Pee in a 5 gallon bucket located in a discreet location. Don’t let it get too full. You don’t wanna spill it while you’re taking it to its final destination.
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I wonder if it’ll work on these evil squirrels. I am going to try it. I’ve got a GoGirl so I can probably get a mason jar to use then water it down for the plants the squirrels are most interested in.
they aren’t scared of anything else, not even the air rifle
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Soil Scientist for 25 years.
Grow our orchard in the septic leach field. Great source of water and nutrients and helps to process the nitrogen leaching into the deep sediment.
Also, have been peeing into the garden for 15 years, 1:1 in a watering can, or more dilute when plants are young.
Also, composting chicken manure with wood ash and coffee grounds. Great compost! Works well in the southwest as long as soils not too alkaline.
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Hi @aaron4peace - welcome to the forum 
.
I’m glad to see you mention wood ash for your mix. Many folks overlook the contribution of potash to fruit quality and perennial plant vigor.
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I’m surprised at the amount of reticence here about using humanure. Pretty safe around fruit trees surely. It’s not the same as using it for growing lettuce - although I have been using it on everything for over 10 years. My soil is pretty good. And my health.
The only problem I’ve had is with getting rats in the compost piles. So a couple of years ago, I built some compost bins out of concrete blocks, with a 4" concrete base. Now the rats can’t get in. I put plastic pallets at the bottom, some stainless steel mesh over that, and build the heap on the mesh. The heap is elevated 4-5 inches about the concrete base. At the bottom of the block wall, I have an air brick - this arrangement allows air to flow right through the compost heaps ensuring aerobic decomposition. I put a drain system in too to catch the liquid that comes out of the pile.
When the heaps were in the open, I used to have a walnut tree downhill of them, planted there with the idea it might mop up extra nitrates etc that came out of the heaps. The tree grew really fast! And one day, the top 1/3 just blew off - in a fairly gentle wind. Growing trees too fast makes them weak.
Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to use the compost runoff on plants to see how it worked. It works like magic! Some of it is urine, that has just passed through the heap, but most of it is the result of decomposing weeds I add to the heaps. You’d think liquid would flow from the heaps at the fastest rate when I’ve just emptied the toilet bucket, but in fact, I collect the most liquid on hot days, when the heap is decomposing at the fastest rate.
I regret ever having had compost heaps on the ground. Most of the nutrients disappear into the ground under the heap! I use the liquid on all my fruit trees and on all vegetables. The only place I don’t use it is on salad that is almost ready for eating. I’ve had some peach trees that haven’t grown much at all in a couple of years. When I’ve used the compost juice on them, they’ve grown 3’ in a few weeks. I have experimented, and found that using it neat can burn leaves. So I dilute it. I might see if I can add it to my irrigation system sometime, as I get gallons of it on a hot day, and it’s a bit of work spreading it about. If I see aphids on the young shoots of trees, I stop using it on them, so that they will slow down their growth and toughen up.
I also collect some urine separately and use that on plants. In winter, the urine goes onto a big bin full of woodchip. It gets soaked up, and and then added to a heap, which is then used as a soil improver in the spring.
The amount of sodium is urine is directly related to the amount of sodium we eat - after all, we don’t increase the sodium content in our bodies, it’s a fairly fixed state. So, as I don’t add salt to anything I eat and don’t eat salty processed food, the sodium I’m adding to the soil isn’t detrimental.
My plants have never been looking better or growing so well since I started using the liquid (which looks surprisingly like ‘Baby Bio’).
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Hi Richard. I noticed you have experience dealing with Peach Tree Borer. I am trying to avoid chemical pesticides, but will break that code to save my trees if I need to. Do you have any advice for how to tackle this? I have tried nematodes, but I think its too dry here for them to thrive. I did some neem oil, spraying monthly, but haven’t yet tried the direct application via full concentration with paint brush. I’m looking for the next level of wisdom here. Trees are getting hammered.
Cheers
-Aaron
on fruit trees yes, diluted. we use urine.
When not diluting 4:1 for direct use on trees and bushes it gets dumped on the large horse manure compost pile. It doesn’t go to waste.
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Hi Aaron,
I’m not Richard, but here’s my take. I had borers in a peach? tree about 15 years ago. I dug out the hole with a paper clip and got the bugger. Then I filled it up with aquarium cement, the stuff that looks like a tube of toothpaste. Worked like a charm.
John S
PDX OR
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The paper clip worked if you punctured the worm. Filling cavities with foreign substances to aid trees has been rejected by research and I don’t see how it would be helpful against peach borers. They don’t need an entrance as they feed themselves by chewing their own. But that is only speculation on my part.
As I have said repeatedly here and taken on as a kind of mission with this forum, anecdotes are fine, but they are what they are- evidence and often slim evidence. Research is far from infallible, especially in trying to understand complicated biological systems, or I should say that conclusions drawn from research are often premature. In that way it is like anecdote, but with a lot more statistical verification. If you filled the worm holes of 100 peach trees and left 100 alone and studied response you would be somewhere.
Over the last several decades I have killed many worms mechanically and left the wounds alone- never lost a single tree as a result (as far as I know).
If you are using wood chip mulch you probably can afford to overlook it and the problem here can become too much K interfering with calcium absorption leading to corking and other rots on certain apple varieties. I have stopped using urine to fertilize my apple trees because of all the K in it. I believe it was contributing to the problem, although I never did leaf analysis to verify it. Certainly soil analysis suggested it.
I use a great deal of woodchips to mulch my nursery trees and most of my orchard trees have access to soil enriched this way.
Those are useful anecdotes, Alan. Here’s another: I got the idea from another guy who had been doing that for several years. I don’t know where he got the idea. Nice to see that I can still get a harsh response from Alan after all these years.
John S
PDX OR
Nice to know that you so gracefully respond to controversy after all these years. It has nothing to do with you John. What is harsh about pointing out that Alex Shigo spent his life trying to find a wound sealant that helped trees heal and determined that, in most cases, trees can defend themselves against invasion best if left to their own devices. This involved close study of thousands and thousands of cuts over half of his lifetime, and the man was hired to find a sealant that actually worked.
You know you are turning a bit into a weirdo when you are out in town, have to use the bathroom, and actually feel bad from being wasteful.
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This was a science experiment for my daughter, she wrote a paper about it. She felt really icky about collecting her urine and diluted it, lol.
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I have that experience all the time. Sometimes I ask people if it’s ok to use their backyard. Some are very pro the idea. Some gross out.
John S
PDX OR
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Chewing tobacco and cigarettes work well around boundary edges but keep it away from your tomatoes. No need to introduce viruses.
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For years I grew a long row of tomatoes beside the tobacco patch; never had a problem.
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A life time of gardening has made me skeptical of such dangers one often sees in the literature but never hears about from actual gardeners. Skeptical- not entirely dismissive.
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Here is Nourse Farms list of what not to do… would be interesting to read a thread about wives tales of what not to do as well.
As far as introducing viruses to tomatoes… isnt there plenty of soil pathogens in tomato soil? Thats one ive heard… dont put the soil where tomatoes have grown anywhere else.