LOL Not being a regular on this forum, I don't know. Thanks Flora for the link and for being lighthearted about it.

I spend a lot of time dry camping in the woods so you may find this tool to be as useful near your compost pile as I do out in the wild: Go Girl (pee standing up)

I looked into this in some detail a few months ago. Had conversations with a couple of plant biologists.

It is the urea in urine that produces plant-usable nitrogen. It does that when combined with a natural urease enzyme which is resident in soil (and all over the place). When urea finds urease, ammonia is quickly produced, and that ammonia is absorbed by soil bacteria and converted into plant-usable nitrates. Artificially produced urea is, in fact, the worlds most heavily used nitrogen fertilizer. It's chancy using urine directly on plants, because the dose of nitrogen may be too high. Also, depending on your diet, urine may contain substantial amounts of salt, which is not good for your plants. I would not apply directly.

But urine is great for compost piles. (The salt deposited will leach effectively out of the pile as it ages.) Now, here are some tricks. (1) Use reasonably fresh urine. Urine stored uncovered for a few days will have lost most of it's urea. It is possible that you can preserve it by keeping it sealed up, to prevent seeding with urease. But urease is everywhere. (2) Dig a hole in your compost pile and pour it in. If you apply to the surface, the ammonia produced will just float away.

Actually nothing "gross" about urine. Urine is pretty innocuous stuff, unlike poop. No disease you might have inside of you comes out in your urine. It's pretty well filtered. I don't think natural and or organic foods have anything to do with its usability. Wholesome? Well, if you eat a lot of highly salted organic and natural corn chips, your urine will be pretty nasty plant-wise.

I agree with the above. But just as straight, undiluted urine from dogs can burn lawns or plants, straight, undiluted urine for humans can do the same thing, so it is best to dilute with water if applying as a fertilizer directly to plants. Otherwise, it is an excellent compost activator!

Using urine as a fertilizer.

Well, certainly don't apply urine to foliage. That's how dogs burn lawns. There are a lot of different recommendations about dilutions for application to garden beds, ranging from 1:1 to so dilute it's hardly useful. Undiluted application to compost seems a no-brainer.

why, Karen, you have come to the right place. not a week goes by without discussing this very topic.

Yeah, but it's discussed a lot because misunderstanding is rampant.

also because it is an easy way to replenish nitrogen organically, and is more popular than people admit. all these composters who vent half their nitrogen for no good reason, they think it grows on trees.

>>they think it grows on trees

Ah, uhm, err.....never mind! :-P

THanks everyone for the links and helpful responses and tips. It is kind of strange to think of one's waste material as useful. But horses, cows, and chicken manures are also animal wastes and they have done wonders for my plants. Human urine properly diluted with water should not be that bad for plants. Still have the gross factor however it's spinned.

Be aware that the urea content of urine is pretty small. You'll get about a pound of urea per person per year. It would take a goodly platoon to produce, in one year, the plant-usable nitrogen you'd get in a bag of nitrogen fertilizer. Now, such a bag would probably serve for a bed size of several thousand square feet. So one person could probably serve the nitrogen needs of a modest garden bed.

** see correction below! **

That doesn't sound right. I think it's more like 50 grams of solids per day, which is a pound every ten days, or a pound of N every three, four weeks.

Yes, the discussion regarding liquid gold is brought up quite regularly on threads. I absolutely use my own urine in my garden! And it thrives. Of course, my garden is very responsive to me - thus other people's urine would not have the same effect, and is not welcome.

If you consume organic natural and wholesome foods and do not take meds,

I am curious as to the decreased value of urine as a 'fertilzer' if it comes from an individual who does take daily meds. An obvious example would be BP medication which is so common place. In such an instance is it detrimental to use it as a direct addition to the soil surrounding a plant (assuming it has been sufficiently diluted with water)? If so can it be of value if it is instead added full strength to the compost pile?

Actually, looking at other sources, I see excretion of 10-20 grams/day of urea per person. Indeed that would make for a pound of urea every 30 days. I stand corrected.

Re: Meds - I don't think there is a problem with respect to the meds affecting whatever nitrogen value the urine might or might not have - it is a question of whether or not you are willing to introduce whatever those meds are into your ecosystem. For instance, I compost my cat's Feline Pine (sans feces), and in fact don't even care if I use it near vegetables. However, as she is on thyroid medication, I want to make sure I am not introducing that into something anyone could eat.

there are ways to optimize your urea contribution to the garden. That nitrogen goes down four inches per month in average soil (more if sandy, less if clay).( isotropic diffusion actually goes with the square root of time, and down-drift depends on rain fall/irrigation. That number is just an estimate).

If you have asparagus, with its 8ft roots, that is the place where you want to use your fall urea. it will be a while before it gets used but it will still be in the proximity of the roots. Losses to the side of the bed will also be limited because the roots extend also laterally.

In winter I start fertilizing garlic, which does have short stubby roots but will start using nitrogen in February. Chard (6ft), beet (8ft), chicory(8ft), tomatoes (4ft), lettuce (4ft) and squash (4ft) can also be fertilized early. Some of the spring urea should go to the onions, also short rooted and growing later than garlic. The summer urea is for brassica mostly, which need it most and do not have extensive roots, although toms, squash and pepper benefit from a June-July shot. Daikon will absorb very large amounts of nitrogen in the Fall, and if you leave part of the crop there to die, it will carry nitrogen and organic matter into next year.