We live in a slum in East Africa and teach sustainable, regenerative agriculture to the locals. We have a rabbit house with 170 rabbits, and the cages are designed where all the urine from the rabbits is automatically collected in a holding tank connected to our irrigation system. When we irrigate, a fertigator mixes the urine with the irrigation water and the dilute urine is sprayed on the crops. It is a gentle, balanced foliar fertilizer, and seems to discourage all manner of pests. When we turn the sprinklers on, you can sometimes see a cloud of bugs escaping the raised beds. We use the urine primarily as a fertilizer, but it seems to handle most pests. If that is not enough, tobacco grows on our compound almost like weeds, and mixing smashed tobacco leaves and some smashed hot peppers with the urine seems to take care of any pests not taken care of by the dilute urine alone. The cages also automatically collect the rabbit poop which is an excellent manure, and can be applied directly to raised beds without composting. We dedicate some fraction of our raised beds to growing timothy hay and alfalfa to feed the rabbits, so we have virtually no input costs in keeping the rabbits, and they provide most of our nutrient and pest controls needs for the compound. This alone justifies the keeping of the rabbit project. Now, this size of rabbit colony produces a great abundance of meat, and the meat is just a free benefit of the nutrient/pest control program. We are now investigating to expand the nutrient program by adding several tilapia tanks. Rather than recirculate and filter the fish water, we will simply use the fish water as a nutrient spray for the farm. Sort of like an open loop aquaponic system. Anyway, I am learning a whole lot from your channel, and we are finally achieving some really amazing results on this farm.
For seedlings you need to mix 1 part urine to 20 parts water. The pepper was most likely burnt. For larger plants 10 parts water to 1 part urine. You were using it way too strong. Been using urine in garden for years.
THANK YOU!!! I can't believe he dumped a cup of urine directly onto the plant. No wonder the pepper up and died and the lettuce had issues. I've used urine for 20 years.
Thought the same thing, used straight pee on a plant once and it died within hours. Figured it just needed to be more dilute. I use MG, but I do like 1/4 the recommended strength and just fertilize more often/as needed. Since your plant basically is forced to absorb chemical fertilizers, I figure consistent low doses are better for the plant, then hitting them hard every 2 weeks.
Human urine is a good fertilizer for plants. It is a natural source of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which are essential nutrients for plant growth. Urine is also a good source of other trace elements, such as calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. Urine can be used as a fertilizer in a variety of ways. It can be diluted with water and applied directly to the soil, or it can be composted and then used as a fertilizer. Urine can also be used to make liquid fertilizer, which is a concentrated form of urine that can be diluted with water and applied to plants. When using urine as a fertilizer, it is important to dilute it properly. Urine is very concentrated, and if it is not diluted, it can burn plant roots. A good rule of thumb is to dilute urine 10:1 with water. It is also important to note that urine should not be used on plants that are sensitive to nitrogen, such as tomatoes and potatoes. These plants can be damaged by the high levels of nitrogen in urine. Overall, human urine is a safe and effective fertilizer for plants. It is a natural source of nutrients, and it is free and easy to obtain. If you are looking for a natural way to fertilize your plants, urine is a good option. Here are some additional tips for using urine as a fertilizer: Collect urine in a clean container. Dilute urine 10:1 with water. Apply urine to the soil around the plants, not directly on the leaves. Do not use urine on plants that are sensitive to nitrogen. Be sure to test the soil pH before applying urine, as urine can lower the pH of the soil. If you are using urine to make liquid fertilizer, be sure to store it in a cool, dark place.
From being a fish keeper I understand the nitrogen cycle. Basically pee is ammonia, not great, you want bacteria to convert it first to nitrite, and then to nitrate before you put it on plants. So if you want to a really good fertilizer you want to setup a mini sewage treatment plant in your backyard. When I had my large fresh water aquarium setup I used to pump dirty tank water out onto the lawn and also dump all the muck from cleaning the filters on the lawn.
I went 100% organic a couple of years ago and I've never had healthier plants than when I began fertilizing with pee! It works wonders for building soil and getting your compost...to compost! lol I do a weak application a couple of times for seedlings and then a stronger feeding or two went the plants are established and that's really all it takes. I'm raking in a massive harvest so far this year. Canning, dehydrating, and freezing my homegrown food every day for the last month or so. Shelves are stacked!
Ah...yep. I grow in the dirt with compost and I remineralize my soil every year with a complete mix. I think you burnt that poor pepper right up. LOL That way WAY too much pee for those little guys...
Thanks for your thoughtful and informative experiment. I have been gardening and composting for years and I did my own experimentation by adding urine to my compost at various intervals. One result was a more rapid breakdown of the materials being composted and the end result was a robust, high nitrogen soil amendment. I used NO chemical fertilizers or pesticides and got great results. I didn't use a control along side the compost / soil mixture, but I had used Miracle Gro in previous years and the results were comparable. Gardening is the process of growing soil, not plants.
I can say that urine is all my corn needed one year. It had a few yellowing leaves and I added some of my yellow and it’s yellow disappeared and it was the best corn I’ve ever eaten. I was going to plant it for shade (high desert) and let the deer eat it, but it was so beautiful and delicious I didn’t share with them. I did give them all of my broccoli this year and most of my cabbage 😊 I’m a carnivore.
I am planning to plant food for rabbits and squirrels on my suburban lot and get myself a pistol crossbow. Seems like the easiest way for a carnivore to get food from their property.
Glad you didn't delete this video. Every failure or success must be recorded and now that you've published this on RUclips your theory and results are cast in concrete. Whether your experiment is flawed is for the next RUclipsr to resolve. However you've answered a lot of questions and gave us closure for this. Great experiment you handled this like a real science project thanks for putting this up!
Or just don't pour it without properly diluting it. Lots of studies were done on this and the piss needs to be dilute with 5-10 parts water. Not poured directly on a plant and then an equal measure of water, which would be 50-50.
I started trying it at home, and I disagree with most of the ratios I see here. I've decided dilution of 30:1 is my baseline. I wouldn't bother going below 20:1, perhaps 15:1 if it's a plant thta can really use the mineral ratios in our bio-product. Of course, I began this experiment with repotted plants and dracena cuttings, in store bought potting soil. Even though I mixed together all my spent soil, and the unopened stuff, I'm sure it had significant added minerals anyway. But once I started diluting it much more the results have been pretty good.
This is the scientific process not a failure! 🙂 The goal of growing healthy plants with only urine failed I suppose. But as an experiment, evidence was obtained that could lead to the next iteration of the experiment. I think millennial gardener was hard on himself saying that.
your experiment was correct with the caveat that you used a full spectrum fertilizer and a limited spectrum fertilizer. i have used urine as a fertilizer for over 40 years. for the vegetables it should be used with compost, as it is correct that with the compost you will attain the full spectrum of nutrients. with shrubberies and flowers i mulch with grass clippings, the only reason to have a "yard" and to mow, and pour a half gallon of urine during january and february per plant and plant area, the reason is to let it "cool" and lower the salts, which is a minor concern---most people know what happens when you pee, or your dog pees, in the same place all the time: plant matter will die. i also have the advantage of having heated with wood all those years and i pour a half gallon of urine into a five gallon steel bucket of ash. and during winter all my plants get four liberal scoops of wood ash using a garden trowel on top of the end of the season mowings---it heightens the phosphorous and potassium which the urine lacks. i also use the woodash/urine mix in my compost during the winter for the same reason. i have had nothing but success with this and stopped using any pre made (man made) fertilizers a long, long time ago.
@jebsteward666 Great info on how you use urine as fertilizer, but I have a question. I'm fairly new to using urine, so I've been diluting in with water 15:1 and applying to my potted plants such as blueberries once per week. Is that too weak of a dilution? Should I go 50/50 or will that burn the plants?
If you conduct this experiment again, may I suggest that you dilute the urine down 1:10 into a separate container and mix it well before you feed your plants. In order to dilute the solution down it needs to be properly mixed with water before not after. Essentially you fed your plants full strength urine and washed it down with some water.
Yes, I was surprised to see this as well. When he poured the 50% urine solution, (and not more diluted to say, 10%) I thought to myself "he's burning those tiny baby roots!" Well, live and learn... Is there any way to mitigate the sodium content? Mixing at 1:10 and using it as a supplement fertilizer only reduces your fertilizer cost by 10%. Also, maybe a little mycorrhizae or lactoferment solution as a mediator would be helpful in both, and might help synthesize whatever nutrients are available in both. Either way, this was a great experiment, and I'm grateful that he conducted it!
A friend gave me some heirloom lettuce sets. I planted them in a planter. He stopped by a few days later an noticed that they were nitrogen deficient by the color of the leaves. He had some commercial fertilizer in his truck and offered me some but I told him I wanted to try diluted urine instead. I did, and in a couple of days the leaves were beautiful. I was sold.
@@namethem00 - I actually don't 'know' the science of it all, but when I tell oh to relieve himself around a citrus tree....and a 'wee' bit in the potted dwarf lemon tree . NEVER 'all' the supply...just a 'wee' bit...and then the trees get a drenching next morning. We don't have 'critters' out here in FNW Qld like many places do around the world, but have read that human 'odours' may deter wild ones. Have not harvested a lemon thusfar, as it's only started to bud and flower up beautifully at the end of the first year in a big container. The mandarins however.........we 'share' with the local cockatoos.......lovely mid sized tree filled with flowers AND fruit and many of the low hanging fruit well shaded under where any of the interloping 'diners' can reach. Quite happy with that......we get some and they get many...and the bees get a heap with the flowers. Big win all around I'd say👌👌👍👍💕💕
Take a jug. An old large Juice jug will work well. Put bits of food scraps in it. Fill it about 10% with the food scraps. Fill it with water. Close it up and put it in the sun for a week. Then put it in a place that gets light but NOT direct sunlight. Shake it up really well once a week. Leave it sit for about 3 to 4 months shaking it once a week. Now you have a super charger for your plants dirt. If you buy Juice or other drinks and have one of these large jugs once a week or more. Then just make one every week. Keep the jugs organized so you know which is newest and which is oldest. These can go for years if not opened but once you open it, use it up. Oh and be ready for a nasty smell. This is like making your own MiracleGro but better.
Add the urine to compost. It helps break the cellulose from wood down to lignins. As far as testing, you could run a parallel test feeding MG to a compost. Then use the compost to grow plants for the experiment.
I'd like to see a part two with: 1. More Samples of seedlings 2. Fresh urine vs aged (test if there is nitrogen gased off due to N cycle) 3. Your local top Soil test instead of no nutrient test, (since is probably how most people will be using it) 4. Intensity and PPM of urine vs MG (I'd like to know if they would perform the same with more diluted more frequent feedings )
So you want more samples, and fresher pee...and you have no idea why that might be a problem. I've seen the same thing with people who advocate electroculture. When somebody runs an experiment, and conclude thst its bullcrap, everyone has an excuse for why it didn't work. You have a favored result, and you're embarrased. So you try to discredit.
Where is this guy getting the urine? Is it clean, healthy, pee or not. Is there RX drugs in the pee? What's the person's water/food intake? Miracle grow is poison. That's a fact that's not going to change, but if dude is not taking care of himself and peeing straight medicated acid, he could change what he is doing to see different results.
