But if you're truly serious about using urine in your garden, post on the composting forum. There ARE folks who (if male) pee on their compost heaps, or (if female) save their urine for the same purpose. It adds nitrogen and helps break down a pile that's heavy on the carbon.

I don't think it's ever appropriate to use urine directly on a garden, though - it could burn your plants.

But if you're truly serious about using urine in your garden, post on the composting forum.
Better yet, just go to this existing thread Human Urine, not need to start a new one.

There are plenty of other existing threads as well: Existing threads regarding the use of urine in the garden.

If you garden for yourself alone, you are missing the best part of it -- how much other people enjoy the fruits of your labor. If your garden is anything like mine, it is for sharing with others, and the topic of how and what I do to bring forth such bounty is always a topic of conversation. No matter what social, ethnic or professional persuasion people come from, they always enjoy good healthy food -- and gardening is often a great "common ground" topic in a social setting. People will ask for details such as which fertilizers and pesticides I use, and it seems reasonable to share all the details with them.

There seems to be plenty about urine as an N source, but what about the morality and practicality of the subject? If you use your urine in the garden, do you tell other people before they eat your produce or while they are eating it? What sort of responses have you gotten or what would you expect that response to be? Do you feel that N is N and you don't see the need to explain what you use? Do you know anyone in their right mind that would eat produce from a garden fertilized with someone else's urine if they had a choice?

As a matter of fact, yes. They also understand it is an integral part of nature.

As mentioned above, it is common in other countries to recycle waste into crops. It's been done for thousands of years, it's nothing new. It's just that those who have been raised in 1st world countries are so far removed from even the possibility of the idea they can't fathom it as a possiblity. As long at it is incorprated into soil it breaks down into other elements quite quickly. Urea is 95 percent water to begin with.

There is plenty of this discussion at this existing thread:

All who want to eat a carrot after violet_z6 has made a pass through the garden, please raise your hand.

Urine is 95 percent water. The other five percent of our urine is made of dissolved and suspended solids, none of which are toxic. The two main components are simple salt and a compound called urea. In addition to salt and urea, other elements include hormones, proteins, antibodies and other beneficial agents.

"Urine is 95 percent water, with less than five percent urea, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, hormones, proteins, antibodies, and other beneficial pharmacological agents. Contrary to popular belief, urine is actually a by-product of blood filtration and not waste filtration. Medically, it is referred to as "plasma ultrafiltrate." It is a purified derivative of the blood itself, made by the kidneys whose principal function is regulation of all the elements and their concentrations in the blood. Nutrient-filled blood passes through the liver where toxins are removed to be excreted as solid waste. Eventually, this purified blood undergoes a more extensive filtering process in the kidneys, where excess components not usable at that time by the body are collected in the form of the sterile, watery solution that is urine."

Make sure that you keep the quote in context to the question it was in direct response to.

Q: Do you know anyone in their right mind that would eat produce from a garden fertilized with someone else's urine if they had a choice?
A:As a matter of fact, yes.

Most people incorporate urea into their compost piles, not directly into their gardens.

It's exactly the same as eating from a garden fertilized with cow feces or ground-up fish guts. People may not like to be reminded of the fertilizer just as they take a bite of a tomato, but they sure enjoy the flavorful veggies.

We're not talking about whizzing on a head of lettuce and then serving it to your guests. We're talking about using urine to feed the *soil* and hence the plant.

I think pee is a great addition to a compost pile. I don't use it straight on the plants because they could get burned.

Stella

At the next gathering at your house place out two crudités trays with fresh garden veggies such as carrots, celery, etc. Lemonade would be a great beverage to serve as well. :)

Above the first tray place a placard that reads, "From my garden -- fertilized with my urine." On the second one place a placard that reads, "From my garden -- not fertilized with my urine." Report back any and all comments, and how much of which tray was consumed. ;)

What's the difference between a dog or cat urinating in your garden vs urea in compost? What's the difference between animal manure (Sh*t) vs urea? Which would you be more opposed to? (Sh*t) or urea?

