Urea as a nutrient

spoitzer · New Member Joined: 29 Aug 2009 Posts: 1

I know there was already a post about urining on plants. Similar question I guess: I work in a chem lab and was given some straight urea and was wondering if anyone can give me an idea for how dilute it should be to work as a fertilizer?! like 1 tsp. urea to 1 L h2o or something, I dunno, theres gotta be some chemist botanists out there right Very Happy

bonsaiboy · Mod Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Posts: 764 Location: Earth

I don't even know if it can work as a fertilizer, but I should think that one part in 100 should work to start you out. If the plant(s) seem tolerant at this level, you could add more.
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הדמיון הוא יותר חשוב מאשר ידע

redback001 · Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2009 10:27 pm Post subject:

urine is approximatley 95% water and the balance uric acid and a few metabolites. the approximatley 5% (uric acid) is about 70% nitrogen based compounds - roughly 3.5% of the original volume. Not particularly stron if you consider Urea (as a fertiliser) contains about 46% nitrogen salts.

i had a brief look at Wikipedia, under "urine", there it offer a dilution rate of 8:1 (water to urine) when using it as a fertiliser. I'd agree with the poster above, start at a dilution of 1: 100 and then increase.

bear in mind that some plant species are more suseptable to root burn or nitrogen burn (eg. ferns).

one obvious disadvantage may be the smell!