While gardening in drought-prone San Diego I was faced with a dilemma. I wanted to take care of my plants and give them good fertilizer (really good fertilizer for their long-term health – not something that was just going to give them a short-term perk-up but then ruin the soil) but I didn’t want to do something that’s bad for the environment and I was thinking about water conservation. Newer toilets use about 1.6 gallons of water per flush. Older ones use even more. All that water could be put to good use. And now a lot of it is.
Reading about plant fertilizers, the word nitrogen always comes up. It’s essential to plants, like oxygen is for us humans. Somehow I remembered that human urine (and maybe all mammal urine?) is high in nitrogen so I started googling whether my own urine could be a viable fertilizer for my plants. I guessed not, because I remember that, growing up, my dog would always pee in the same area of our yard (against a basketball pole) and all the grass was dead in that area. But I was happy to learn that human urine (and maybe even dog urine) is a very good fertilizer as long as it’s diluted so that it won’t burn the plants. Here’s an article from Scientific American that explains it all. There are plenty of similar articles around the web on the subject. Besides nitrogen, there’s also phosphorus and potassium in urine, plus other good stuff for plants and trees.
It’s certain that the urine needs to be diluted, but the exact amount depends on the plants and on the soil, and maybe some other factors. You’ll probably want your fertilizer mix to be more dilute for young plants. I’ve read that the water-to-pee mix ratio should be anywhere from 10/1 to 16/1.
What I Do
In order for this to work for me it has to be simple. I’m not going to be measuring how much I pee each time (but for most people it’s always going to be between 8 and 16 ounces) just so I can mix the exact amount of water.
Each time I need to pee I take this two gallon watering can into the garage, empty my bladder into it, then use a hose or outdoor faucet to fill up the remainder of the can with water. I estimate this makes a pee/water ratio at about 17/1 or even a little weaker. That’s fine. I’d rather my fertilizer be a little weak than too strong. Obviously this is going to much easier for men, but there are devices that make it fairly convenient for women to do this too.
I’m lucky enough to be working from home these days so I do this fairly often, but previously I would just do this while working around the garden on weekends. This also saves time. Instead of going back inside and taking off your muddy shoes every time you need to pee, just grab your watering can! This method saves time, saves water (assuming you were going to water your plants anyway), saves money by providing a quality fertilizer for free, and is better for the environment and your soil than synthetic fertilizers like Miracle-Gro. And there’s something else. We gardeners cultivate, prune, weed, and I find it particularly satisfying to nourish my plants with my own bodily fluids. This reminds me of what I do is with coffee grinds. Coffee grinds are often used in compost and they are particularly good for plants that crave more acidic soil, including my hollies. I make coffee in a French press, then I take the grinds and just cast them within the drip line of my trees and shrubs. In the amounts that I do this the grinds probably don’t make any difference. But I love the idea that every time it rains my plants get a drink of coffee!
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