@@A.E.Lanman777Clearly you didn't watch the entire video He explains in detail where, when and how the urine was collected, What the donor's diet consisted of and what medications could possibly be in it. Why are you asking us to watch the video for you?
Nitrogen in urine does gas off and the nitrogen changes form. Urine is recommended to store air tight and use as fertilizer fresh, that is, within 24 hours. I am also interested to see the results of fresh vs month old.
Great experiment, I think the PEE is an excellent amendment for soil that is already rich (compost etc.) in micro-nutrients, but still probably lacks sufficient N and K since these are required in large amounts. Another item to consider however is that the pepper plant may have been burned. I have come across references to university studies that have concluded that urine needs to be cut by a ration of 8 parts water to 1 part urine to avoid being burned. 50/50 may be too concentrated. Though I still think you are exactly right. Pee simply isn't a stand alone fertilizer, but may be quite useful as an augmentation.
Your logic makes sense. Wild animals pee in the forest and fields but their urine (and poop) is mixed with whatever else is in the soil to be used by the plants. I saw a video where someone added their pee to mulch which they kept in a wire cage. That mulch eventually found its way around trees and plants. The mulch contained worms so they were happy.
I never expected it to be a complete fertilizer, but I did expect that it had some of what a plant needs. I have had other people tell me that they thought human urine would kill the plants. So this is an interesting experiment to see. Thanks
Besides the 10-1-4 application being a bit strong at 1 to 1, better at least 1 to 5 dilution, consider the gradual concentration of salt, NaCl, from your diet. Most of our western diet is a bit rich in salt, tasty in our food, but easy to accumulate in the planting medium. Some folk are learning to moderate the NaCl but most of us use more than MDR 1,500 mg/day. Some plants can tolerate salinity, but not as much as we need, or like, so have to consider that.
And their fluid intake and exercise routine. Im a heavy duty water drinker that also sweats a LOT, so my gallon of pee would be MUCH more clear than his was. And if you collect pee right after vigorous workouts, there will be significantly more ammonia in the mix. Lots of variables with the pee
Depends on how fresh the pee it. Very fresh it is sterile and the N is in the form of urea, nontoxic. But let it stand around a while contaminated and it will ferment into ammonia and become toxic. Space agencies are planning to use human pee when growing food or oxygen producing plants for long term space travel.
@7thsluglord363 looking at the thumbnail of apple cider coloured whizz, my first thought was, "My God are you dehydrated!!" Idk maybe it turns brown when it sits?? But that can't be true because I had a barbarian ex who used bottles and they didn't turn brown....
I use urine for a fertilizer. you were burning the plants. you MUST mix the urine with water BEFORE feeding it to the plants. a stronger mixture is 5 to 1, so say you had 1 cup of urine you would need to mix it with at least 5 cups of water before feeding it to the plants. and even then, that is a strong fertilizer mixture. a more common is 10 to 1. I tend to do 5 to 1 once a month and 10 to 1 for the rest. my gardens EXPLODE. way better than they ever do with miracle grow, which even then is better than my neighbors. this includes my plants grown in coco-coir planter pots.
this is another great video with a clear conclusion. Maybe consider making another one with a different purpose: "How to use urine effectively". You could test how urine works with compost and/or in the ground and compare the performance to what you found it this video. As you know, many people want to use urine. Even though it isn't as good as MG, you might identify some "optimal" ways to use it. (Also - would it make a difference to let the urine set for a few weeks before you use it?) Love your channel!
Awesome! Great job doing a video that was fun to watch, nicely paced, and very thought-provoking. I definitely want to try a test like this, too. I had a garden expert tell me that plants need different amounts of N,P,K during the lifecycle, because N is good for green growth, P is for blooming/roots, and K is overall health.
Newer flower / rose gardener here. I live in a townhouse that recently allowed me to remove a dying bush from two areas in front of my unit. The plants weren’t doing great. Actually, one perennial flowering plant wasn’t flowering, my Stalk flower weren’t growing tall, my delphinium looked like Sh!t and my rose was all but dead. I tested the soil and found the P,K were both “adequate” but the Nitrogen was depleted. I peeeeeeed and diluted it approx 1/10 and watered the garden with that (and cheated with fish emulsion 0-10-10 and bone meal 0-20-0) and I think it works! Within a few days my rose has new red shoots (red are blooms and not leaves) and my stalk is flowering / growing and the delphinium is growing new shoots. I also added this to the flowers in an already established garden and same, the rose is going nuts with new shoots. My honeysuckle is flowering like mad and growing new shoots. I am a believer. I don’t use Miracle grow as I prefer organic Alaska Fish Emulsion, Dr earth’s and superthrive.
@@oh_boy_oh_boy22 why, yes I did. So, I found the urine started to smell and it might have been in my head, but fish fertilizer works just as well and the smell goes away. Also, worm castings from my worm bin that I started since have really helped!
So interesting. My vegetable garden is 99 percent organic. I say 99 % as once in a while it do use a tiny bit of Miracle Gro. during periods of plant stress. Thanks.
I have never thought of urine as a complete fertilizer though it does contain more than N, P, and K, but another variable is pH, and urine can have a very high pH especially if consuming a lot of veggies. When I was on a very low carb diet, I was checking the pH of my urine daily, and there were times when it was about a 9! Few plants like or can tolerate a high soil pH (tomatoes are very sensitive, in my experience, to strong urine whether that's from high pH or high nitrogen and can easily decline as your experiment showed), and you don't have compost in your mix for helping to buffer the pH of the urine so you will need more water to reduce the PH. I suggest a redo of the experiment with a lower concentration (maybe 10-50%) the whole length of the experiment--just more volume as the plant grows. I believe you said that the plants looked equally healthy for the first two weeks. Perhaps the 2-week mark is when you jumped the concentration. Another good experiment would be to see how long plants can remain happy on urine alone without supplementing with other nutrients. The nitrogen content of urine is also affected by diet. I consume a lot of a food that increases nitrogen content.
I agree, a diet very high in whole food plant foods, especially veggies and fruits, tends to leak to high alkalinity in the urine and saliva. A diet very high animal protein (especially meat) tends to lead to a more acidic urine and saliva. A diet high in junk foods also tends to lead to a more highly acidic urine and saliva. A diet high in both of the just former will tend to lead to a very highly acidic urine and saliva. My well water is somewhat acidic. Back when I used to grow stuff (gave up because way too much shade, not enough sun), I used to mix fresh urine with a a little epsom salt, some kelp powder, and a very little bit of wood ash, all in a lot of well water.
This was a very intelligent and creative gardening experiment. Great work! And thank you for sharing your findings with us! I'm very impressed with your well-spoken conclusions and I love meeting the clever mind behind another great gardener! I look forward to seeing more of your videos.
I will respond under here so maybe it gets seen. So one big problem i see with your experiment @The Millennial Gardener. You use the same scoop with out cleaning it to pour both the pee and the miracle grow into the pots. This was slightly rinsed when you added rain water but you did not do this each time. This is grounds for cross contamination of the different fertilizers and taints the experiment. I applaud the effort and the idea, I suggest a more mindful application of these ideas. I only say this to attempt to assist, not as a knock on your abilities or your channel. I support everything you are doing. I think your doing great, keep it up!
He didn’t use the pee in the right concentration. 1:10 is what I’ve read so he killed it by burning it with too strong a dose. Another person posted that seedlings require even more dilution, 1:20. Using a sample size of one also isn’t scientifically worthy of showing any results anyways. What if the one plant had some root damage from the transplant? He just turned off many ppl from using a free natural fertilizer.
He used full strength urine for his test. He should have used about 3tbsp of urine in his gallon test solution diluted with water. He used 1.5tbsp of miracle grow diluted with water for the other solution. Remember that urine was about half as strong as the miracle grow powder according to several sources so he should have used twice as much urine by weight as he did miracle grow by weight. That is what the problem was. Full strength urine is about a hundred times as strong as his MG diluted solution.
In the saltwater aquarium hobby, the fish waste needs to be broken down from ammonia into nitrites and then from nitrites to nitrates or usable nitrogen. Same thing happens in a waste treatment plant. I wonder if you had the bacteria and time to change that urine into usable nutrients, if it would have made a difference.
@@jaimethiessen When fish pee or poop the water becomes toxic when it builds up so you need to add something to the water in the fish tank that dissolves their waste or changes it into something safe for them to swim in because your freshwater or salt water tank is not a real environment.
@@jaimethiessen Yes, probably, not sure. Now it makes sense what he said about the soil. The actual earth like real salt water would be able to break it down naturally instead of using somewhat fake soil in planters. Both tanks freshwater and saltwater need to be cleaned for the fish?
I would enjoy seeing a redo of this experiment using normal garden soil, not inert material. Also, mix the urine and water together first prior to watering. You could be burning the plants with straight urine. (Ever notice a dead patch of grass where a dog peed, which, after recovering from the urine burn, turns dark green and lush ?) My guess is the plants will perform equally well with the revised protocol.
It's not compete until you harvest and sample the product to see which tastes better. Come on, take one for the team. 🙂 Btw, the P should have been kept on the fridge, because warm temps damage any vitamins and minerals that may have been in it. I would also guess that fermented P can't be a good fert either.
Human wee is used by those wishing to dye with plant-sourced indigo dyes by purely natural means (ie without industrially-produced chemicals). It is referred to as a Sig vat, and the chemical changes needed are caused by the fermentation of human urine ... very interesting process.
There is at least one well known and accomplished gardener he says don't pee on a fruit tree or three times a year. Too much nitrogen causes a plant not to fruit but just grow a lot of leaves.
I've been using homemade liquid fertilizer for 4 years now and it's great! I was taught to use old urine (not from old people!!!) at least 2 weeks old (I don't know why PLUS I'm on a low salt diet). I mix everything in a 50 gal garbage pail. I use plant clippings, weeds, grass & leaves - anything green, Epson salt - 2 cups, Egg shells, Coffee Grinds, a bag of Black Cow and Urine. Fill it the rest of the way with well water. I let it sit for 2 weeks and it's ready to use. I water my plants and shrubs first then apply 1 ½ cups mixed in 1 gallon of water.
Hey great video! Good thoughts and point of view, the other thing to consider is the salt load from urine. That amount of salt in coir is like you said, not going to have enough micro nutrients and the salt load could start to effect the roots and ability to absorb the nutrients.
Thanks for posting this experiment. I saw another comment on RUclips on another channel that stated that the author's father used only urine and wood ash and had incredible (enviable) yields. I"m sure dilution is important and he was growing in garden soil.
I believe that human urine ( or any mammalian urine for that matter) has had enough trials over many years, decades, and centuries to be relied upon as a safe organic soil amendment for hungry growing plants. we can all go back and forth about the proper ratio to administer, but the safe road of diluted solution can't possibly be harmful to plants. Thanks for be brave enough to publish the video.
You are incorrect. This is called a false positive. This happens in the early stages of the plant and provide plenty to talk about as growth is natural. Julius Hensel detailed this clearly, as the manure companies had been pushing their waste to the minds of rot.
Was it in soil or in a sterile medium? I specifically avoided soil, since soil has all sorts of nutrients and uncontrolled variables. I used coir to ensure no contamination from soil.