Urea is harmless, "vitamins, minerals, enzymes, hormones, proteins, antibodies, and other beneficial pharmacological agents" that have been filtered by the human body that can not be consumed by the human body already.

Put a sign up for veggies that have been fertilized with urea vs all the chemical products on the market and I will choose those fertilized via whatever method urea every time. The vegetables only take in the nutrients they need, there's not a thing wrong with them.

You might be surprised. Of course it depends on the guests. If you invited people who are used to eating out of boxes and restaurants versus people who have been gardening all their lives my guess is that you're going to witness different results.

;-)

Since my points have all been made, I return you now to your regular programming.

Another example is illiterate people running market gardens and spraying the vegetables with high levels of pesticide. They couldnt read the label and quessed! This was the case in Western Australia. How many people had eaten the vegetables?

Living in a first world country I think urine on the compost heap is the least a person could worry about. I wouldnt care about urine in compost going to fertilise the vegetables

Daddy poured the collected urine in a compost pile, and I am sure he used the compost on the garden. I would now, but I was not into such things at that time.

Today, anybody pees in my garden is going to hear it from me! LOL

Janie

Be honest, how many guys in here have peed inside the house after a heavy night of drinking........i'm guilty!

Rita

Head-in-the-sand, please-spank-my-bottom-pink out of touch. 'Trays of crudites'? You gotta be kidding me. We'll be lucky to have enough to eat in a few years.

I don't use it around salt-sensitive vegetables, just in case.

Salt sensitive vegetables: beans, peas, onions, strawberries, carrots

My sister-in-law was just here and we were talking about this. She's a nurse who works various places in northern Canada - rocky territory where sewage disposal is always problematical. She's all for using urine as a fertilizer - it's sterile after all, she says. She happily shares the pee bucket ran than flush clean drinking water down the toilet.

Knowing how squeamish some people would be, is it right to not tell them urine is involved in growing the food you give them? A good topic for Ethics 101.

I ought to have said Ethics 301, or graduate level.

i don't see why it grosses people out.

you may as well be grossed out about using guano on your crops...

we would save SO MANY resources that are used to make nitrogenous fertilizers

len

Maybe using urine to wet the compost pile would be ok (for me), but directly on the soil itself? I dunno. Still have a hard time when the kids forget to flush!
h.

Yes, hooray, imagine. Are you saving your urine?

It would be helpful for everyone if you posted the URL.

;)

I save urine for my compost pile, letting it ferment as I fill it up over the span of a few days. It doesn't smell great up close, but it introduces bacteria into the pile -- along with the protein they want. I would pee on my pile, but I keep it covered with a tarp. A tarp is a good idea to keep the neighbors from noticing my eccentric use of urine.

I use fresh urine on growing crops, too. I eyeball a 10:1 ratio of water to pee, and use right away. I try to limit salt in my diet when I think I'll be using fresh urine. I don't add diluted urine to salt-sensitive crops.

As for morality, I garden for one. I wouldn't use urine if I was a market grower, because that would probably be against the law. If I were to share stuff from my garden I wouldn't feel obligated to tell all about certain fertilization methods. After enough research on the topic, I see no worthy evidence that healthy, fresh urine added to food crops will harm the end product. Also, something like this is loaded down with too much false stigma too make the truth too difficult to explain; what one doesn't know will not hurt.

I also got the two plants mineralogically analysed and the urine one has more nutrients in it, more iron, phosphorus, etc than the chemical fertilizer ones. But the whole reason I did this project was to show that urine is a sustainable resource that can be used for agriculture.

I would much rather eat food grown with a natural sterile fertilizer such as urine than food grown with chemicals that had been mined, transported all around and then been mixed in a lab. We really have to get over this gross factor.

I guess in developed countries this idea may not fly but I am going to be presenting at a seminar for many Africans and I think they will be very interested. Many don't have access to chemical fertilizers and the soil is bad quality and they are growing plants to sustain themselves, then urine is a great option.

Here in Sweden some farmers collect urine from eco-villages (that had been diverted in a waste separating toilet and stored) and they apply it on their fields to increase yeild.

