Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => The Environment => Topic started by: Lewis Thomson on 23/02/2022 10:43:13
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Martin would like some insight into this situation.
"I have heard members on BBC garden programmes advocate urinating on compost heaps for the nitrogen and phosphorous in the liquid. I also read that a dilution of 1/20 is a valid fertiliser. How much 'pee' could we actually recycle and how much Co2 and other 'climate' chemicals can we not-use by literally bottling it!?"
What do you think? Discuss in the comments below...
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Most of us have diets with too much salt in for this to be a great idea.
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Champion vegetable growers would disagree. But if you insist on flushing it down the loo, Thamesgro (other suppliers are available) is an excellent agricultural fertiliser made from the poo and pee of the Thames Valley.
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Champion vegetable growers would disagree.
It's not a difficult experiment; go pee on the same patch of lawn every day for a week..
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I don't eat grass. Nor am I in the habit of peeing on the lawn (I have a dog to do that for me). However if anyone was stupid enough to use undiluted fertiliser, I'm sure they could kill almost any plant. It says so on the packet of the stuff you pay for.
The advice of farmers and market gardeners world wide is not to mimic habitual drunks, but spread the poo and pee fairly thinly, with a good dose of rain to wash it down. I revisited an old camp site a couple of years after we had finished the contract (ten people living under canvas for a month, doing forestry and fencing work) and was not surprised to see healthy young trees and wild roses growing in just one spot - where the latrines had been - in an otherwise unremarkable pasture.
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if anyone was stupid enough to use undiluted fertiliser,
It's not the "fertiliser" that matters, it's the weedkiller.
It's about 0.03M salt water (with some other bits).
Try watering the lawn with 0.2% salt water.
not surprised to see healthy young trees and wild roses growing in just one spot - where the latrines had been - in an otherwise unremarkable pasture.
So- the livestock had more sense than to eat the seedlings on top of a pile of sh1t and that gave the roses a chance to get started.
I'm not surprised either.
But it does lead to the question of where the seeds came from.
Was the hole filled in with soil from a rose garden?
I don't eat grass.
Well... nobody said you did.
But actually, you do.
Wheat, rice, oats, maize and cane sugar are all grasses.
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Anyway the OP specifically asked about diluting urine with compost, which is what organic market gardeners do. And God decreed that wild trees and roses scatter their seed, unlike Onan who was condemned to write silly things on public noticeboards.