Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

https://idle.slashdot.org/story/09/09/1 ... e-On-Urine

The excerpt:
"Using human urine as a fertilizer produces bumper crops of tomatoes that are safe to eat, scientists have found.
Their research was published last month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and may help cheaply boost crops in the developing world. From the article, 'Yields for plants fertilized with urine quadrupled and matched those of mineral-fertilized plants. The urine-fertilized tomatoes also contained more protein and were safe for human consumption.'"

Anyone want to run an experiment? One AP system with extra urine, and one without?

I can't imagine there'd be much difference between fish pee hand me pee, but you never know...
How 'Scientific' were these 'Scientists'? One look on here would show that fishless cycling with humonia produces BUMPER crops of tomatoes!
Perhaps we should have published our findings, then we could be scientists too.

I read that in Mexico City in the slums they are really helping the poor by teaching them to use urine as a fertilzer.

They needed to come up with something that needed little or no land, little or no investment in infrastructure, no purchase of chemical inputs, and be light weight for rooftop cultivation.

http://www.journeytoforever.org/garden_con-mexico.html

Over time they found that certain insufficiencies started showing up in certain plants as they grew older. They then started adding vermicompost to these growpots and have not looked back since. All low cost and completely sustainable.

Liquid Gold. Urine has been being used as fertilizer with great success for a long time.

I have even heard it said that there are enough nutrients in a person's urine to grow all their grain needs for a year. I don't know how many people are likely to try growing their own grain but urine is great fertilizer for any high demand plant.

Now for those that think using urine in the garden might somehow be bad for the environment but their toilet is hooked to a septic system and leach field. Peeing in the toilet will simply place the nutrients into the ground below the reaches of the lawn roots. Thus, the excess nutrients will simply leach down into the lower levels of the ground and eventually into the ground water supplies. It would be better to dribble it around your high fertilizer demand plants so they can make more immediate use of the nutrients.

For those that are worried about pathogens (generally urine is thought to be relatively safe) there are things that will kill off certain pathogens. Leaving the urine bottled for a period of time will allow enzymes to convert the urea into ammonia. Ammonia is a natural disinfectant and will kill things like e. coli. Now it might not be wise to pour the urine of cholera patients over your veggies but using your own urine on your own veggies is not going to give you any diseases you didn't already have.

If you still don't like the idea of dribbling your very own free liquid gold around your gardens. Then use urine as a compost activator. It is a great nitrogen source for getting high carbon compost to heat up. It is an important ingredient in making Humanure compost work!!!!

If you want free great fertilizer from something that is otherwise a waste product, urine is the best choice I can see. Dilute it some since it is strong. Greedy plants like it 1 part urine to 1 part water. More sensitive plants (like lettuce) would do better with 1 part urine to 20 parts water. Most garden veggies seem to do ok with 1 part urine to 10 parts water.

Chelle, When I was reading your post I thought, "Now there's somebody who would be interested in the JTF website."
Was about to suggest it to you when I saw your reference to it. Great minds.......!
......Bid...

The Chinese, Japanese... and most asian countries... have been using "night soil" for centuries...

There is a big difference in using urine to using night soil. Far fewer pathogens are in plain urine than are in the mixture of urine and feces that make up night soil. There is a reason all veggies are cooked in certain places. However, composting the night soil properly before applying to the fields would make it quite safe to eat raw veggies and make the fields smell much nicer too. Oh well

Thanks Bid. True. Is an excellent resource. I often land up there.

Do you know of this site? ... http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrar ... lcome.html .....is a library of some excellent out of print books.

Huge difference. And yes... Humanure is a valuable resource to when correctly managed. Just takes time. Humanure handbook says 2 years. I wonder if using Efficient Microbes wouldn't speed that up? I know that chickens on an earth floor with deep litter are healthier because there are EMs that build up to even eat cocciodosis.

[/quote]There is a big difference in using urine to using night soil. Far fewer pathogens are in plain urine than are in the mixture of urine and feces that make up night soil. There is a reason all veggies are cooked in certain places. However, composting the night soil properly before applying to the fields would make it quite safe to eat raw veggies and make the fields smell much nicer too. Oh well[/quote]


i know plenty of places that smell like they dont compost night soil properly....

I expect that the deep litter composts a fair bit in place and yes, compost microbes can be very beneficial.

As to taking 2 years for humanure compost. It really only takes one year. If you had a full bin full or pile of humanure compost all collected in a short period of time (like for a festival or something) It only takes a year from when you add the last new poo to the pile. Why it is usually called two years is because a household can usually take a whole year to build a pile till it is full and then they let it age for the year before they can use it. It important things are that you make sure the hot top center of the pile does get hot and then make sure to let it age for a year after you stop adding to it before you use it. The nice thing about this continuous composting method is how little work is involved. No heavy work turning the piles. Just build then age, patients is all really.

But this thread was about using urine. That is a great thing too!

Does it really take that long for humanure to breakdown...

Why so long... most things decompose a lot quicker than that...

Didn't realise that... one year to build (usually) and one year rest. Better than what I thought. Probably takes that long because of human pathogens and the need to play it safe.

About urine: The big plus about using urine is that world shortages of phosphorus are being projected and urine is high in phosphorus. Doesn't make sense to waste it. We use it.