I have well over a decade of time served using urine as a fertilizer and I’m a huge proponent. Here are a few points. Don’t mix the urine with grey water for use. It’s actually quite potent. Grey water will make a better everyday fertigant. Save the urine separately to have a convenient water soluble, fast acting fertilizer to use strategically as needed. It is fine if it’s fresh, or if it is sits around. It’s a fantastic fertilizer and for most people it will solve all of their nitrogen problems. Urine contains the great majority of the plant macronutrients that leave the human body, plus lots of minerals that are very valuable, and I think all soluble and pretty fast acting. Urine separation also makes it much easier to deal with the feces, since it is drier without the pee in there, easier to compost, less smelly etc.
Dilution of urine can be as low as 2:1 if you are watering in. It depends on how you are using it. Think of the dilution as a combination of the ratio at application and the water used to water it in immediately afterward. If you live on fairly free draining soil with significant rainfall, I doubt that salt build up will be an issue. I’ve never seen it. Worry about it when it happens.
My take on safety is that composting feces is an undertaking that should be taken seriously, while urine is just not really a big deal. Keep it off of the food you eat and you’re probably good. Just my opinion. Feces can always be buried just to be extra safe.
Very good info. I read your article and it was quite enlightening as well. Honestly i feel much more safe about using PEE as fertilizer and i am quite the prolific pee er…Over 50 will do that. I do believe the storing and directly applying method will be the preferred method just simply for control. Great info. Thank You…BTW I like your bit of an irreverent way of writing. Great info. but it just makes reading a little more fun. THNX
Another alternative would be to irrigate your lawn with grey water, and then take the clippings to the compost pile or use as mulch for the trees and garden. This would capture much of the nutrients. If you don’t have a lawn, you could plant a fast growing, water loving, biomass crop such as willow and irrigate it. You can cut willow and many other woody perennial crops to the ground every year (Google coppicing). Running waste through one or two biological processes prior to application on a food crop should reduce pathogen concerns. Stockpiling nutrients as compost or biomass mulch and applying seasonally would alleviate Alan’s concern regarding the timing of nitrogen application.
I personally would be less worried about fertilizing a fruit tree with human waste versus a vegetable garden crop (eg a root or leafy green crop). Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems more difficult for a pathogen to make its way up a tree and into a fruit vs superficial contamination of a leafy green…
I personally just pee on the compost pile when the urge strikes, and mow my leach field.
Keep in mind that the e coli outbreak and a few other outbreaks brought attention to the fact that the vast majority of fields harvested by migrant labor ends up having waste eliminated in it. Thoroughly rinse your veggies. It’s a risk, but it’s just Not A Big Deal™.
As a side note and probably way more than you want to know the guys that work down at the county say there sure are a lot of cantaloupe, tomatoes and such growing along the banks of the lagoon of the waste water treatment plant! Those must be some happy raccoons and such there! They can steal all the produce they want and no one will stop them!
haha yeah i’ve heard wastewater treatment guys talk about the amazing tomato plants with ripe red fruit growing in a logjam in the sewer on only a few hours of light a day. Thing is - nobody wants to try the tomatoes!
A local master gardener took me aside a few years ago and, as we looked over his very lush garden, he told me the secret is to use my urine to fertilize my garden. I’ve been following his advice ever since. Works great. Between this and my rabbit compost, I never have to use chemical fertilizers in my organic urban farm/orchard.
Although this sounds good in theory (as many things in life do), the deal breaker for me is the smell.
I visited a friend who raised chickens and turkeys not far from her house when I was considering this. As soon as we walked out the back door, ugh. I thought it was just my own sensitivitiy but I’ve changed enough diapers to desensitize me. I had a friend who thought goats were so cute and she and her husband decided to get some. Last time I saw her and asked about her cute goats she had a change of mind. She said she hates to go outside for the smell. Not everyone is sensitive to smells, but to me, why would you want the place where you live to smell like that? Thanks but I’d rather raise confederate jasmine.
Edit: And I forgot to mention the flies. Holy cow. BUT I have admitted to being the whimp-us maximus. To each his own.