Isn't it funny to think that is how we probably figured this stuff out. Our great great...grandfather noticed the same thing and became a land baron. 😊
I use human urine in my compost piles. It is mixed with hen house liter and veggie stalks including corn stalks. I do have good luck with this, and believe it is better than direct addition to a plant.
I tried on my lawn last season 1 to 1 ratio. Works SO well! I stared in patches as a control. Takes about a week, then suddenly the lawn in the treated areas very very dark green. Lasts for a few months. This year I am going to do one side Scott's, the other side 'Me'. I drink a lot of water so I can collect about 5 gallons a week...eezy peezy :)
This was an good experiment, thank you. I was wondering if you had considered adding a control plant as a third category by feeding it just water? This could be compared to the urine to see what the urine did to aid in growth.
It helps so much you wouldn’t believe. Try it out you will be amazed. I use 1 liter of urine and 8 liters of water. Actually there is nothing better than urine
@@Vertikala-pc5ig The harsh reality is that most commercial fertilizers have salts in them. They seem good in the short run, but it kills the biology in the soil in the long run. Requiring even more fertilizer later.
If you chose to do this again next year, I would very much like to see a comparison of the two "fertilizers" with good soil. Perhaps using some garden soil mixed with added perlite for drainage?
It would be interesting to have both crops tested for microplastics. You didn't use any here, but the manufactured soils with white beads, those white beads are the actual nutrients coated in a film of plastic on a production line. Studies have shown plants can deliver microplastics from the soil to their leaves and fruits. I'm curious if it's even possible to avoid eating microplastics at this point.
@@aliensmanillegalaliens8950in the air??? Are you talking about forever chemicals??? Apparently we are already totally saturated with the stuff and there's no getting rid of these death sentences
The main problem here is dosage. By nature p is a great herbicide. If you want to get rid of weeds in your yard and don't want to use weed killer, 99% of the time it kills anything that you have growing you want to kill. At least in my experience that's the case. When it's full strength or half. The only time that urine actually makes good for fertilizer when it's one part urine to 10 part water. Other than that it doesn't work as it's too strong.
Urine is actually toxic enough to kill athletes foot fungus. I've used white vinegar to kill weeds between the bricks in my patio, but only because I didn't want the lingering odor of human urine in our seating area. I have used possible further out to discourage rodents, though.
He used full strength urine for his test. He should have used about 3tbsp of urine in his gallon test solution diluted with water. He used 1.5tbsp of miracle grow diluted with water for the other solution. Remember that urine was about half as strong as the miracle grow powder according to several sources so he should have used twice as much urine by weight as he did miracle grow by weight. That is what the problem was. Full strength urine is about a hundred times as strong as his MG diluted solution.
Great experiment. Was thinking that if you took multivitamins and minerals or increased your dosage of them maybe the results might be different with the urine. Just something to consider.
He used full strength urine for his test. He should have used about 3tbsp of urine in his gallon test solution diluted with water. He used 1.5tbsp of miracle grow diluted with water for the other solution. Remember that urine was about half as strong as the miracle grow powder according to several sources so he should have used twice as much urine by weight as he did miracle grow by weight. That is what the problem was. Full strength urine is about a hundred times as strong as his MG diluted solution.
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Miracle grow if formulated for everything to be immediately plant available. The human urine is urea and that has to be converted to ammonia then to nitrate. It requires a microbiome to do that and your experiment didn’t have any live microbiome so the Miracle Grow was destined to win. Great video. I’d love to see it with soil where bacteria could do its job naturally.
Would be interesting to run this experiment again (larger sample size, obvs) but have you take multi-vitamin tablets every day. Excess minerals will be excreted along with the usual nitrogen, potassium etc and might make up for the deficiencies.
Yes also . Health of urine is dependant on what the human consumes - foods and Water ! along with their health ! It deff deters some Cats from gardens tho 🤣👀
You obviously already know that your sample size was too small, N=40 is considered a bare minimum for statistically significant results. Also, the urine was way too strong, I have seen it recommended to be applied no more than once per week at a 5% or less solution. I'd like to see such an experiment redone with these considerations.
I was going to say the same thing. He's an engineer, and they typically work with small sample sizes, for example when doing materials stress and strain testing, or failure analysis. They believe the small sample is a pretty close approximation of the population. A real scientist (that is, not an engineer) knows that ain't so. Even a biologist, with limited math skills, knows enough to make the sample size large enough to yield statistically significant results, and would verify a conclusion by hiring a statistician to validate the work.
@@DanielinLaTuna Engineers typically work with HUGE quantities, for example when making 10 Million mobile phones or 10 million cinderblocks and do pull a few here and there for quality checks (and yes, they understand the math involved in sampling and testing.) An engineer gets fired if they don't know their math inside and out because the thing doesn't work. Perhaps you are basing your impression of engineers on too small a sample size, or perhaps you have been faking your data in a rush to get your papers published.
@@asicengineer thank you! My dad is an engineer. Let’s just say without his work, and those who work with him, the military would have a lot of training accidents.
Good workout. Interesting 🤔 but nasty experiment 😝. Great time at shoreline. And thank you for explaining the end results. I usually purchase any broken bags of fertilizer at a discount from the Home Depot with a military discount. And save them for a later day when perlite and other broken bags are sold at discount. Then mix them together and generously spread the barrels across the entire garden. And turn the mix into the soil before watering and tarping and leaving covered for two or three weeks to kill of weed growth. Then uncover and begin planting seedlings and seeds. I have had great yields from our family garden. With the included addition of Miracle Grow after a month and an additional application a month later then no more but fresh water up to harvest. Yummy Then turn the soil water, tarp and repeat the entire process. I will be copying your black can composting x2 because you are on it! Very good explaining of garden success and failures. Keep up the great sharing., AL
Good testing & reasoning. I would concur that you should have had at least one planting of each plant that had no pee or MG fertilizer. Additionally, urine can have lots of sodium in it (depending upon your diet) & some plants are suseptible to increased sodium concentration in the growing medium. Another thing that you didn't mention is that your MG did, in fact, provide more P & K--which could definitely have made a difference. I would have also mixed the pee & rain water before applying it. Thanks for sharing!
Finally an accurate comment. No one mentioned sodium and it is the primary reason urine does not work as fertilizer. There is a technique called alkaline urine dehydration that evaporates the water from the urine while stopping the nitrogen from evaporating with it. An an enzyme in urine converts to ammonia as the water evaporates which is why the nitrogen leaves as well. By increasing the PH of the urine this stops that process. This process allows you to directly extract the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous from urine while leaving the other components behind. It is possible to use urine as a fertilizer directly but you need to know what you are doing and you certainly cannot use it in a 1:1 amount with regular fertilizer. It is strange that his lettuce survived because lettuce is highly sensetive to salts. I suspect that something else occured with the dead plant because that seems odd. I would not take away anything from a test like this since it is on a sample size of 1 plant in each category. That is hardly scientific.
Interesting experiment. Thank you! Please also consider doing the experiment in living soil (your normal garden soil, topped-dressed w some compost soil)? It would be interesting to see if urine would do better where there is active soil life/biology all around it to diffuse it & break it down, maybe helping the plants utilize it's micro-nutrients better. My garden plants do very well this way & it's lowered disease & pest pressure.
Active soil life is assumed, but not always correctly, it my intention to work with the naturally occurring microbes in the soil. There is the emerging field of regenerative ag which deals with soil biology.
That wouldn't be controllable. Everyone's soil is going to be different, so the results would be unreliable. I have very sandy soil where I live, so my results could be dramatically different than someone who has a heavy clay soil, or a loamier native soil. The only way to do this reliably is to use an inert medium.
This was a GREAT video! The experiment was interesting, full of good information, and also humorous! My husband and I laughed multiple times while watching! 😂 Thank you for all you do, we have learned a lot in the couple months we have been watching your videos.
This teaches a wrong result. The urine needed to be diluted to work, otherwise it would pickle the plant like dog piss pickles the grass. If he used 10 tablespoons of Miracle Grow per gallon it would have been a fair comparison. Entertaining stuff but do it again with 5-10 times diluted pee to show people a meaningful result.
I'd be interested in a follow-up experiment comparing inert medium to potting soil and/or untreated compost or soil from the yard. If the pee-plants do much better on pre-fertilised potting soil it would further strengthen the hypothesis that urine is lacking in one or more micronutrients.
As a nerdy scientist (of the healthcare variety) and 30+ year organic grower, i loved this experiment. i also think your conclusions are sound. As an organic vs conventional grower, i've gone on the idea of feed the soil and the soil feeds the plant vs a more conventional idea of feeding the plant without considering the soil. For instance, an objection to conventional practices is that petrochemically manufactured fertilizers and pesticides often kill of beneficial elements in the soil (like earthworms). i restored a historical house/farm in Virginia that had been growing tobacco since the 1700's and the soil was dead as a door nail, couldn't find an earthworm to save my life. i brought in semi truck loads of compost, was spraying molasses on the dirt, all sorts of weird stuff to try and restore a natural biome. Why? Because ultimately, i think nature is more practiced and smarter than we humans. Of course, we are a part of nature, so i think we can have beneficial input, but i think it wiser to consider ourselves as a part of nature vs taking all of nature into our hands and trying to control it in a reductionist manner (and i think conventional farming can venture there). To wit, i think the variable that doesn't quite fit in your experiment is the use of a sterile growing medium, for the exact reasons you identify, all those micro nutrients that more possibly exist in soil, but do not in a sterile growing medium. Miracle grow, and other fertilizer manufacturers have also noted this and include some of that stuff in their fertilizers. i think the question of whether a manufacturing process can beat nature is a question that would better be answered using more of nature in the experiment... i.e., as you note, planting everything in garden soil. Of course, in that kind of experiment, it would be impossible to identify all the variables/confounders of the garden soil... but if garden soil vs sterile medium is where we are all, or most, are gardening, i'd argue it would be a more useful experiment for gardening and gardeners. Also, another thought is the MG is a standardized, consistent product, urine is not. Urine is the bodies way of getting rid of stuff it doesn't need. i appreciate you consider that when you speak of eating a whole foods diet, no meds, processed food. Still, kidneys help keep things like potassium and phosphorus in balance. E.g, in healthcare we give phosphate binders to our patients who's kidneys aren't working right and not regulating phosphate well. I.e., the human body as a fertilizer producer is a variable. Either way, great stuff, thanks for doing this.
I think the urine should be diluted a little bit more because of salt buildup over time. Maybe not a complete fertilizer by itself, but certainly a useful (and free) amendment.
He used full strength urine for his test. He should have used about 3tbsp of urine in his gallon test solution diluted with water. He used 1.5tbsp of miracle grow diluted with water for the other solution. Remember that urine was about half as strong as the miracle grow powder according to several sources so he should have used twice as much urine by weight as he did miracle grow by weight. That is what the problem was. Full strength urine is about a hundred times as strong as his MG diluted solution.
