Urine and Compost...

[planter]

I'm sorry folks for such an odd topic to start out with but but as gardeners you will understand... .
On a trip to Pompeii a few years ago the tour guide said that in the olden days urine was an important gardening commodity and kept shouting out in Italian "Leave your urine" and there were actually places to do so. (Not presently of course).
I only bring this up because I do in fact "leave my urine" at the compost heap but what exactly is so benificial. Is it nitrates alone or sumpin more. I am a guy so I'm not really expecting the woman to do the same unless she is of equally wacky nature.
Ps.. I am not a gardening stalker.

[engineeredgarden]

I pee on my pile everyday!

[tomf]

I do that but I am to embarrassed to say so. Opps I just did.

[Gary350]

Urine I a great source of nitrogen and phosphate. The old timers mixed wood ashes with manure to get the ultimate compost.

I have been mixing organic material with wood ash then I pee in it for about a week or so. When it gets a very strong ammonia smell I set it outside in the sun. It will heat up on its own but a black plastic 5 gallon bucket with a black top makes it heat up hotter. After 1 month in the sun it looks like potting soil. It works pretty fast in the summer heat but not so fast in the winter.

If you do a search on You Tube you can find several videos on how to make urine compost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRAaAkfirRU

For many years I have wanted to crawl under the house and change the plumbing pipes. One toilet in the house should be for urine only, the kitchen sink and garbage disposal needs to go to a holding tank with the urine toilet, all the bathroom sink water and shower water needs to go to the holding tank too. I don't want any BMs in the holding tank just liquid only. Chopped up kitchen scraps that go down the kitchen garbage disposal will be good organic material and urine too in the tank. All the water in the holding tank will be good irrigation in the hot summer for the garden. The volume of urine and kitchen scraps will be very small, mostly I want is to reuse the water for irrigation.

[planter]

Your right Gary. As I look out to the back 40 I see green spots and brown spots left by my dog. Not sure what causes the brown and what causes the green but I'm guessing brown made the green and yellow made the brown.

For me I guess it's almost a family tradition. Ole Gramps in Miami showered with a bucket between his legs to collect the grey water and I don't think he EVER urinated in the house. He figured why pay for two gallons of water to flush away urine although his neighbors may not have felt the same.

Doubt I will change my MO to a more active style of urine utilization and if I do I won't tell the wife and kids. I can't even get the wife and daughter to urinate on the compost heap and I must say I would be thunderstruck if they adopted that into their routine.

For you guys who who came clean good for you. Where else does such an activity elicit so little negative feedback.

Gary.. Drop me a PRIVATE message concerning "manure" and wood ash?? Your not suggesting!!!!! . I guess I BUY Millorganic which is essentially composted sewer sludge so it's feasable although I'm NOT GOING THERE!!

[Joyfirst]

If you want to water your plants directly with it, then you have to dilute it about 10 parts of water to one part of urine-mainly because of the salt-unless you eat salt free diet. I don't think it is important to dilute in the compost pile, but you can still do that with a hose. I don't put in my compost very salty things like salted peanut shells.

[gixxerific]

That reminds me have 3 bottles of urine to dump on the compost.

Don't feel bad about asking this planter, their have been odder questions asked.

I like your ideas G350. I can picture the kitchen sink pipe like you said going to a reservoir maybe with a screen above it to catch the solids. Than you could remove the screen and add that to your compost and it all the scrap would already be shredded by the disposal. Than of course the water used on he garden already infused with the essence of the scraps above it.

Good ideas gary.

[Sage Hermit]

O.o 3 bottles of urine!!

So how about fecal matter can it compost too in the pile or just urine? Human fecal matter.

[planter]

Sure!! After all a good deal of the food we import is grown in it..
Frankly I think there would be some health concerns although I'm not sure what they would be specifically.

For some reason I'm having trouble getting psyched up about it.

[gixxerific]

Sage I'm not so sure you want to compost human or for that matter cat, dog manure. HG could give you a good earful as the why's. But there can be some bad pathogens in human manure.

Look up humanure, here is the Wiki link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanure

There are certain things that must be done to keep it safe.

[rainbowgardener]

Where I used to live, we had a composting toilet. I did compost humanure, which makes a wonderful rich compost. However, to be safe, I did compost it separately from my regular compost pile and only used that compost on the flower beds, not the food crops.

[planter]

Spare a little info Rainbow... Not that I'm "off" the grid here in MA but I was just curious if a composting toilet really composted or incinerated with propane as well??

Side note...I believe I BUY a product call Millorganic with is essentially sewer sludge. It does say not recommended for veggies but it's OK. The biggest problem is that it is not any cheaper than a CHEAP bag of rotten so called composted manure. I produce a lot of compost but always like to reward a plant with cow doo. It's like a tradition.

[gixxerific]

Before using sewer sludge in your garden you may want to check out this thread.

