I suppose I could have googled to find the actual article, but this will have to do. Organic Gardening Magazine was an early influence of mine before I began growing fruit in the northeast and discovered the magic of modern chemistry which persuaded me to give up my “Christian Science” approach to horticulture. Prayers and “good karma” just weren’t working.
It is amusing to imagine Organic Gardening trying to market itself to wealthy subscribers- but then, they are often the customer base of the likes of Whole Foods and many of them are gardeners. I doubt many will embrace peeing on their vegetables, however.
This is a more interesting article than the one in the Rodale magazine.
I read you post and the article linked. Then I searched for the original article, but wound up reading the Scientific American one first. I didn’t see a reference to it your original post. Either I didn’t read the whole thing, or it was edited while I read.
The original link was to the NY Post article that was simply a business related piece. I later looked up the other articles, started reading the Rodale thing but then when straight to their source. I just thought it was interesting that this all has gone main STREAM.
OK, I started the kindergarten fun, but it is interesting to me that Scientific American covered this issue and that this is being studied and has been studied in the context of claims I’ve embraced for almost 50 years. That is- the huge environmental benefits of keeping urine out of the waste systems and in the garden, among other things.
And they did what you and many of us like to see, Alan, a controlled experiment.
For the recent experiment with beets, the urine was obtained from specialized toilets in private homes. Heinonen-Tanski’s group planted four plots of beets and treated one with mineral fertilizer, one with urine and wood ash, one solely with urine, and one with no fertilizer, as a control.
After 84 days, about 280 beets were harvested. The beetroots from the urine- and urine/ash–fertilized plants were found to be 10 percent and 27 percent larger by mass, respectively, than those grown in mineral fertilizer. By subjecting some of the beets to chemical analysis, the researchers determined that all of them had comparable nutrient contents—and according to a blind taste-testing panel, their beety taste was indistinguishable. The results were published in the February 10 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
From the Scientific American article
I should put our fire pit to use this fall to aid in feeding the beets and other crops I planted for winter.
It stated that one person’s output is sufficient to feed ~1 sq. meter/day. I’ve definitely been spreading myself too thin.
I suspect that one person fertilizing 1 sqM per day does not mean that one person’s pee can only supply fertilizer for one sqM for the year. They fail to mention how often this “fertilizer” needs to be applied, but I strongly suspect is is not daily.
Even when growing plants that like a lot of N, I think that pouring your urine on them daily would overdose them.
I didn’t pay much attention to the data. I know that my own supply is more than adequate to supplement the growth of vegetables and fruit way beyond the use of my small family. Using compost from kitchen scraps, etc. is in the mix as well, but some quick release N increases yields immensely by pushing spring growth when things are establishing.
My customers almost all get synthetic N when it is helpful.
Steve, I’m positive they didn’t mean for it to be applied to the same sq. meter day after day. I was thinking along the lines of rotating areas for about a month long cycle during growing seasons. The frequency was totally out of my hat.
That rate would only feed 30 sq. meters. If my brain isn’t as foggy as the weather, that would cover about a 15x20’ garden area during the cycle, or maybe 10 or so youngish fruit trees, or just a few full sized ones. My thinking was only allowing for pee produced during growing times when nitrogen would normally be applied. The tea leaves tell me that storing it is not in my future, even if that would substantially increase the amount of area that could be adequately covered.
Now, my thinking may be way off track, because one of the articles also stated that one person’s output, when used specifically for growing corn, was sufficient to produce a harvest that would provide 1,800 calories a day for a year. That would be 3 ears per day of sweet corn @ an avg. of 600 calories per ear. Thirty peaches or 18 apples, or about 22 medium beets along with greens, or ~1 1/3 gal. blueberries or sweet cherries, or just under 2 gal. raspberries.
It looks like my mind was wandering there, and it was. From that wandering came the thought that a single person’s output could be more than sufficient to provide nitrogen and trace nutrients for nutrition rich vegetables in which much of the plant was consumed, but could only partially satisfy the needs of enough orchard trees and bushes for an individual. I believe that what one could supply for an orchard compared to its needs would only be a drop in the bucket, so to speak. The more mature trees and bushes would probably benefit from additional fertilization from other sources.
I tried a free subscription to “Organic Gardening.” I found it written to the level of a short attention span 3rd grader. Boring. Not to mention claims not backed by scientific evidence—lots of them.
That took all of 2 minutes to locate the article the Sci AM article is based upon. Too bad it is pay for article after five+ years. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf9029157
The lead author has published at least two subsequent papers (one a review) that are open PDF docs. Thanks to Alan for bringing the SciAm article to my attention.
Urine as a nitrogen source is an interest of mine along with human feces as a finished compost. For urine it should be diluted at least three fold to prevent damage to roots. Also there is an significant amount of sodium in urine so for arid regions it needs to be judiciously applied. [For feces while there is no reason in a finished compost it could not be used in vegetable gardens I would not recommend using it on any edible that is in direct contact with the ground in case a batch were not completely composted. Fruit and nut trees would be ideal use as a top soil/compost/mulch layer. Composting toilets would save around 4-8% of the household water used by a flush toilet.] http://www.omick.net/composting_toilets/barrel_toilet_urine_diversion.htm
It is interesting to me that the body excretes more N and K through urine than through feces and a highly convenient state of affairs it is. I don’t actually have much interest in composting my feces- I get enough flack from my wife for saving piss. I wouldn’t mind using a good Swedish composting toilet, however. It is strange to me that someone hasn’t come up with a sound design to replace porta-pottys with a composting toilet.
I cannot blame your wife. Until they have a composting toilet that guarantees and actually provides as odor free a toilet as a flush toilet, and as convenient to use as pushing down on a button or lever flush composting toilets will be the purview of people either with hippie mindset (extreme minority unfortunately) or who cannot connect to a sewer line and can talk their county into allowing it as opposed to a space wasting problematic septic leach field.
When I read the articles I also read the abstract of the original study that both articles were taking their information. I just wasn’t $35 worth of interested enough to access the study for 48 hrs.
Alan, I was also happy to read that the desired elements are more concentrated in urine. It’s so much easier and less problematic to handle.
Also, if anybody can point out reasoning errors in my previous rambling post, please do.