Any chance you might revisit this, but use a mix of urine and fish meal instead of just urine? That would go some way to address the nutrient imbalance. I do use some urine but add it to my compost bins to keep them moist rather than putting it straight on the plants. If you don't do it - I might have to 😄
2 things. You kept using the same cup to fertilize both. More than that, you used it for urine first. So the MG plants got both MG and pee. and 2. It might have been different if you had used fresh pee every time. It's not like you couldn't produce more. LOL
Hmm I see a few differences… miracle grow got 25% dilute pee 50%… and one other difference is urine has to be broken down by microbes vs the miracle grow comes broken down already…. So this mostly tests if you can piss in your plants vs if pee is a valid food source to create a healthy soil… which is what you want organic ferts to do One thing I notice the soil health is probably better in the pissy soil as there’s algae growing on the perlite… I think a better experiment would have been to inoculate one soil with the urine first and allow the microbes 🦠 to create a rich soil/heslthy rhizosphere , and comparing that to a soil that had not been pissed in as a control Also keep in mind that plants take take 2 weeks to react in organic feed so if the pepper didn’t make it past two weeks the soil was too hot to begin and might have thrived with one feeding Interesting video. I will probably do one of these experiments myself …
@@jennifereverettgrowsfoodor1598 We are probably going to have to keep wondering. My guess is you're thinking that he burnt the plants when he went to full strength. It certainly makes more sense to me than the video.
@@victorb145 I have killed plenty of young tomato plants with full strength before I knew better. Probably too much nitrogen and/or the pH was too high. Diluted is a requirement for success.
@@jennifereverettgrowsfoodor1598 Your spittin facts. But it's not like I was going to start using urine on my plants anyway. The the dog and cats like using the flower bed, but if it was a garden they wouldn't be allowed.
The Pee also has Salt (NaCl). Miracle grow does not have any salt in it. Romans used Salt to poison the soil. That is what pee does poisons the soil. If you could remove the salt the pee would work better.
MiracleGro: Turned out much better because it contains both macro and micro nutrients. Pee: Performed poorly because it only contains macro nutrients. I just saved you 18 minutes, YOUR WELCOME!
I read somewhere that you should use 1 to 10 of urine. 10 parts water mixed with 1 part urine. I could be wrong but I think that what I read years ago. It might even 1 to 20. I read it several years ago. In both instances it was being heavily watered down.
I don't think that would work. The NPK would be so weak that it wouldn't be able to do anything fed once a week. You'd be talking an NPK ratio of only about 1-0.2-0.4, and in an inert medium like coir+perlite, you'd have to feed it every single day to catch up to the "real" fertilizer. That's far more handling of the...product...than I'm willing to do. If you have to apply it that frequently, I don't think it's reasonable to use, because no normal person is going to take the time to fertilize daily. It just isn't realistic.
@@TheMillennialGardener I totally understand I think I had heard them talking about on Gardening Australia program. I don’t remember if they were just talking about supplementary fertilizing. I personally have never tried but I remember that undiluted urine in fast draining soil will usually burn plants up. Thank you for sharing your experiment and knowledge!
The algae in the Pee Pepper pot looks pretty healthy ;) I came to this video because I grow cannabis (legally) and I'm a huge believer that living soil and natural sunshine give the best results. I keep a good pile of compost, manures, and yard scraps on hand to amend my soil (I grow in pots) each autumn. Begging when the plants are a 4 nodes high, I'll even start digging small holes in the potting mix and bury things like apple cores, banana peels, and whatnot. The idea is to keep "fresh" food in the soil for the bugs and microbes to feast upon. You'd think this would make the soil too hot, but usually in the mid-late vegetative season, I start to see signs of nitrogen deficiency. My "solution" to this is urine (between 1:2 to 1:10 dilution... I don't measure anything) and it works like magic. Perhaps urine is best used in the soil because of all the microbes that can benefit from it? Maybe it's my lack of imagination, but I can't see miracle grow "feeding the soil". What do you think? Time for an experiment with soil (and more specimens)?
I have looked at cultures in the world who use urine as fertilizer on a large scale. What they do is: every home in town or country has a chamber pot. Collectors go around every morning and collect the contents of the chamber pots ,take those contents out to the country, and sell it to farmers for fertilizer. They sell all the contents of the pots, so the farmers get a mixture of urine, feces, and toilet paper. It would be interesting to run a test using such a mixture. One thing I notice in your test is that you first pour pure urin over the plant, then pour rainwater. I would suggest that you mix the rainwater with the urine before pouring them over the roots. This would reduce the chances of the urine burning the roots.
From a Permaculture course I did, I learned that you need to use a ratio of Urine 1:1 Carbon, meaning equal volumes of urine to dry carbon matter like dry straw, hay, "brown" materials, clippings, sawdust or wood chips, will balance the correct decomposition producing an organic compost.
No experiment survives first contact with data, but it was a relaxing pleasure to watch you go through the process. Or at least the first iteration of the process; I'd value an experiment to test your hypothesis about missing nutrients, and the many commenters' hypothesis that half diluted urine is too harsh.
I use miracle grow on plants that are seasonal at times. The only problems I have with it is it is like crack for plants. If you stop the feeding they don’t react too well. And that can happen with many inorganic fertilizers. I have tied the pee method very diluted and had mixed results. Like others have said here, urea turns to ammonia over time which plant roots are not fond of, so using it dusted fresh is better. As for salts, as some have mentioned, I don’t know. I do drain some of my salt water pool into an area of grass when needed due to summer rains and that are grows green and healthy. But organic fertilizers such as kelp and seaweed or fish emulsion etc have yielded the best results for me. I will also tell you that the old farmer myth of placing an egg in the soil under the roots is no myth. I planted pepper and tomato plants last year, half with eggs, half without……the eggs ones grew to unmanageable proportions but needed a lot of phosphorus to fruit especially the peppers. The tomatoes produced fruit until November!
I’ve done tons of plant experiments. There’s nothing wrong with your sample size. The only thing that causes a variable is application. Soil or compost or any organic medium containing life will have interactions with the introduction of compounds. Soil biology can be altered by what is added to it and then the microbes releases the nutrients to the plant. So while in an inert experiment testing direct relationships between plants and nutrients yields clear answers, a dynamic relationship between nutrients and living soil may yield different results with an indirect relationship between the fertilizer and the plants.
We live in a slum in East Africa and teach sustainable, regenerative agriculture to the locals. We have a rabbit house with 170 rabbits, and the cages are designed where all the urine from the rabbits is automatically collected in a holding tank connected to our irrigation system. When we irrigate, a fertigator mixes the urine with the irrigation water and the dilute urine is sprayed on the crops. It is a gentle, balanced foliar fertilizer, and seems to discourage all manner of pests. When we turn the sprinklers on, you can sometimes see a cloud of bugs escaping the raised beds. We use the urine primarily as a fertilizer, but it seems to handle most pests. If that is not enough, tobacco grows on our compound almost like weeds, and mixing smashed tobacco leaves and some smashed hot peppers with the urine seems to take care of any pests not taken care of by the dilute urine alone. The cages also automatically collect the rabbit poop which is an excellent manure, and can be applied directly to raised beds without composting. We dedicate some fraction of our raised beds to growing timothy hay and alfalfa to feed the rabbits, so we have virtually no input costs in keeping the rabbits, and they provide most of our nutrient and pest controls needs for the compound. This alone justifies the keeping of the rabbit project. Now, this size of rabbit colony produces a great abundance of meat, and the meat is just a free benefit of the nutrient/pest control program. We are now investigating to expand the nutrient program by adding several tilapia tanks. Rather than recirculate and filter the fish water, we will simply use the fish water as a nutrient spray for the farm. Sort of like an open loop aquaponic system. Anyway, I am learning a whole lot from your channel, and we are finally achieving some really amazing results on this farm.
Wow ❤ amazing 🇵🇷✊🏻🙏🏻
Great ecology. I wish people didn't need to eat meat, but most do. But your use of resources is incredible.
Good Work
Yep rabbit waste fertilizer is known to be pretty good. I think I saw some setups where the rabbit hutch was placed over the plants.
Love it and thanks for the explanation 🇨🇻
For seedlings you need to mix 1 part urine to 20 parts water. The pepper was most likely burnt. For larger plants 10 parts water to 1 part urine. You were using it way too strong. Been using urine in garden for years.
It depends on how dilute your urine is. If you're dehydrated your urine will be dark. If you just drank a gallon on water it will be clear almost.
THANK YOU!!! I can't believe he dumped a cup of urine directly onto the plant. No wonder the pepper up and died and the lettuce had issues. I've used urine for 20 years.
@@saintmichael3879 🫶
Thought the same thing, used straight pee on a plant once and it died within hours. Figured it just needed to be more dilute. I use MG, but I do like 1/4 the recommended strength and just fertilize more often/as needed. Since your plant basically is forced to absorb chemical fertilizers, I figure consistent low doses are better for the plant, then hitting them hard every 2 weeks.
Also depends on diet
I've been using urine as a fertilizer on my plants for years....ever since my wife started locking the door when I come home late from the bar
It's how I kill a beautiful bush of roses.
At the beginning they were blooming like crazy, but after a couple of months they were dead.
@@bestdjaf7499 You have to dilute it, not concentrated.
@@MickSupper
I don't dilute my drinks.
I am not gay.
Why would I dilute my pee!?
🤣😂
🤣🤣☠️
😂😂😂
turns out an engineer makes some of the most easily digestible and informative gardening videos out there!
We are very plain folk 😆
Human urine is a good fertilizer for plants. It is a natural source of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which are essential nutrients for plant growth. Urine is also a good source of other trace elements, such as calcium, magnesium, and sulfur.
Urine can be used as a fertilizer in a variety of ways. It can be diluted with water and applied directly to the soil, or it can be composted and then used as a fertilizer. Urine can also be used to make liquid fertilizer, which is a concentrated form of urine that can be diluted with water and applied to plants.
When using urine as a fertilizer, it is important to dilute it properly. Urine is very concentrated, and if it is not diluted, it can burn plant roots. A good rule of thumb is to dilute urine 10:1 with water.
It is also important to note that urine should not be used on plants that are sensitive to nitrogen, such as tomatoes and potatoes. These plants can be damaged by the high levels of nitrogen in urine.
Overall, human urine is a safe and effective fertilizer for plants. It is a natural source of nutrients, and it is free and easy to obtain. If you are looking for a natural way to fertilize your plants, urine is a good option.
Here are some additional tips for using urine as a fertilizer:
Collect urine in a clean container.
Dilute urine 10:1 with water.
Apply urine to the soil around the plants, not directly on the leaves.
Do not use urine on plants that are sensitive to nitrogen.
Be sure to test the soil pH before applying urine, as urine can lower the pH of the soil.
If you are using urine to make liquid fertilizer, be sure to store it in a cool, dark place.
how about for eggplant?
Excellent reply, sir!
What about urine that is tainted with pharmaceutical drugs? There is nothing natural on pharmaceutical drugs.
From being a fish keeper I understand the nitrogen cycle. Basically pee is ammonia, not great, you want bacteria to convert it first to nitrite, and then to nitrate before you put it on plants. So if you want to a really good fertilizer you want to setup a mini sewage treatment plant in your backyard. When I had my large fresh water aquarium setup I used to pump dirty tank water out onto the lawn and also dump all the muck from cleaning the filters on the lawn.
