in storage. Apparently the urea has to be converted to ammonia, before it can be converted to the nitrite/nitrate forms that are useful to the soil and plants, so the smell is probably just part of this transformation process that has to happen anyway.
@@REDGardens Have traveled to some third world countries; Madagascar and Tanzania' where they do not have public restrooms and people urinate practically everywhere. The smell remains for quite a while.
It's best to use on the same day as the chemical composition changes as it degrades.
Many thanks for both the great information and having the courage to talk about something that many feel is taboo.
Hats off to your courage for openly tackling this topic. Completely agree with every point made. I heard from a different gardening channel of only one case where it was too much. The gardener's husband heard it was beneficial so he would pee directly on the base of the same fruit tree once every day, and it wound up with an aphid infestation.
Thanks. I have heard a few similar stories.
Yes a great summary and helpful suggestions to the home gardener .not sure how long I can leave urine in big container wit h fresh water added
And rain water added ...does the chemistry of the urea get changed and become ineffective ?
I appreciate your videos. I use urine on my leaf/yard waste compost since it's carbon-heavy. It really speeds up the decomposition. I also use urine when I overwinter garden beds. Water the soil, then cover with a thick layer of raked leaves. It provides a warm home for insects and worms and by spring the ground is rich and ready for planting with little to no effort.
Great option!
Using a jug is a good idea. I always over fill my watering can when filling it directly... 🙃
To avoid any whoosh, I'm joking that I release that much in one go.
That can be a problem!
Thank YOU for straightening out the human mind fellow living creature.
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Little and often is a pretty good rule to go by, it's been working for me when I'm trying to get new beds filled with municipal compost established. Thank you for showing the siphon! I've been wondering how I could "inject" teas into my drip lines and this seems to be a good solution.
Yes, I am looking forward to being able to 'inject' all kinds of liquid fertility into the drip lines, as it makes the whole process of using large batches of nettle/comfrey/weed tea a lot easier. Spreading that stuff by hand with a watering can is not an easy job if I want to keep the smell off the plants!
just don't pee at the roots of a smaller tree too many times a year or you might start affecting the balance.
Unless it's in a spot where you don't want it, we used to kill tree saplings for fun with my brother when we were kids by directly applying a few days worth from two boys on a single sapling...
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I have friends in Florida who swear by Vitamin P for their gardenias. The father of the house uses it freely and they have 5 foot high gardenia plants covered with blooms.
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i often pee directly on fruit trees in the garden, easy, directly applied and safe
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I will have to try this, ive heard about it before. We only have one restroom in our home, so, sometimes we have to go in a red solo cup when someone else in in there and we cant hold it. Maybe next time, ill just use it on my garden. I know what i and my family intake and am fine with it. Thanks for a very informative video!
If you have a high compost bin and a garden with some privacy, you could use a pee funnel and pee directly on the compost. Using the compost bin as a spare bathroom!
There are lots of options, though some of them are easier for people with a penis! If you are already ok with peeing into a cup, then you are already a major step along the path of developing decent nutrient cycling!
Interesting video. I especially like your advice about using urine right away, or, as some here in the comments have mentioned, mixing it with other things and/or composting it. While it 99.9% sterile, E coil is the most common pathogen found in it. So not giving that germ a chance to multiply, diluting, or composting would be safe. My spouse pees on our hugelkultur bed, as I know it needs nitrogen.
I think the movie The Martian should have disabused most people regarding their, uh, crappy attitudes toward human waste.
Yeah, it makes sense to me to use it before something has a chance to really colonise the urine, but perhaps that happens within a few hours or days. I also wonder how public perception of about using human waste did change because of that movie. I suspect it introduced a very new idea to a lot of people, which is a start. I don't think anyone would suddenly think about doing it themselves based on that movie, but massive social change does take a lot of little things.
Thank you for this video. I think it is an important subject for the reasons you have outlined so well. With urine, there's one challenge though which I'd like to mention: Urine contains a lot of salt (sodium chloride). In order to not ruin the soil in the long run it is nessecary to wash out the salt from time to time. While washing out nutrients may seem a negative thing at first it is actually nessecary to get rid of the salt load that urine brings.
I wonder how long that would take. In our outside gardens we get so much rain it isn’t really an issue, but in the polytunnel it could be.
Let`s not forget when nitrogen breaks down it converts to ammonia so I personally never use old urine unless it get dumped onto my compost pile which mostly gets fresh ish urine...2 days old tops.
