Feasible? No. Possible? Yes. Personally, I think that the degree of control that Chuck wants, can only be found in hydroponics, not organic gardening.
Feasible? No. Possible? Yes. Personally, I think that the degree of control that Chuck wants, can only be found in hydroponics, not organic gardening.
Are you calling me un-american?
:)
I just pile stuff up and pull out what I can. Once in a while I'll run into a cigarette pack or plastic toy from the 1950s. Back in the pile it goes. You can never tell when the right bacteria might show up.
Turn the pile over, add water? You've got to be kidding. One of the nice things is that you can just let it lie there.
I'm not actually trying to 'control' so much as not to 'waste'.
For example, if I didn't know better, I'd just pour the urea on the top of the pile and leave it at that. But that would be a waste.
If I really wanted to control it, I'd 'inject' the urea ... but that's too much work for a single home sized compost heap.
I'm content with simply covering the urea with moist soil, since that seems to keep 90% of the nitrogen locked up instead of gassing out.
Like anything new ... it's a bunch of simple things that get us most of the way there. So, I'll do the simplest things that work best.
It's more about not wasting ... and not doing something stupid or counterproductive ... than about control.
Thanks for all the advice & viewpoints. I learned a lot!
Now that's interesting.
Previously, the equation train went from urea [(NH2)2CO] to ammonium carbonate [(NH4)2 CO3] to ammonium [2 NH4] and carbon dioxide [CO2 gas)] & then I stopped at ammonia [NH3 gas] and water [H2O].
But I guess (from what you said above) some of that atmospheric ammonia is converted to nitrous oxide (probably by oxidation of the ammonia?): 2 NH3 + 2 O2 ? N2O + 3 H2O
Is that urea reaction path above correct yet?
Chuck Banshee found:
I have to ask why ? As an academic exercise? Not much reason to save it. Urine is pretty cheap and fairly renewable for most of us. In a compost pile I would let it go do it's job unhindered. Unless you test/ analyze your homebrew, hot or cold, your only guessing as to its nutrient content. So the urine is just feedstock and not a nutrient at this stage.
As for using urine in your soil, you and others gave some good info as to how best to use. I did read excerpts from one of the Finnish team's three experiments wherein =93Surendra K. Pradhan, K. Holopainen and Helvi Heinonen-Tanski of the University of Kuopio in Finland collected human urine during the winter of 2007-2008 from several eco- toilets in private homes. The urine was stored for about six months at
45 degrees F and tested for microbes and bacteria. The team mixed it with wood ash collected from a household furnace, and found the mixture was just as good as -- or better than -- conventional chemical fertilizer.=94 So I would assume urine was relatively shelf stable for at least that amount of time/temp. Here is a lead on her email if you want to ask first hand: snipped-for-privacy@uku.fi .WA State's land grant site on Composting :
good luck
That being the case, I would apply the urea to the garden or pots and then water it in. If you don't till your soil the mycorrhiza will spread the the nutrients, including the nitrogen, around in the garden, and the life and death cycles of the microbes you encourage will feed the plants.
The stoichiometry looks right. I'd have to look up the reaction sequence to be sure.
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a strong greenhouse gas with global warming potential (GWP) which is much greater, by 310 times, than that of CO2.
I recently found this, an entire doctoral thesis, on the fate of radioactive nitrogen in urine applied to soils over a period of time.
Title: Fate of urine nitrogen applied to peat and mineral soils from grazed pastures, by Timothy John Clough, Lincoln University, 1994.
UPDATE:
Here, for the record, is a picture of my ad hoc 'compost' bucket ... where I put all kitchen food-related trash (eggshells, banana peels, lettuce cores, chicken bones, fat cuttings, orange peels, stale bread, etc.):
So far I've been emptying this about once a week into a large wheeled green compost bucket (which is half full and getting unwieldy).
The bottle of urine you see there is about a day's output from yours truly:
I wonder what a comparison cost would be for equivalent store bought NPK
12:1:2 fertilizer containing 6 pounds of nitrogen?
It looks like apple juice or recycled beer. ^_^
TDD
Well, in a way, it 'is' recycled apple juice & beer!
I haven't flushed the toilet in a week! :)
EEEEEEeeeeeeuuuu! ^_^
TDD
I agree the yuck factor is high.
But, I'm at least learning yuck that I never knew before ... for example, on Saturdays I deliver double my normal urine output - and - the color tends to fade to a lighter amber (as shown in this picture taken today of the second bottle of the day):
For example, I found that this width bottle is too small for a normal person to fit and therefore there's the need for a wider bottle opening (two inches would seem to be a good bottle opening size for a 2 liter bottle):
Andy comments: Use laundry detergent plastic jugs. Wide mouth, easy to fit with no= fiddling around ..... I keep one under the bed to keep from stumping my toes at night, and one in the truck so I don't have to stop and go into a gas station after every beer....... They are empltied into a raised bed garden, in those spaces where I've already picked the produce.....
I have a plastic urinal I got during my last hospital visit where I had to keep track of urine output. I keep track of output every now and then especially after I peed out 50lbs of fluid in two weeks last fall. In a month I was 60lbs lighter after getting the right medication. No more fluid in my lungs went a long way toward making me feel better. ^_^
TDD
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.