By the way, next do poop
I went 100% organic a couple of years ago and I've never had healthier plants than when I began fertilizing with pee! It works wonders for building soil and getting your compost...to compost! lol I do a weak application a couple of times for seedlings and then a stronger feeding or two went the plants are established and that's really all it takes. I'm raking in a massive harvest so far this year. Canning, dehydrating, and freezing my homegrown food every day for the last month or so. Shelves are stacked!
Ah...yep. I grow in the dirt with compost and I remineralize my soil every year with a complete mix.
I think you burnt that poor pepper right up. LOL That way WAY too much pee for those little guys...
you should try applying electroculture. Amazing technology
The moment I got to “weak application”, I could not stop seeing in my head scenes in which I made fun of you for this.
@@JanicePhillipsquick question why is pee diluted by ten parts water but the fertilizer is diluted 1 part to 100?
Yes, i put mine into the compost. Also compost chicken poo ans vegetable scraps.
Salt! We excrete like 90% of our excess salt through our urine, so it really depends what your diet was like when you filled that jug.
Yeah like if you just added straight fertilizer with no water
Like maybe dont "ferment" ?
Fresh pee vs stagnant pee, may also be a variable?
Salt. Good point 👍
Brawndo's got what plants crave, electrolytes!
Thanks for your thoughtful and informative experiment. I have been gardening and composting for years and I did my own experimentation by adding urine to my compost at various intervals. One result was a more rapid breakdown of the materials being composted and the end result was a robust, high nitrogen soil amendment. I used NO chemical fertilizers or pesticides and got great results. I didn't use a control along side the compost / soil mixture, but I had used Miracle Gro in previous years and the results were comparable. Gardening is the process of growing soil, not plants.
I can say that urine is all my corn needed one year. It had a few yellowing leaves and I added some of my yellow and it’s yellow disappeared and it was the best corn I’ve ever eaten. I was going to plant it for shade (high desert) and let the deer eat it, but it was so beautiful and delicious I didn’t share with them. I did give them all of my broccoli this year and most of my cabbage 😊 I’m a carnivore.
I should try that cuz I live in high desert too.
yeah since going carnivore i dont grow as much veg. have you seen sun hemp for tall cover crop, deer prolly love it,
I am planning to plant food for rabbits and squirrels on my suburban lot and get myself a pistol crossbow. Seems like the easiest way for a carnivore to get food from their property.
Best venison I ever ate was the one I caught trespassing in my corn patch
Just tell everyone how you did it after they eat it
Glad you didn't delete this video. Every failure or success must be recorded and now that you've published this on RUclips your theory and results are cast in concrete. Whether your experiment is flawed is for the next RUclipsr to resolve. However you've answered a lot of questions and gave us closure for this. Great experiment you handled this like a real science project thanks for putting this up!
Add wood ass and burnt eggshell to the urine and the plants get much more nutrions.
Or just don't pour it without properly diluting it. Lots of studies were done on this and the piss needs to be dilute with 5-10 parts water. Not poured directly on a plant and then an equal measure of water, which would be 50-50.
I started trying it at home, and I disagree with most of the ratios I see here. I've decided dilution of 30:1 is my baseline. I wouldn't bother going below 20:1, perhaps 15:1 if it's a plant thta can really use the mineral ratios in our bio-product.
Of course, I began this experiment with repotted plants and dracena cuttings, in store bought potting soil. Even though I mixed together all my spent soil, and the unopened stuff, I'm sure it had significant added minerals anyway.
But once I started diluting it much more the results have been pretty good.
No, he did not answer any questions, the whole experiment is so flawed that it is useless. People do not grow anything in sterile coir.
This is the scientific process not a failure! 🙂 The goal of growing healthy plants with only urine failed I suppose. But as an experiment, evidence was obtained that could lead to the next iteration of the experiment. I think millennial gardener was hard on himself saying that.
your experiment was correct with the caveat that you used a full spectrum fertilizer and a limited spectrum fertilizer.
i have used urine as a fertilizer for over 40 years. for the vegetables it should be used with compost, as it is correct that with the compost you will attain the full spectrum of nutrients. with shrubberies and flowers i mulch with grass clippings, the only reason to have a "yard" and to mow, and pour a half gallon of urine during january and february per plant and plant area, the reason is to let it "cool" and lower the salts, which is a minor concern---most people know what happens when you pee, or your dog pees, in the same place all the time: plant matter will die.
i also have the advantage of having heated with wood all those years and i pour a half gallon of urine into a five gallon steel bucket of ash. and during winter all my plants get four liberal scoops of wood ash using a garden trowel on top of the end of the season mowings---it heightens the phosphorous and potassium which the urine lacks. i also use the woodash/urine mix in my compost during the winter for the same reason.
i have had nothing but success with this and stopped using any pre made (man made) fertilizers a long, long time ago.
@jebsteward666 Great info on how you use urine as fertilizer, but I have a question. I'm fairly new to using urine, so I've been diluting in with water 15:1 and applying to my potted plants such as blueberries once per week. Is that too weak of a dilution? Should I go 50/50 or will that burn the plants?
Dude, I absolutely love the part where you faked out with the garden. Hose, that was very comical that was fantastic. You had me for a split second.
Yeah I agree. Definitely a good sense of humor helped with the entertainment factor of this vid. Reminded me of the bro science lifting guy.
Me too. I was impressed by the flow.
🤔
Me three lol i was cracking up
If you conduct this experiment again, may I suggest that you dilute the urine down 1:10 into a separate container and mix it well before you feed your plants.
In order to dilute the solution down it needs to be properly mixed with water before not after. Essentially you fed your plants full strength urine and washed it down with some water.
Yes, I was surprised to see this as well.
When he poured the 50% urine solution, (and not more diluted to say, 10%) I thought to myself "he's burning those tiny baby roots!"
Well, live and learn...
Is there any way to mitigate the sodium content? Mixing at 1:10 and using it as a supplement fertilizer only reduces your fertilizer cost by 10%.
Also, maybe a little mycorrhizae or lactoferment solution as a mediator would be helpful in both, and might help synthesize whatever nutrients are available in both.
Either way, this was a great experiment, and I'm grateful that he conducted it!
Also if he only used the urine from that 1st collection it would start to turn to ammonia after sitting for time and fermenting.
If you ad a teaspoon of baking soda it will kill the acid in the urine an mix 50/50
@@johnnylambert6003 1 teaspoon of baking soda per gallon of straight urine?
This is why I flush my plants with water before I feed them
A friend gave me some heirloom lettuce sets. I planted them in a planter. He stopped by a few days later an noticed that they were nitrogen deficient by the color of the leaves. He had some commercial fertilizer in his truck and offered me some but I told him I wanted to try diluted urine instead. I did, and in a couple of days the leaves were beautiful.
I was sold.
Not reporting/publishing negative results is a major problem with science. Thanks for sharing regardless of the results.
The urine is great, but not at full strength.. so this confirms what we already know.
It really is a major problem with science, and I'm glad to see other people recognizing it too.
@@namethem00 - I actually don't 'know' the science of it all, but when I tell oh to relieve himself around a citrus tree....and a 'wee' bit in the potted dwarf lemon tree . NEVER 'all' the supply...just a 'wee' bit...and then the trees get a drenching next morning. We don't have 'critters' out here in FNW Qld like many places do around the world, but have read that human 'odours' may deter wild ones. Have not harvested a lemon thusfar, as it's only started to bud and flower up beautifully at the end of the first year in a big container. The mandarins however.........we 'share' with the local cockatoos.......lovely mid sized tree filled with flowers AND fruit and many of the low hanging fruit well shaded under where any of the interloping 'diners' can reach. Quite happy with that......we get some and they get many...and the bees get a heap with the flowers. Big win all around I'd say👌👌👍👍💕💕
Take a jug. An old large Juice jug will work well. Put bits of food scraps in it. Fill it about 10% with the food scraps. Fill it with water. Close it up and put it in the sun for a week. Then put it in a place that gets light but NOT direct sunlight. Shake it up really well once a week. Leave it sit for about 3 to 4 months shaking it once a week. Now you have a super charger for your plants dirt.
If you buy Juice or other drinks and have one of these large jugs once a week or more. Then just make one every week. Keep the jugs organized so you know which is newest and which is oldest. These can go for years if not opened but once you open it, use it up.
Oh and be ready for a nasty smell.
This is like making your own MiracleGro but better.
Add the urine to compost. It helps break the cellulose from wood down to lignins. As far as testing, you could run a parallel test feeding MG to a compost. Then use the compost to grow plants for the experiment.
Tnx, I'm having trouble breaking down compose, will try that next :)
@@Eduardo_Espinozathrow a handful of grass fertilizer on a pile of compost stir it and spray enough water on it to make it damp but not soggy wet.
Drunk compost = Coca-Cola, beer, amonia or to make it
Organic- sugar, yeast, Urine
I tried this and the neighbors complained. Oh wait....I guess you meant collect it first?!? 🙂
Just be careful because this is the basis for some illegal activities. You might get some unwanted guests.
I'd like to see a part two with:
1. More Samples of seedlings
2. Fresh urine vs aged (test if there is nitrogen gased off due to N cycle)
3. Your local top Soil test instead of no nutrient test, (since is probably how most people will be using it)
4. Intensity and PPM of urine vs MG (I'd like to know if they would perform the same with more diluted more frequent feedings )
So you want more samples, and fresher pee...and you have no idea why that might be a problem.
I've seen the same thing with people who advocate electroculture. When somebody runs an experiment, and conclude thst its bullcrap, everyone has an excuse for why it didn't work.
You have a favored result, and you're embarrased. So you try to discredit.
Where is this guy getting the urine? Is it clean, healthy, pee or not. Is there RX drugs in the pee? What's the person's water/food intake? Miracle grow is poison. That's a fact that's not going to change, but if dude is not taking care of himself and peeing straight medicated acid, he could change what he is doing to see different results.
@@A.E.Lanman777 I love how pissed off people are at his results. Poor babies.
@@A.E.Lanman777Clearly you didn't watch the entire video
He explains in detail where, when and how the urine was collected, What the donor's diet consisted of and what medications could possibly be in it. Why are you asking us to watch the video for you?
Nitrogen in urine does gas off and the nitrogen changes form. Urine is recommended to store air tight and use as fertilizer fresh, that is, within 24 hours. I am also interested to see the results of fresh vs month old.
Great experiment, I think the PEE is an excellent amendment for soil that is already rich (compost etc.) in micro-nutrients, but still probably lacks sufficient N and K since these are required in large amounts. Another item to consider however is that the pepper plant may have been burned. I have come across references to university studies that have concluded that urine needs to be cut by a ration of 8 parts water to 1 part urine to avoid being burned. 50/50 may be too concentrated. Though I still think you are exactly right. Pee simply isn't a stand alone fertilizer, but may be quite useful as an augmentation.
10 or higher to be safe.
Your logic makes sense. Wild animals pee in the forest and fields but their urine (and poop) is mixed with whatever else is in the soil to be used by the plants. I saw a video where someone added their pee to mulch which they kept in a wire cage. That mulch eventually found its way around trees and plants. The mulch contained worms so they were happy.
I never expected it to be a complete fertilizer, but I did expect that it had some of what a plant needs. I have had other people tell me that they thought human urine would kill the plants. So this is an interesting experiment to see. Thanks
It works very well as lawn fertilizer. Like really really well.
