Better tomatoes via a fertilizer of human urine
 

Yep, pee. Apparently this increased crop production by over 4x! It also works on other plants as well. The study

So, I guess ya need to start filling those self watering planters in your bathroom Hig! :D

Better Tomatoes Via a Fertilizer of...Human Urine? | Popular Science

EEEWWW!

Plus...there's a tube...that means in the summer I don't even have to go back inside to pee.

My plants get a combination of ovine and human urine...and the odd squirt of canine, filine, lapine, rodent, and batrachian urine. Of course, birds mix their urine with their feces as it comes out, so my plants get fertilized with a bit of bird urea along with the uric acid crystals expelled by the insects and spiders inhabiting the garden.

and here I peed on stuff to keep the rabbits away.

I did hear from somewhere that mixing Urine with water - At a ratio of about one to four - Would help fertilize plants. And hey, It reduces use of the five-gallon flush toilet (Which is where a lot of our time is going by using it, No joke)

We've been putting a 1:4 mix on the flowers for 22 years. I was initially worried about buildup of mineral salts in the soil but this hasn't proven to be a problem. The biggest problem is the bucket of whiz stinking up the bathroom before morning.

I lived across from some drunks many moons ago. As drunks do, they would not always go inside to pee. They would go to the side of the house and pee, the side of the house where they had cucumbers growing.
When I would see them picking the cucumbers it made my stomach turn.

But how big were the cucumbers?! :p

Although urine provides all the nutrients for bacterial development, the urine itself is essentially sterile. The revulsion toward the behavior of some drunkards makes one wish they were sterile.

Urine makes an excellent starter for a compost pile as it will encourage decomposition of just about any vegetative material. I've seen a pressure treated deck destroyed because of poorly aimed "used" beer.

The Rich Earth Institute is currently undergoing field trials of using urine to fertilize. They pasteurize it first to eliminate micro organisms. Urine contains most of the Potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus we eliminate from our bodies. The main downside is it also contains most of our unwanted chemical residues (ie drugs and their metabolized components). Part of what REI is looking into is what is the plant take up rate of these things, and is it a health risk.

All this talk of pee..... makes me have to pee :)

ahhhhhhhhhh

Steve

If that made your stomach turn, it's probably best that you do not inquire into how your food is actually grown, harvested and handled... and especially where your meat comes from. Or inquire into the laws that limit how much animal feces IS ALLOWED in the meat you eat, and how poorly enforced even those sloppy standards are.

If you allowed yourself to become aware of these things, you might become something I'm sure you do not want to become... an activist.

-AC

P.S.: Then there's THIS.

The big ag companies will just start pumping out septic systems to get their raw materials. Then there will be millions of tons of "organic" fertilizer used daily to grow soybeans, corn, and wheat. If that doesn't work, they can always use soylent green to feed us. EEK!

Nothing new there;)
https://suite.io/vic-sanborn/3des2zr

In regions with a lot of chicken CAFO's they feed the chicken manure/litter/sweepings from the chicken houses to cattle in nearby feedlots. From what I've heard, when they process these cattle in the slaughter houses there is a strong odor of chicken manure present. If any of this makes your stomach turn, then raise your own food. At least that way, you know exactly and can control what goes into your food.

Besides the unsavory feed inputs, the high amounts of antibiotic use in CAFO's has generated numerous strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria which can get on and in you when you handle the raw meat and then can cause problems the next time you have to take antibiotics for an infection or surgery.

Should We Return The Nutrients In Our Pee Back To The Farm? : The Salt : NPR
The average human generates 8 pounds of nitrogen and almost 1 pound of phosphorous in a year's worth of urine. And those nutrients come in a form that plants can use.

But - and there is always a but . . . .

Both bioavailable nitrogen and phosphorus, but WAY lots of salt (NaCL). After a while the salt builds up and there goes the plant. Just ask anyone who has a dog. Those dead yellow spots in the lawn are the result of too much salt all in one place.

Sadly, an urban myth (peeing on veggies). Now, if you want to discuss "night soil" on veggies, then that is a different discussion altogether. But that one is something that very few of us would consider.




Steve

Too much nitrogen does the same thing, and I think it's the nitrogen that makes the yellow spots. My grandfather killed dandelions in the lawn by putting a teaspoon of ammonium nitrate on them. It killed the dandelion and a three inch spot of grass. Two weeks later the grass closed in and the dandelion never returned.

Granny was pissed because the old fart eliminated her source of dandelion greens.