Good video Red.
Thanks.
Apparently in Nepalese organic farming they are aging the urine for a minimum of 2 weeks so that the ammonia kills off bacteria.
I agree with you Sir. In fact I will do it to my trees asap.
🙂
Been collecting my urine for about 2 years now. When I don't need it for crops I fertilize my lawn (At night, when no one's around). I then collect grass clipping which I mix in my compost pile. Great for tomatoes in the late season when the compost gets low on fertility. My biggest problems come from winter, they are 3-4 months of snow here, and my compost pile is too small for that amount of urine.
Finding a use or spot to put the urine over winter is an interesting challenge, one I don't have in this climate.
My neighbors multiple dogs have pee'd in one spot of their fenced yard for years. On the downslope side of the pee spot, a 25 foot long section of grass is always dark green & healthier that the surrounding grass- even during the winter months.
Cool, makes sense
Bare minimum it is great jumpstarting compost piles.
Yep.
High Ann!
@@ChessKombat hello 👍🏼
I use my fishtank water over my flower beds does wonders.
I imagine it would be quite nutrient rich.
Much appreciated your deep dive into the subject, just wondering even if people are on pharmaceuticals, after an earthworm has eaten the compost with urine whether it would still be toxic. Maybe that's a study which still needs to be done.
Generally speaking, pharmaceuticals will decompose in earth better than in water. So it is better to put such urine onto a non food growing part of the garden, than to flush it down the toilet.
Yes, we need a lot more research into the potential impacts of pharmaceuticals in the soil ecosystem.
I think hormones are more of an issue, I have faith in earthworms ability to detox.
'night soil' is the term for human faeces but it's been used for centuries by multiple cultures 😊
Also, seeing as the best form of fertilizer available to plants on planet earth is the nitrogen formed by lightning (NO3). Have you considered aquiring a long lightning rod for the garden to test if there is a measurable improvement during stormy seasons?
Umm, no. We don't get a stormy season around here, very rarely any lightning, but that isn't the main reason for not doing that! 🙂
I prefer to stick tot he ways of getting nitrogen tat are much see exciting!
@@REDGardens
Nitrosomas and nitrobacter will happily convert ammonium into nitrate (NO3) with zero risk, no lightning rod required :)
A very small amount of potassium hydroxide will raise the pH enough to stop the bacterial conversion of urea to ammonia, and thus prevent it becoming smelly. An excellent source of potassium hydroxide is wood ash. Thus you can transport large quantities from cities to fields without worrying about smell.
That is interesting!
The worst part about using urine is when you realize that it's free, provides a lot of nutrients but you really just don't pee enough to feed yourself.
That is the worst part!
It's great for greening up a lawn, and I find it deters the local cats if applied daily.
More reasons to drink more tea or beer.
More reasons to drink!
We in Iraq have been cleaning the waste of cows, sheep, and human waste for plants, especially in winter, by diluting it with water, and the results are very impressive.
Fantastic. Now I can openly admit that I pee in the compost bins. Bwhahaha.
We are in it together.
Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
Yay! Hello there in Africa.
i add it directly to my garden beds in the off season by walking sideways as I pee, walking down the bed. Rain then helps dilute it
I would be a bit concerned doing that where I live as it probably rains enough to wash it out of the topsoil.
For hundreds of years, the Chinese have used "night soil" as the ONLY fertilizer that made all the vegetable growth available for the gold rushes across the world.
The classic Chinese vegetable garden as seen in artwork from many gold rush in Australia, the USA and elsewhere has become so common we have forgotten the essential part played by the non-mining peoples that appear in every historical mining site.
"Night soil" is, was and continues to be used as fertilizer in vegetable and other gardening systems.
It was the basis of agriculture in many places for most of the time people ave been growing food.
In the past apparently men were encouraged to wee on the wood ash from the fire for the garden.
I just pee in my compost, so it’ll end up in the right place eventually.
That is the easiest option.
@@REDGardens For men.
@@HelenRullesteg True, though a friend of mine just squats over a bucket and then dumps the urine into the compost.
I was got told as a kid to piss on the compost heap at grandads he reckoned it break its down quicker and adds to it
Peetatoes!
haha!
I really like the way you circumvent the "iieeek" moments people may have as you explain how you use urine as a fertiliser. My grandpa kept telling to please pee in the vergetalble garden when ever we want... he had no second thoughts and would have otherwise used horse and cow manure and urine..:-)