Besides the 10-1-4 application being a bit strong at 1 to 1, better at least 1 to 5 dilution, consider the gradual concentration of salt, NaCl, from your diet. Most of our western diet is a bit rich in salt, tasty in our food, but easy to accumulate in the planting medium. Some folk are learning to moderate the NaCl but most of us use more than MDR 1,500 mg/day. Some plants can tolerate salinity, but not as much as we need, or like, so have to consider that.
I would think the urine toxicity depends on what the human has been eating.
And their fluid intake and exercise routine. Im a heavy duty water drinker that also sweats a LOT, so my gallon of pee would be MUCH more clear than his was. And if you collect pee right after vigorous workouts, there will be significantly more ammonia in the mix.
Lots of variables with the pee
Also, their meds. I am on some meds that would kill plants. 😂
@@HomeNGardening
He explained he was not on any meds
Depends on how fresh the pee it. Very fresh it is sterile and the N is in the form of urea, nontoxic. But let it stand around a while contaminated and it will ferment into ammonia and become toxic. Space agencies are planning to use human pee when growing food or oxygen producing plants for long term space travel.
@7thsluglord363 looking at the thumbnail of apple cider coloured whizz, my first thought was, "My God are you dehydrated!!" Idk maybe it turns brown when it sits?? But that can't be true because I had a barbarian ex who used bottles and they didn't turn brown....
I use urine for a fertilizer. you were burning the plants. you MUST mix the urine with water BEFORE feeding it to the plants. a stronger mixture is 5 to 1, so say you had 1 cup of urine you would need to mix it with at least 5 cups of water before feeding it to the plants. and even then, that is a strong fertilizer mixture. a more common is 10 to 1. I tend to do 5 to 1 once a month and 10 to 1 for the rest. my gardens EXPLODE. way better than they ever do with miracle grow, which even then is better than my neighbors. this includes my plants grown in coco-coir planter pots.
This is why you have a fence around your property isn't it..
10’!!! 😂😂😂
😆🤣😂
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Can't put raw urine on any type of plant. You Oughta try just putting raw chicken shit on a plant see what happens
😅😂
You need to add wood ash to the pee for fruit bearing plants. Also, the pee you used was too strong. The ratio is 1 part pee to 10 parts water.
exactly, wayyyyy tooo strong in video
I have been using pee and wood ash but not mixed and on alternate days. Is it safe to mix it directly?
I was thinking the same, also pre mix it before applying not one after the other. The leafs even show burn marks on the edges.
He should´ve mix it up before he watered the plant with it. And you never give feritlizer over the plant especially young plants.
Nitrogen is good for vegetative growth. Flowers need higher phosphorus and low nitrogen. I thought everyone knew this.
The next part of your experiment should be a taste test.
the lettuce or the fertilizer😆
this is another great video with a clear conclusion. Maybe consider making another one with a different purpose: "How to use urine effectively". You could test how urine works with compost and/or in the ground and compare the performance to what you found it this video. As you know, many people want to use urine. Even though it isn't as good as MG, you might identify some "optimal" ways to use it. (Also - would it make a difference to let the urine set for a few weeks before you use it?) Love your channel!
“Babe I’m not drunk I’m just fertilizing the garden”
Awesome! Great job doing a video that was fun to watch, nicely paced, and very thought-provoking. I definitely want to try a test like this, too. I had a garden expert tell me that plants need different amounts of N,P,K during the lifecycle, because N is good for green growth, P is for blooming/roots, and K is overall health.
Newer flower / rose gardener here. I live in a townhouse that recently allowed me to remove a dying bush from two areas in front of my unit. The plants weren’t doing great. Actually, one perennial flowering plant wasn’t flowering, my Stalk flower weren’t growing tall, my delphinium looked like
Sh!t and my rose was all but dead.
I tested the soil and found the P,K were both “adequate” but the Nitrogen was depleted. I peeeeeeed and diluted it approx 1/10 and watered the garden with that (and cheated with fish emulsion 0-10-10 and bone meal 0-20-0) and I think it works!
Within a few days my rose has new red shoots (red are blooms and not leaves) and my stalk is flowering / growing and the delphinium is growing new shoots.
I also added this to the flowers in an already established garden and same, the rose is going nuts with new shoots. My honeysuckle is flowering like mad and growing new shoots.
I am a believer.
I don’t use Miracle grow as I prefer organic
Alaska Fish Emulsion, Dr earth’s and superthrive.
Do you do this in Spring?
Also, do use the Superthrive vitamin or fertilizer? Just planted new roses and think might be good for them.
@@oh_boy_oh_boy22 why, yes I did. So, I found the urine started to smell and it might have been in my head, but fish fertilizer works just as well and the smell goes away. Also, worm castings from my worm bin that I started since have really helped!
@@HildeAzul thanks!
So interesting. My vegetable garden is 99 percent organic. I say 99 % as once in a while it do use a tiny bit of Miracle Gro. during periods of plant stress. Thanks.
I have never thought of urine as a complete fertilizer though it does contain more than N, P, and K, but another variable is pH, and urine can have a very high pH especially if consuming a lot of veggies. When I was on a very low carb diet, I was checking the pH of my urine daily, and there were times when it was about a 9! Few plants like or can tolerate a high soil pH (tomatoes are very sensitive, in my experience, to strong urine whether that's from high pH or high nitrogen and can easily decline as your experiment showed), and you don't have compost in your mix for helping to buffer the pH of the urine so you will need more water to reduce the PH. I suggest a redo of the experiment with a lower concentration (maybe 10-50%) the whole length of the experiment--just more volume as the plant grows. I believe you said that the plants looked equally healthy for the first two weeks. Perhaps the 2-week mark is when you jumped the concentration.
Another good experiment would be to see how long plants can remain happy on urine alone without supplementing with other nutrients.
The nitrogen content of urine is also affected by diet. I consume a lot of a food that increases nitrogen content.
I agree, a diet very high in whole food plant foods, especially veggies and fruits, tends to leak to high alkalinity in the urine and saliva.
A diet very high animal protein (especially meat) tends to lead to a more acidic urine and saliva. A diet high in junk foods also tends to lead to a more highly acidic urine and saliva. A diet high in both of the just former will tend to lead to a very highly acidic urine and saliva.
My well water is somewhat acidic. Back when I used to grow stuff (gave up because way too much shade, not enough sun), I used to mix fresh urine with a a little epsom salt, some kelp powder, and a very little bit of wood ash, all in a lot of well water.
To throw another spanner into the works, I don't think that coco coir was buffered so it'd probably throw things out of whack short term.
This was a very intelligent and creative gardening experiment. Great work! And thank you for sharing your findings with us! I'm very impressed with your well-spoken conclusions and I love meeting the clever mind behind another great gardener! I look forward to seeing more of your videos.
Wrong... urine has to be digested by soil microbes to be beneficial... not a fair experiment
I will respond under here so maybe it gets seen. So one big problem i see with your experiment @The Millennial Gardener. You use the same scoop with out cleaning it to pour both the pee and the miracle grow into the pots. This was slightly rinsed when you added rain water but you did not do this each time. This is grounds for cross contamination of the different fertilizers and taints the experiment. I applaud the effort and the idea, I suggest a more mindful application of these ideas. I only say this to attempt to assist, not as a knock on your abilities or your channel. I support everything you are doing. I think your doing great, keep it up!
I like to see a repeat of the experiment with a compost tea used to inoculate the roots.
He didn’t use the pee in the right concentration. 1:10 is what I’ve read so he killed it by burning it with too strong a dose. Another person posted that seedlings require even more dilution, 1:20. Using a sample size of one also isn’t scientifically worthy of showing any results anyways. What if the one plant had some root damage from the transplant? He just turned off many ppl from using a free natural fertilizer.
I am in a FB group for tomato growing. there they recommend 10 to 15% urine in the water. the advantage is that it is free
He used full strength urine for his test. He should have used about 3tbsp of urine in his gallon test solution diluted with water. He used 1.5tbsp of miracle grow diluted with water for the other solution. Remember that urine was about half as strong as the miracle grow powder according to several sources so he should have used twice as much urine by weight as he did miracle grow by weight. That is what the problem was. Full strength urine is about a hundred times as strong as his MG diluted solution.
Very well done. Make no apologies, friend. Keep up the good work. This RUclips thing is great!
Nice experiment! I would love to see a 2nd version of this experiment with the plants planted outdoors in garden soil to see the results there.
In the saltwater aquarium hobby, the fish waste needs to be broken down from ammonia into nitrites and then from nitrites to nitrates or usable nitrogen. Same thing happens in a waste treatment plant.
I wonder if you had the bacteria and time to change that urine into usable nutrients, if it would have made a difference.
Exactly thank you!
Can you expound on this?
I want to start using ray aquarium water on my plants..
@@jaimethiessen When fish pee or poop the water becomes toxic when it builds up so you need to add something to the water in the fish tank that dissolves their waste or changes it into something safe for them to swim in because your freshwater or salt water tank is not a real environment.
Ok. Moreso in Saltwater. Freshwater aquarium water can be used directly?
@@jaimethiessen Yes, probably, not sure. Now it makes sense what he said about the soil. The actual earth like real salt water would be able to break it down naturally instead of using somewhat fake soil in planters. Both tanks freshwater and saltwater need to be cleaned for the fish?
I would enjoy seeing a redo of this experiment using normal garden soil, not inert material. Also, mix the urine and water together first prior to watering. You could be burning the plants with straight urine. (Ever notice a dead patch of grass where a dog peed, which, after recovering from the urine burn, turns dark green and lush ?) My guess is the plants will perform equally well with the revised protocol.
I use straight ammonia as a nitrogen fertilizer. 2 cups per 3 gallons of water and pump spray this mixture on the base of the plants.
It's not compete until you harvest and sample the product to see which tastes better. Come on, take one for the team. 🙂 Btw, the P should have been kept on the fridge, because warm temps damage any vitamins and minerals that may have been in it. I would also guess that fermented P can't be a good fert either.
Urine should be stored in a cool dark area and fermented for 30 days for sterility before use for agricultural purposes.
Urine at room temperature converts to ammonia.
You can see my videos of a garden fertilized with urine.
Human wee is used by those wishing to dye with plant-sourced indigo dyes by purely natural means (ie without industrially-produced chemicals). It is referred to as a Sig vat, and the chemical changes needed are caused by the fermentation of human urine ... very interesting process.
Such a funny way of getting important information out there and I can appreciate you for it.
There is at least one well known and accomplished gardener he says don't pee on a fruit tree or three times a year.
Too much nitrogen causes a plant not to fruit but just grow a lot of leaves.
10:1 water to urine ration would work
I've been using homemade liquid fertilizer for 4 years now and it's great! I was taught to use old urine (not from old people!!!) at least 2 weeks old (I don't know why PLUS I'm on a low salt diet). I mix everything in a 50 gal garbage pail. I use plant clippings, weeds, grass & leaves - anything green, Epson salt - 2 cups, Egg shells, Coffee Grinds, a bag of Black Cow and Urine. Fill it the rest of the way with well water. I let it sit for 2 weeks and it's ready to use. I water my plants and shrubs first then apply 1 ½ cups mixed in 1 gallon of water.
