Looking for an all natural fertilizer?

By Andrew

If you’ve been reading our earlier articles, you will probably already know that I’ve been working on a balcony garden in order to get myself a little closer to the food production process.  To date, I have been successful in growing chives, basil, oregano, potatoes, tomatoes, asparagus, peppers, and onions.  Unfortunately I’ve only been able to eat the first four items on this list due to the time it takes for food to grow in particularly nutrient poor soils.  The soil in flower pots are relatively nutrient poor for the reason that they rarely have active bacterial soil cultures and access to decaying organic material.  An easy answer to this would be to use some conventional fertilizer or compost.  But, if you’re like me you’ll want to try to avoid using chemicals and you lack the space for a composter.  Don’t fret, a slightly unconventional answer to this has been highlighted in Scientific American by using urine.  Now before you get all grossed out, please note that urine is completely sterile.  Read on to find out more…

I can already see your faces starting to scrunch up, and no I haven’t tried to sprinkle my veggies with my natural fertilizer blend yet.  Although, the article is convincing, at least from a nutrient and sustainability standpoint.  Urine is full of nutrients that plants love, which our bodies have already taken the liberty of breaking up into basic constituents.  The main ones of note are nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous.  All of these elements are essential if you want your crops to thrive.  Although, if I were to give this a shot, I would definitely want to water down the mixture to avoid any unpleasant odours as well as avoid potentially burning the plant’s roots if the mixture is too strong.

On the sustainability side, harvesting urine for fertilizer would notably decrease the production of agri-chemicals and decrease overall household water use (less flushing).  The main rub here would lie in updating household infrastructure and as the article notes, people don’t want to pee into strange toilets.  It is for this reason why I would suggest a pilot program in office complexes collecting the ‘run off’ from urinals.  Unlike divided toilets, urinals are already dedicated to the one task of urine disposal.  Perhaps along with rain water collection, LEED and other sustainable building practices could hand out a few points for fertilizer collection.  The difficulty here in North America may be in finding organic farmers willing to give this ‘new’ fertilizer a shot and customers willing to buy urine fertilized produce.

As we’ve said in countless discussions earlier, it’s our habits and preconceptions that will be the most difficult things to change. Would you be willing to give this proven experiment a shot?