What I learned from my own experience is it’s a matter of room with animals. When I was a kid farms had one cow per acre because it’s highly efficient but what I learned is 1 per acre and a half or 2 acres does not smell bad. Large cow, pig, and chicken lots have many animals in one spot which smells terrible. Pigs and chickens smell way worse than cows but if you put a sow and her pigs on 3-5 acres and raise the half dozen pigs until they are 200 pounds on mostly grass and a little grain there is little smell. Chicken coops I had smelled strong with ammonia because I used the recommended methods but if you have 4-5 hens and you clean the pen once a week and let them roam all over the smell is minimal. The reason why I don’t have farm animals is letting chickens, goats, cows, or even hogs roam all over is asking for uninvited guests for dinner and my animals would be the main course. So some would ask what’s different than ever and it’s time people stayed with heir goats all day In the old days and their dogs helped them but now no one can afford to do that. Farming like that is all but gone in this country and it’s going away in others. Since corporations took over farming we have seen everything change. The aged cow manure I buy does not smell bad and it’s very good fertilizer. It looks more like rich black dirt. I’ve got 20 more loads coming and since the farm is close by it’s $25 per load which is 5 bobcat bucket scoopfuls.
Interesting to know. I am planning on having a dozen chickens for eggs, a few goats for milk and cheese, I’ll have to do research to see what monthly production is on both to decide how many in the end, I’ll only need enough for me and the wife. Maybe grandkids too. I’m definitely going to have a pair of mules for trail riding. I think 8 or so acres should easily keep those animals. While some of my fruit trees will be inside the fencing. Just mulberry and crabapple and 3 pecan trees. I don’t see a problem there? Does anyone?
We raise cattle but with lots of room so the only smell happens in the spring after the thaw and then nadda. For the chickens, I use wood shavings as bedding, make sure it is not too deep and they seem to scratch it up looking for small pieces of grain, which keeps it turning and drying. IMO the only chicken poop that smells is the wet stuff.
I read that if you are using a composting can…the best thing to use is woodchips//for smell/breakdown time. I always thought cedar chips would work///but i think they found they didn’t work nearly as well (as least in the article i remember reading).
I wouldn’t be scared to use urine but i’d be watering it down.
The chickens should love eating the fallen mulberries, but I would hesitate to put any “nice” trees where chickens would be spending much time. They scratch so much I would worry about the long term health of the tree.
As for yield, our very average mail order birds (two black sex links and two americaunas) are two years old and lay on average 5 eggs a week each. As far as poop management goes (so I don’t go OT), the coop is generous (48) and they have two 1010 pens to alternate between. Lots of shavings in the coop and wood chips in the pens. Replacement layers and meat birds are raised in a mobile chicken tractor. When you open the coop door, there is an animal smell, but otherwise no smell at all. I hate poop smell! Lots of space and lots of carbon!
I should update my advocacy for my urine as fruit tree fertilizer. I’ve stopped applying it to bearing age apple trees for fear of providing excess potassium. Apparently this can lead to corking and black rots in susceptible varieties, especially Honey Crisp and Jonagold, but I’ve also had issues with Pink Lady, Braebern and Newtown Pippin. It seems to interfere with calcium absorption. I will use it for all other fruit trees, including younger apples.
Thank you for the update Alan, I have been following this thread. I started my very own “storage system” (a 5 gallon used DEF fluid bucket with a handle on the bottom from tractor supply) in the basement bathroom closet last night! My wife rarely uses that bathroom and it’s close by to where I’ve been fiddling with soil mixes, starting cuttings and seeds, and getting ready to graft. It’s a plant friendly zone down there right now.
I just can’t resist trying to contribute something to this conversation. I don’t know why.
This is a picture of a building in its original context at Fort Larned (1866—1884), KS, historical site. It was a duplex residence for officers’ families. There is a shared well (under a canopy) and a privy, which is unacceptably close by modern standards. I don’t know how the inhabitants made this work, but I have a few guesses as to how they lived.
No. 1: You have to buy into the fact that men didn’t use the privy for that! There’s a reason that outhouses were decorated with moon signs. While everyone used the privy for no. 2, only women were allowed to use it for no. 1. Even in town, men would go to the alley or behind a stable to relieve themselves during the day. There were institutional buildings such as courthouses, churches, and schools where men were confined for long periods of time, and these had separate privies for each sex. The ones for men were decorated by sunbursts. In general, male home owners, though, preferred not to contribute to the volume contained in their own privy, which might cause it to have to be pumped out more frequently. In an era where horse-powered conveyance was universal, the stench of male urination was only a minor contribution to the overall stench of city living. All that changed when electric power made indoor plumbing commonplace and after horses were displaced by automobiles.
Also, I should say that I, myself, have imbibed at establishments that had no boys’ room. Fondly I recall Tillie’s Bar in Beechwood, WI, which is no more, and especially the Jersey Lilly in Ingomar, MT.
I also thought about suggesting Maypoops.