Peeing in the garden

Recently we have been looking at various methods of being environmentally friendly, one issue is the waste of water, we already are careful, not leaving the tap running while showering and brushing teeth and reuseing what water we can for watering the garden. One big usage  is flushing the toilet, each flush uses approximately 8 litres of water, this can be reduced by lowering the ball cock, but even more by less flushing, most people flush the loo after having a pee, using 8 liters of water to move something that is 95% water and 5% other elements.

So our urine is a valuable resource, it is an extremely good garden fertiliser, containing among other elements, nitrogen, sodium, potassium and magnesium, it can be applied diluted or undiluted to the soil around your vegetables, shrubs and potted plants, and is a tried and tested method of fertilising.

It has been proven that vegetables and plants fertilised with  human urine grow bigger and are healthier than compared to untreated greenery.

It will surprise many to know that urine has actually been used as a crop fertiliser for thousands of years, particularly in Asia, but also widespread around the world, it is only because of our hygiene obsessed culture that we have stopped using it as a fertiliser and even view its use as uncomfortable or disgusting. Urine from a healthy person is actually nearly completely sterile. and only starts to turn to ammonia after around 24 hours of standing and therefore should be used before then.

Even after 24 hours it can be put onto your compost heap as an excellent accelerater.

Our garden in Blanca is very sandy with very little humous so we create as much compost as we can with garden clippings, leaves and kitchen vegetable waste, to dig into the garden to help it, but from now on, I shall also be useing my pee to fertilise the garden and also get the compost heap going. So we may be saving between 50 and 80 litres of water a day (and the water bill! ) at the same time.