I had no intention of writing an article but after reading Rod Jensen’s article about saving water by peeing into a hose connected to the drain and septic system, I had to write in. Saving water in today’s drying up world is great and saving your septic system from having to process all that water you would have flushed, is good too. But I have gone one step better, that not only saves the water and saves the processing of the water, but also save the processing of the nutrient rich urine as well, and it saves me from buying fertilizer.
My wife and daughter occasionally drink “Life Water” which comes in a plastic bottle with a wide neck, wide enough for a male to pee in. I haven’t peed in a toilet for three and a half years now. And I have never bought fertilizer. I save the urine filled bottles in milk crates which hold 16 life water bottles perfectly. When I add to my compost pile I add some full strength urine. When I plant, I water with 10% urine. One bottle of urine matches perfectly with one watering can full of water/pee mixture. Whenever watering the garden I can use more urine in the same way, just slack off on the urine a couple weeks before harvest if you are watering greens.
For you guys on public and municipal water systems you have to purge the chlorine from your water before watering the garden because the chlorine will kill the good bacteria in your soil that breaks down the urine into nitrites and then into nitrates that the garden needs. Do this by letting the city water set in your watering can 24 hours before using it. I use collected rain water from my roof to water the garden, not because water is short here in upstate New York but because of the chlorine.
If Rod Jensen doesn’t have a garden he can still pee in the bottle right there in the bathroom and once a week pour them all down the toilet in one shot, but I think using it as fertilizer is much better. And don’t forget to use it to jump start your compost pile. The bacteria need the nitrogen to hasten the breakdown process of composting.
Oh, while writing this the beeper on my soy milk machine went off and I had to tend to that. I grow my own soy beans and make chocolate soy milk sweetened with a little of my home grown sorghum syrup (no white sugar at all). In making the milk you get soy pulp that is strained out. I call it what the packaged food companies call it, “soy protein isolate,” and never throw it away. I was adding it to my cake, pie, and bread recipes but now that I am raising chickens I feed the protein rich pulp to them. Now that I have chickens, no food scraps go to waste. Of course they never went to waste before because they went to feed my worm farm (bucket with shredded wet paper and food scraps). Nothing goes to waste here, ever. Oh did I mention I am 1/64 Iroquois?
Gee, now that I’ve broken the ice I might write more often.
Note: This article was an entry in our October – December 2014 writing contest. Click here to find out about our current writing contest.
COMMENTS(0)
This is just gross!
I have a small greenhouse in which I grow with aquaponics. I have a large tank in which I grow fish, which poop in the water, the bacteria eats the waste turning it into nitrites, then other bacteria eat the nitrites turning them into nitrates that the tomatoes just love. The fish tank needs lots and lots of ammonia to make these nitrates. That is why this type of system is called aq-pee-ponics. Every time I am outside and need to pee, I water the fish, which makes the tomatoes grow bigger.