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20703&highlight=prions

[rainbowgardener]

Spare a little info Rainbow... Not that I'm "off" the grid here in MA but I was just curious if a composting toilet really composted or incinerated with propane as well??

Composting toilet (at least the one we had, and I think most of them) composts, it does NOT incinerate. Had no propane. Did require a small amount of electricity for the fan (described below)

Ours which (was a fancy $800 model) had a rotating drum that the wastes were deposited into. Along with the wastes, add sawdust or other browns, and sometimes need to add water. Rotate the drum every day or so. It had a little fan that ran all the time and a vent pipe to outdoors. The fan and vent pipe made sure there were no odors. Then it had a tray/drawer at the bottom that material from the drum could be emptied into where it would dry out. By the time you empty the drawer, the material in it was pretty broken down, dried out, not very recognizable and not odiferous. Just take that out and dump it into it's own compost pile.

You can accomplish the same thing with a bucket toilet without the $800. It would be like an outhouse, except under the seat instead of a pit, is a bucket. As long as the toilet seat has a lid which fits tightly and seals and the bucket is flush up against the seat bottom, they are not bad to have in the house. You need to keep a lot of sawdust in the bucket then and I imagine it would be somewhat less pleasant to empty than our compost toilet drawer was and would need a emptying a lot more often. But we are throwing away so much valuable organics and using up millions of gallons of pure drinking water in the process. It is a stupid system.

[rainbowgardener]

The one we had was a Sun-Mar and looked pretty similar to this one:

[url=https://www.woodlanddirect.com/Outdoor/Composting-Toilets/Excel-AC-DC-Compost-Toilet-Beige?utm_source=gan&utm_medium=aff&utm_campaign=k232270&utm_term=Primary]sun mar compost toilet[/url]

I see they are now charging about $1800 for it! I suppose that is partly inflation. We bought ours at least 15 years ago. But still, I don't think $800 1995 dollars = $1800 2010 dollars. They seem to be pricing themselves out of any reasonable market.

Here's one that's selling for about $800 today's dollars:

https://www.natureshead.net/?gclid=CJ3V3MvYyKICFRY75QodXG6Q5g

[Toil]

I think that in most cases, urine in nature is spread out unevenly, not deposited in a single area. This leads me to favor spreading over composting.

I don't really have any science to point to, just the notion that too much of any one food source in one place leads to reduced diversity.

In dealing with urine, I would seek to prevent nutrients from entering the water table first, then once I have that down I would think about turning it to my immediate advantage.

[nickolas]

I add urine to my compost, I collect urine from both my dad and myself in a bucket and apply it undiluted directly on my many compost piles, it is a very good source of nitrogen as well as most importantly for me a very good organic compost activator.
And it is a good organic fertiliser albeit very strong, I dilute it 1 part urine to 30 parts water.
It is also undiluted a very good organic herbicide , I also apply it on top of my compost to kill any unwonted plants that are growing on top of my compost pile.
Also my dad and I are both vegetarians which means no risk of exec pathogens for the compost to deal with.

[rainbowgardener]

I (being female) have been known to pee in a jar and take that to compost pile, on occasion. Due to the extra trouble, I've never done it on a real regular basis.

[toxcrusadr]

Two posts above is this rather curious line:

"Also my dad and I are both vegetarians which means no risk of exec pathogens for the compost to deal with."

It's from 2011 so the poster may not be around, but I'm curious what is meant by 'exec pathogens'. Vegetarian or not, human poop has pathogens in it - e coli for example - that will make you sick, but pee generally does not, regardless of your diet.

[rainbowgardener]

I add urine to my compost, I collect urine from both my dad and myself in a bucket and apply it undiluted directly on my many compost piles, it is a very good source of nitrogen as well as most importantly for me a very good organic compost activator.
And it is a good organic fertiliser albeit very strong, I dilute it 1 part urine to 30 parts water.
It is also undiluted a very good organic herbicide , I also apply it on top of my compost to kill any unwonted plants that are growing on top of my compost pile.
Also my dad and I are both vegetarians which means no risk of exec pathogens for the compost to deal with.

He was talking about urine, not humanure. Still doesn't quite make sense though, since urine is generally sterile, vegetarian or not.

[Greywolf]

It seems to me a personal choice - eventually guess who gets to dig in it and turn it over?

Traditionally the rice paddy is the Japanese toilet - it returns to the soil what was consumed. Again it seems a matter of personal choice, and what you eat determines the suitability of what goes in there. Indeed - SHOULD YOU POOP IN IT?

It is in keeping with nature returning to the life cycle that what we consume should be returned in a natural fashion.


But we also eat meat products - and I have always heard MEAT doesn't belong in a mulch pile...


This may seem a quite disgusting topic, when you get right down to it. And remember - you will have to dig in it YOURSELF when all is said and done.


What is acceptable to YOU?