And jrrrr I have found that storing the urine is better myself because with time the nitrogen is broken down into ammonium which is more easily taken up by the plants. One month storage in air tight bottles is the best method. But if fresh urine is working for you then go for it!

And pnbrown, no I am not saving my urine now. I don't have a garden, I did this project in a greenhouse because it was too cold in Sweden to grow anything outside. If I had a garden I would forsure be savig my urine! :)

1:3 is way too much urine

Ladies, what about your monthly visitor? I assume it's also good fertilizer (as is any blood), but I doubt if it is sterile? No, I am not talking about collecting, but just the urine being contaminated. Would that be a product for the compost pile only?

Seriously though, I was considering this - to the compost pile...until alabamanicole raised a question that I hadn't considered. And now this is something that I'm sure that I personally would not, could not do, Sam I Am.

Horses poo where they stand, they don't care, and neither do we. Same for cows, goats, chickens, rabbits, etc. I think that humans are a little more shy and private about elimination habits. I for one would like to keep it that way, at least in MY yard. LOL
But, I am all for whatever floats yer boat, you know?
Viva la differance!
h.

Class #1
Is It Possible To Urinate Using The Technique Of Lifting The Seat and Avoiding The Floor, Walls and Nearby Bathtub?
Group Practice...

Class #2
The Toilet Paper Roll....Does It Change Itself?
Round Table Disucssion....

Somebody HAS to kill this thread!
Sincerely,
Squeamish Moron

Next house isn't going to have flush toilets, that's how I'm going to solve that problem.

You guys are hilarious! Well yes I did think about a woman having to pee into a bottle and I thought of a funnel! Haha! But then quickly thought of a better solution. Like I had said before here in Sweden many ecological homes have waste separating toilets. Basically when you go the toilet is separated into 2 parts. The urine goes down a small hole in the front and the poo goes in the back. The urine is diverted into a tank outside the house that can be emptied whenever. Check out this link... http://www.separett.com/

As for smell, yes urine is sterile when it leaves your body (unless you have a urinary tract infection) but after that it quickly grows bacteria (that's why urinals smell so bad!). If you put it in airtight containers it denies the bacteria oxygen and reduces the amount of nitrogen being lost to the air. After a month there will be no smell causing bacteria left in the sample and okay it is true that it doesn't smell like roses but it isn't as offensive as a urinal after a frat party. Many chemical fertilizers have a bad smell too. It is all what we are used to culturally.

Cool site. In all honesty, I could not make it past the first paragraph!

"In addition, you'll be doing your part on lightening the load on our sensitive environment."

Lightening the load?? Was that intentional??
Hahahahaha!

If you guys don't knock it off, I'll be wringing out my Depends over the compost pile!

I'm glad you explained that, because I had this horrible vision in my head of the bacteria proliferating in the bottles until I had something like Molotov cocktails just waiting to explode old pee everywhere.

I've been using a little of the fresh stuff on the compost heap, because it's mostly dry leaves, but hadn't thought of storing it up.

We live in the country and my two sons and husband would often go off the porch. After a couple of months I noticed that my Azalea (that would not die when we TRIED to kill it) was losing foilage on one side. I don't think they were actually peeing on the plant just near that side of it. Anyway, thanks for proving to my husband why it is ok to pee in the compost pile but not directly on my plants. We have went around and around on this subject for at least a month now.

I thought that sounded a little wacky. Not because of the urine, but because next year when I'd be digging around in that spot, I'd be unearthing bits of plastic diaper lining.

The reason that most folks would take umbrage to eating foods grown from composted human urine is because it's a waste product that can contain toxins -- that's why we expel it.

A compost bin can be "Super charged" with any number of high nitrogen, low-salt, non-toxic materials. They are almost too numerous to mention, but can be summed up as adding more greens.

These points certainly do run contrary to the "everything must have 101 uses or be reused 101 times" template, but some things really are waste and should be disposed of. Yes your urine is free, but it may very well contain more than just the N you are trying to take advantage of.