Peeing on plants is the gardening world’s hot new trend — but there’s a catch
Urine for a real shock.
Gardeners are pouring pee onto their plants, saying human urine contains nutrients that make flora thrive.
However, simply unzipping your pants and watering your plants won’t work — effective self-soaking of your soil all comes down to a fine art.
Rodale’s Organic Life claims that a healthy and measured concentration of urine is needed to replace store-bought fertilizers.
Professional gardener Miguel Palma told Well and Good that pee “should be diluted before application” so as not to burn off important leaves or microorganisms on a plant.
“You can do this at home and save on the cost that would have been used to buy fertilizers,” he enthused.
Studies in recent years have tied the efficiency of urine fertilization to notable success with tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, and beets as well.
Gardening wiz Lissa Schneckenburger collects and pours her family’s diluted urine onto her Brattleboro, Vermont garden.
“When we tell people about it, they’re mostly confused,” she told CBS. “They’re just like, ‘What? Why? What?'”
Kim Nace, a co-founder of the pee-to-fertilizer project Rich Earth Institute, similarly admits that “people are usually a little taken aback” at the ghastly gardening secret.
“But then I just kinda give ’em the real quick [pitch] – there’s nutrients in your urine, and we are figuring out how to capture those and use ’em in agriculture,” she told CBS.
People deposit their urine into 5-gallon jugs before donating them to Nace’s “pee-cycling” organization once they’re full.
Her contraption heats up and later cools down its annual 12,000 gallons of urine before it’s converted into a fertilizer.
A person’s pee is rich in plant-friendly components including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and trace minerals, Nace added.
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Watering plants with with straight H20 in between is also critical to lower salt concentrations, which can harm plants.
Anne Spurkland, a professor and medical researcher at the University of Oslo advises to “mix urine and water as you would mix squash.”
“One part urine, nine parts water.”