Hey great video! Good thoughts and point of view, the other thing to consider is the salt load from urine. That amount of salt in coir is like you said, not going to have enough micro nutrients and the salt load could start to effect the roots and ability to absorb the nutrients.
Thanks for posting this experiment. I saw another comment on RUclips on another channel that stated that the author's father used only urine and wood ash and had incredible (enviable) yields. I"m sure dilution is important and he was growing in garden soil.
Especially with urine AND woodash, you really have to dilute.
I believe that human urine ( or any mammalian urine for that matter) has had enough trials over many years, decades, and centuries to be relied upon as a safe organic soil amendment for hungry growing plants. we can all go back and forth about the proper ratio to administer, but the safe road of diluted solution can't possibly be harmful to plants. Thanks for be brave enough to publish the video.
You are incorrect. This is called a false positive.
This happens in the early stages of the plant and provide plenty to talk about as growth is natural.
Julius Hensel detailed this clearly, as the manure companies had been pushing their waste to the minds of rot.
We did this test some years ago and posted it. Couldn't tell the difference! Remarkable how well urine worked.
Was it in soil or in a sterile medium? I specifically avoided soil, since soil has all sorts of nutrients and uncontrolled variables. I used coir to ensure no contamination from soil.
I remember growing up the horse would pee in a spot on the turf and that spot would go dark green and grow like crazy.
Isn't it funny to think that is how we probably figured this stuff out. Our great great...grandfather noticed the same thing and became a land baron. 😊
I use human urine in my compost piles. It is mixed with hen house liter and veggie stalks including corn stalks. I do have good luck with this, and believe it is better than direct addition to a plant.
Urine kicks compost into high gear.
Millennial Gardener providing a valuable community service 👍👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@TheMillennialGardenera week of good pee wasted on a pee plant I wonder how that pee plant tasted like 😂😅?? Very pissy
I tried on my lawn last season 1 to 1 ratio. Works SO well! I stared in patches as a control. Takes about a week, then suddenly the lawn in the treated areas very very dark green. Lasts for a few months.
This year I am going to do one side Scott's, the other side 'Me'. I drink a lot of water so I can collect about 5 gallons a week...eezy peezy :)
This was an good experiment, thank you. I was wondering if you had considered adding a control plant as a third category by feeding it just water? This could be compared to the urine to see what the urine did to aid in growth.
I have the same question / request for a water-only control group.
I would love to see pee vs nothing just to see how much it helps
Need a control without any fertilizer.
There are more videos.
It helps so much you wouldn’t believe. Try it out you will be amazed. I use 1 liter of urine and 8 liters of water. Actually there is nothing better than urine
@@Vertikala-pc5ig The harsh reality is that most commercial fertilizers have salts in them. They seem good in the short run, but it kills the biology in the soil in the long run. Requiring even more fertilizer later.
I'm gonna try it, nothing to lose 😂
If you chose to do this again next year, I would very much like to see a comparison of the two "fertilizers" with good soil. Perhaps using some garden soil mixed with added perlite for drainage?
Freakin hilarious and informative video man. I don't care what anyone says, this was great.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching!
It would be interesting to have both crops tested for microplastics. You didn't use any here, but the manufactured soils with white beads, those white beads are the actual nutrients coated in a film of plastic on a production line. Studies have shown plants can deliver microplastics from the soil to their leaves and fruits. I'm curious if it's even possible to avoid eating microplastics at this point.
It is possible, its called starvation.
@@neilhallberg1784 yeah think of all the plastic partials created in home construction sawing foam board . Starvation is the right answer
Bro its in the air to☠
@@aliensmanillegalaliens8950in the air??? Are you talking about forever chemicals??? Apparently we are already totally saturated with the stuff and there's no getting rid of these death sentences
Definitely unavoidable...look at all the plastic he used 🙄
The main problem here is dosage. By nature p is a great herbicide. If you want to get rid of weeds in your yard and don't want to use weed killer, 99% of the time it kills anything that you have growing you want to kill. At least in my experience that's the case. When it's full strength or half.
The only time that urine actually makes good for fertilizer when it's one part urine to 10 part water. Other than that it doesn't work as it's too strong.
Urine is actually toxic enough to kill athletes foot fungus.
I've used white vinegar to kill weeds between the bricks in my patio, but only because I didn't want the lingering odor of human urine in our seating area. I have used possible further out to discourage rodents, though.
I haven't been able to kill any weeds where I whizz, but I shall keep trying
He used full strength urine for his test. He should have used about 3tbsp of urine in his gallon test solution diluted with water. He used 1.5tbsp of miracle grow diluted with water for the other solution. Remember that urine was about half as strong as the miracle grow powder according to several sources so he should have used twice as much urine by weight as he did miracle grow by weight. That is what the problem was. Full strength urine is about a hundred times as strong as his MG diluted solution.
Great experiment. Was thinking that if you took multivitamins and minerals or increased your dosage of them maybe the results might be different with the urine. Just something to consider.
What about Meth?? That gets things done!
I used to take a leak in my mother's garden regularly. Can attest that the tomatos and peppers grew well, and were delicious.
I'm curious if salt content in pee had an effect.
He used full strength urine for his test. He should have used about 3tbsp of urine in his gallon test solution diluted with water. He used 1.5tbsp of miracle grow diluted with water for the other solution. Remember that urine was about half as strong as the miracle grow powder according to several sources so he should have used twice as much urine by weight as he did miracle grow by weight. That is what the problem was. Full strength urine is about a hundred times as strong as his MG diluted solution.
If you have that much salt in yer pee, yer garden is th least of yer worries. Just don't pee in th same place all th time.
I developed wrlds best garden system. Chicken wire vases lined with leaves. Can dip in water to save water. Mulch all surfaces, breathes better, roots grow beneath vase or if lay on side, endless advantages mobile garden. Plants exploding in these vases. Cut 32" x 48" give u 20" tall 4gallon pot, dynamite (shaped long root system)
Plant tomatoe 1gallon dirt, add dirt as tomatoe grows so stem forms more&more roots.
Ocean water is same as human womb. Plants like it. Heals cuts fast. Table salt poison.
Not only urine is a good firtlizer, but it also can be used to calm skin irritation and heal wounds faster.
I appreciate that you decided to post anyway. You've contributed data to humanity.
Age of the urine matters. Notice old pee smells like ammonia? Duh 🙄
Results need updating to allow for this variable.
Miracle grow if formulated for everything to be immediately plant available. The human urine is urea and that has to be converted to ammonia then to nitrate. It requires a microbiome to do that and your experiment didn’t have any live microbiome so the Miracle Grow was destined to win. Great video. I’d love to see it with soil where bacteria could do its job naturally.
Would be interesting to run this experiment again (larger sample size, obvs) but have you take multi-vitamin tablets every day. Excess minerals will be excreted along with the usual nitrogen, potassium etc and might make up for the deficiencies.
Multivitamin tablets are not to be overconsumed.
Yes also . Health of urine is dependant on what the human consumes - foods and Water ! along with their health !
It deff deters some Cats from gardens tho 🤣👀
You obviously already know that your sample size was too small, N=40 is considered a bare minimum for statistically significant results. Also, the urine was way too strong, I have seen it recommended to be applied no more than once per week at a 5% or less solution. I'd like to see such an experiment redone with these considerations.
I was going to say the same thing.
He's an engineer, and they typically work with small sample sizes, for example when doing materials stress and strain testing, or failure analysis. They believe the small sample is a pretty close approximation of the population. A real scientist (that is, not an engineer) knows that ain't so. Even a biologist, with limited math skills, knows enough to make the sample size large enough to yield statistically significant results, and would verify a conclusion by hiring a statistician to validate the work.
exactly what I was thinking
@@DanielinLaTuna Engineers typically work with HUGE quantities, for example when making 10 Million mobile phones or 10 million cinderblocks and do pull a few here and there for quality checks (and yes, they understand the math involved in sampling and testing.) An engineer gets fired if they don't know their math inside and out because the thing doesn't work. Perhaps you are basing your impression of engineers on too small a sample size, or perhaps you have been faking your data in a rush to get your papers published.
@@asicengineer thank you! My dad is an engineer. Let’s just say without his work, and those who work with him, the military would have a lot of training accidents.
that, and down here in Australia native plants suffer from phosphorus toxicity as we have a primitive soil.
Good video bro. You put a lot of work into this and it shows. Happy gardening.
Good workout. Interesting 🤔 but nasty experiment 😝. Great time at shoreline. And thank you for explaining the end results.
I usually purchase any broken bags of fertilizer at a discount from the Home Depot with a military discount. And save them for a later day when perlite and other broken bags are sold at discount. Then mix them together and generously spread the barrels across the entire garden. And turn the mix into the soil before watering and tarping and leaving covered for two or three weeks to kill of weed growth. Then uncover and begin planting seedlings and seeds.
I have had great yields from our family garden. With the included addition of Miracle Grow after a month and an additional application a month later then no more but fresh water up to harvest. Yummy
Then turn the soil water, tarp and repeat the entire process.
I will be copying your black can composting x2 because you are on it!
Very good explaining of garden success and failures.
Keep up the great sharing., AL
Good testing & reasoning. I would concur that you should have had at least one planting of each plant that had no pee or MG fertilizer.
Additionally, urine can have lots of sodium in it (depending upon your diet) & some plants are suseptible to increased sodium concentration in the growing medium. Another thing that you didn't mention is that your MG did, in fact, provide more P & K--which could definitely have made a difference. I would have also mixed the pee & rain water before applying it.
Thanks for sharing!
Finally an accurate comment. No one mentioned sodium and it is the primary reason urine does not work as fertilizer. There is a technique called alkaline urine dehydration that evaporates the water from the urine while stopping the nitrogen from evaporating with it. An an enzyme in urine converts to ammonia as the water evaporates which is why the nitrogen leaves as well. By increasing the PH of the urine this stops that process. This process allows you to directly extract the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous from urine while leaving the other components behind. It is possible to use urine as a fertilizer directly but you need to know what you are doing and you certainly cannot use it in a 1:1 amount with regular fertilizer. It is strange that his lettuce survived because lettuce is highly sensetive to salts. I suspect that something else occured with the dead plant because that seems odd. I would not take away anything from a test like this since it is on a sample size of 1 plant in each category. That is hardly scientific.
Interesting experiment. Thank you! Please also consider doing the experiment in living soil (your normal garden soil, topped-dressed w some compost soil)? It would be interesting to see if urine would do better where there is active soil life/biology all around it to diffuse it & break it down, maybe helping the plants utilize it's micro-nutrients better. My garden plants do very well this way & it's lowered disease & pest pressure.
Active soil life is assumed, but not always correctly, it my intention to work with the naturally occurring microbes in the soil. There is the emerging field of regenerative ag which deals with soil biology.
You should do an experiment with real soil. What if Pee and real soil works as a team to produce good plants
That wouldn't be controllable. Everyone's soil is going to be different, so the results would be unreliable. I have very sandy soil where I live, so my results could be dramatically different than someone who has a heavy clay soil, or a loamier native soil. The only way to do this reliably is to use an inert medium.
4:43 Love it. Scoffs at the White Claw. A man of knowledge and taste. I smiled ear to ear. The hose prank too. Clever.
This was a GREAT video! The experiment was interesting, full of good information, and also humorous! My husband and I laughed multiple times while watching! 😂 Thank you for all you do, we have learned a lot in the couple months we have been watching your videos.
This teaches a wrong result. The urine needed to be diluted to work, otherwise it would pickle the plant like dog piss pickles the grass. If he used 10 tablespoons of Miracle Grow per gallon it would have been a fair comparison. Entertaining stuff but do it again with 5-10 times diluted pee to show people a meaningful result.
I'd be interested in a follow-up experiment comparing inert medium to potting soil and/or untreated compost or soil from the yard.
If the pee-plants do much better on pre-fertilised potting soil it would further strengthen the hypothesis that urine is lacking in one or more micronutrients.
Keep the video up, along with the comments!
This is how we learn !!
Thank you for your work !
You’re welcome! I appreciate you watching.
As a nerdy scientist (of the healthcare variety) and 30+ year organic grower, i loved this experiment. i also think your conclusions are sound. As an organic vs conventional grower, i've gone on the idea of feed the soil and the soil feeds the plant vs a more conventional idea of feeding the plant without considering the soil. For instance, an objection to conventional practices is that petrochemically manufactured fertilizers and pesticides often kill of beneficial elements in the soil (like earthworms). i restored a historical house/farm in Virginia that had been growing tobacco since the 1700's and the soil was dead as a door nail, couldn't find an earthworm to save my life. i brought in semi truck loads of compost, was spraying molasses on the dirt, all sorts of weird stuff to try and restore a natural biome. Why? Because ultimately, i think nature is more practiced and smarter than we humans. Of course, we are a part of nature, so i think we can have beneficial input, but i think it wiser to consider ourselves as a part of nature vs taking all of nature into our hands and trying to control it in a reductionist manner (and i think conventional farming can venture there). To wit, i think the variable that doesn't quite fit in your experiment is the use of a sterile growing medium, for the exact reasons you identify, all those micro nutrients that more possibly exist in soil, but do not in a sterile growing medium. Miracle grow, and other fertilizer manufacturers have also noted this and include some of that stuff in their fertilizers. i think the question of whether a manufacturing process can beat nature is a question that would better be answered using more of nature in the experiment... i.e., as you note, planting everything in garden soil. Of course, in that kind of experiment, it would be impossible to identify all the variables/confounders of the garden soil... but if garden soil vs sterile medium is where we are all, or most, are gardening, i'd argue it would be a more useful experiment for gardening and gardeners. Also, another thought is the MG is a standardized, consistent product, urine is not. Urine is the bodies way of getting rid of stuff it doesn't need. i appreciate you consider that when you speak of eating a whole foods diet, no meds, processed food. Still, kidneys help keep things like potassium and phosphorus in balance. E.g, in healthcare we give phosphate binders to our patients who's kidneys aren't working right and not regulating phosphate well. I.e., the human body as a fertilizer producer is a variable. Either way, great stuff, thanks for doing this.
I think the urine should be diluted a little bit more because of salt buildup over time. Maybe not a complete fertilizer by itself, but certainly a useful (and free) amendment.
He used full strength urine for his test. He should have used about 3tbsp of urine in his gallon test solution diluted with water. He used 1.5tbsp of miracle grow diluted with water for the other solution. Remember that urine was about half as strong as the miracle grow powder according to several sources so he should have used twice as much urine by weight as he did miracle grow by weight. That is what the problem was. Full strength urine is about a hundred times as strong as his MG diluted solution.
@@robklein583 Concur.... Was LOL after seeing he did not dilute the urine.
Any chance you might revisit this, but use a mix of urine and fish meal instead of just urine?
That would go some way to address the nutrient imbalance.
I do use some urine but add it to my compost bins to keep them moist rather than putting it straight on the plants.
If you don't do it - I might have to 😄
I would be very interested in your results if you do it.
I loved watching this!! Great experiment!
2 things. You kept using the same cup to fertilize both. More than that, you used it for urine first. So the MG plants got both MG and pee. and 2. It might have been different if you had used fresh pee every time. It's not like you couldn't produce more. LOL
I'm pretty sure the trace amount of residue is negligible, at most.
Very valid points. There is no such thing as "negligible" if what is in pee is poison.
😂 I had to laugh at the workout part
I lived in Philly for 13 years. Rocky was our movie 😆
Age the urine for 6 or more months to get a better fertilizer.
I've read that it takes time for nitrogen to form through bacterial degredation of the urine so aging it is best.
Hmm I see a few differences… miracle grow got 25% dilute pee 50%… and one other difference is urine has to be broken down by microbes vs the miracle grow comes broken down already…. So this mostly tests if you can piss in your plants vs if pee is a valid food source to create a healthy soil… which is what you want organic ferts to do
One thing I notice the soil health is probably better in the pissy soil as there’s algae growing on the perlite… I think a better experiment would have been to inoculate one soil with the urine first and allow the microbes 🦠 to create a rich soil/heslthy rhizosphere , and comparing that to a soil that had not been pissed in as a control
Also keep in mind that plants take take 2 weeks to react in organic feed so if the pepper didn’t make it past two weeks the soil was too hot to begin and might have thrived with one feeding
Interesting video. I will probably do one of these experiments myself …
My question is. Did the plants start going downhill before or after you went to full-strength?
I'm wondering the same thing.
@@jennifereverettgrowsfoodor1598 We are probably going to have to keep wondering. My guess is you're thinking that he burnt the plants when he went to full strength. It certainly makes more sense to me than the video.
@@victorb145 I have killed plenty of young tomato plants with full strength before I knew better. Probably too much nitrogen and/or the pH was too high. Diluted is a requirement for success.
@@jennifereverettgrowsfoodor1598 Your spittin facts. But it's not like I was going to start using urine on my plants anyway. The the dog and cats like using the flower bed, but if it was a garden they wouldn't be allowed.
The Pee also has Salt (NaCl). Miracle grow does not have any salt in it. Romans used Salt to poison the soil. That is what pee does poisons the soil. If you could remove the salt the pee would work better.
I drank pee and it didn't taste salty...
But seriously most salt comes out of your body in sweat not urine
MiracleGro: Turned out much better because it contains both macro and micro nutrients.
Pee: Performed poorly because it only contains macro nutrients.
I just saved you 18 minutes, YOUR WELCOME!
The University of Michigan researched this. I believe diluting the urine 8or10:1 was the result that produced as good or better than Miracle-Gro.
Wee can make miracle grow!
It's a lot easier to store MiracleGro 😅
I read somewhere that you should use 1 to 10 of urine. 10 parts water mixed with 1 part urine. I could be wrong but I think that what I read years ago. It might even 1 to 20. I read it several years ago. In both instances it was being heavily watered down.
Definitely, anything more than 1:5 will most likely burn most plants... I go 1:10. Great for my corn!
Agreed. I have seen 1 to 20 for new transplants, 1 to 10 for established.
I don't think that would work. The NPK would be so weak that it wouldn't be able to do anything fed once a week. You'd be talking an NPK ratio of only about 1-0.2-0.4, and in an inert medium like coir+perlite, you'd have to feed it every single day to catch up to the "real" fertilizer. That's far more handling of the...product...than I'm willing to do. If you have to apply it that frequently, I don't think it's reasonable to use, because no normal person is going to take the time to fertilize daily. It just isn't realistic.
@@TheMillennialGardener I totally understand I think I had heard them talking about on Gardening Australia program. I don’t remember if they were just talking about supplementary fertilizing. I personally have never tried but I remember that undiluted urine in fast draining soil will usually burn plants up. Thank you for sharing your experiment and knowledge!
The algae in the Pee Pepper pot looks pretty healthy ;)
I came to this video because I grow cannabis (legally) and I'm a huge believer that living soil and natural sunshine give the best results. I keep a good pile of compost, manures, and yard scraps on hand to amend my soil (I grow in pots) each autumn. Begging when the plants are a 4 nodes high, I'll even start digging small holes in the potting mix and bury things like apple cores, banana peels, and whatnot. The idea is to keep "fresh" food in the soil for the bugs and microbes to feast upon. You'd think this would make the soil too hot, but usually in the mid-late vegetative season, I start to see signs of nitrogen deficiency. My "solution" to this is urine (between 1:2 to 1:10 dilution... I don't measure anything) and it works like magic. Perhaps urine is best used in the soil because of all the microbes that can benefit from it? Maybe it's my lack of imagination, but I can't see miracle grow "feeding the soil".
What do you think?
Time for an experiment with soil (and more specimens)?
Did anybody make the “Peter Piper Peed a peck of pickled peppers” joke here?
I don’t want to be redundant
Thank you, I have waited years for someone to do this test. My opinion, urine salt plus coir salt equals plant starvation of nutrient uptake.
I have looked at cultures in the world who use urine as fertilizer on a large scale. What they do is: every home in town or country has a chamber pot. Collectors go around every morning and collect the contents of the chamber pots ,take those contents out to the country, and sell it to farmers for fertilizer. They sell all the contents of the pots, so the farmers get a mixture of urine, feces, and toilet paper. It would be interesting to run a test using such a mixture.
One thing I notice in your test is that you first pour pure urin over the plant, then pour rainwater. I would suggest that you mix the rainwater with the urine before pouring them over the roots. This would reduce the chances of the urine burning the roots.
Love that you tossed the white Claw. My eyes were almost rolling.
From a Permaculture course I did, I learned that you need to use a ratio of Urine 1:1 Carbon, meaning equal volumes of urine to dry carbon matter like dry straw, hay, "brown" materials, clippings, sawdust or wood chips, will balance the correct decomposition producing an organic compost.
No experiment survives first contact with data, but it was a relaxing pleasure to watch you go through the process. Or at least the first iteration of the process; I'd value an experiment to test your hypothesis about missing nutrients, and the many commenters' hypothesis that half diluted urine is too harsh.
Great experiment. Thanks for sharing. You have a great sense of humor. Good video.
I use miracle grow on plants that are seasonal at times. The only problems I have with it is it is like crack for plants. If you stop the feeding they don’t react too well. And that can happen with many inorganic fertilizers. I have tied the pee method very diluted and had mixed results. Like others have said here, urea turns to ammonia over time which plant roots are not fond of, so using it dusted fresh is better. As for salts, as some have mentioned, I don’t know. I do drain some of my salt water pool into an area of grass when needed due to summer rains and that are grows green and healthy. But organic fertilizers such as kelp and seaweed or fish emulsion etc have yielded the best results for me. I will also tell you that the old farmer myth of placing an egg in the soil under the roots is no myth. I planted pepper and tomato plants last year, half with eggs, half without……the eggs ones grew to unmanageable proportions but needed a lot of phosphorus to fruit especially the peppers. The tomatoes produced fruit until November!
I’ve done tons of plant experiments. There’s nothing wrong with your sample size. The only thing that causes a variable is application. Soil or compost or any organic medium containing life will have interactions with the introduction of compounds. Soil biology can be altered by what is added to it and then the microbes releases the nutrients to the plant. So while in an inert experiment testing direct relationships between plants and nutrients yields clear answers, a dynamic relationship between nutrients and living soil may yield different results with an indirect relationship between the fertilizer and the plants.
I have strawberry plants been going for 3 years no 1st was bit slow but I found using urine the last two years really made a difference