If you can get over the ewwww factor, pee-cycling your own urine into the garden makes good sense. Fresh urine is high in nitrogen, moderate in phosphorus and low in potassium and can act as an excellent high-nitrogen liquid fertilizer or as a compost accelerator.
Components of Urine
The exact breakdown of urine varies depending on the diet of the pee-maker. The more protein a person consumes, the more nitrogen will be excreted into the urine. Typical Western Diet pee has an NPK ratio of about 11-1-2. In comparison, blood meal is 12-2-1 and cottonseed meal is 7-2-2.
Urine also contains salt – sometimes quite a lot of it if you are hopped up on a diet of canned soup and french fries. Because of both the salt and high nitrogen levels, urine should generally be diluted 10:1 before use on garden crops. Greater dilution – 20:1 or more – is appropriate for more tender plants, seedlings and potted plants which are more susceptible to salt build up.
Keep in mind that areas with a lot of rain (Seattle!) tend to leach salts out of the soil, so salt build up is something gardeners in arid climates should be more concerned about.
Fresh pee can have a pH anywhere from 5 to 9 depending on a person’s diet, but it tends to move toward neutral as it ages and breaks down when applied outside. I would not personally worry too much about the variable pH of urine for garden use.
Safety Issues
In a healthy person, urine is sterile. In someone with decent hygiene and wiping technique, it should more-or-less stay that way as it leaves the body. Cross contamination with fecal matter (health risk!) can be a concern, so perfect your front-to-back TP technique if you are going to pee-cycle.
If you are on medication, don’t fertilize with your pee. If you have a UTI or other infection or – well, let’s just say anything funky going on in or around your pee-hole – your urine is not fit for garden use.
Grossness Issues
Assuming the safety issues are satisfactorily addressed, then the grossness issue is cultural programing and you should think about if it’s programming you want to keep in your brain. Most gardeners, after all, are pleased as punch to get ahold of a big load of cow poop for their garden, and that fertilizer has a far greater chance of spreading harmful pathogens than pee.
Here’s a few other things to think about:
“Urine accounts for only 1% of the total volume of wastewater, but it contains up to 80% of all the nutrients.”
–Science Daily
A typical toilet flusher wastes “up to 22 liters of drinkable water every day, one three- to six-liter flush at a time. What follows…is the long and costly process of sanitizing the water that was clean before you answered nature’s call. Using so much water per flush unnecessarily increases the volume of our waste and the cost of its transportation and treatment, ecologists say….The process also leaves a huge carbon footprint.”
–Time Magazine
Basically, the environmental and financial cost to piss in a bunch of drinking-quality water and then process it back into drinking water is huge. Separating urine from solid waste – through direct pee-cycling or urine-separating toilets – could go a long way to offset this cost by reducing the burden on wastewater treatment programs.
If the tree-hugger eco stuff doesn’t move you to action, consider the cost of a bag of blood meal. Now consider the cost of your pee. You will never find a more easy-to-acquire, cheaper source of fast acting nitrogen.
Basic courtesy is to not apply urine to those parts of the plant that will be consumed (i.e., as a foliar feed for spinach). Even so, if pee-cycled fertilizer on food crops just grosses you out, consider using this resource on fruit trees, perennials, and ornamental plantings, including your nitrogen-lovin’ lawn, instead.
5 Ways To Use Pee In The Garden
Okay, I’ve convinced you! You are ready to drop trou’ and add your liquid gold deposit to your garden. But how do you pee in the garden in the most effective way (and without getting arrested for indecent exposure in the process!)?
1. Compost Accelerator
Is your compost pile cold? A little long on carbon and low on nitrogen? Pee, poured or – ahem – directly deposited – on the pile can start to speed things up and add moisture. If you are nervous about using urine directly on your plants, incorporating urine into a compost pile is the way to go.
2. Dilution is The Solution
Dilute fresh urine at a 4:1 ratio and apply to the root-zone of corn every two weeks or as needed. (Some people say corn, being a grass, can handle fertilization with straight urine. Proceed with caution.)
Dilute fresh urine at a 10:1 ratio and apply to the root-zone of fruiting plants like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, or to leafy crops like cabbage, broccoli, spinach and lettuce every two weeks or as needed.
Dilute fresh urine at a 20:1 ratio and water in to the root zone of seedlings and new transplants.
3. The Straw Bale Sprinkle
When Straw Bales are used for gardening, they must be “conditioned” or partially broken down / composted before use. This is accomplished with the addition of a very high nitrogen fertilizer. Guess which free, Bud Lite-hued high-nitrogen fertilizer I’d recommend?
4. Deep Mulch Direct Application
If you thickly mulch your woody perennials, cane fruit and fruit trees with a high-carbon material like leaves or woodchips, you can apply your urine straight onto the mulch, which will absorb and moderate the straight shot of nitrogen in your pee.
5. That Asparagus Smell!
If asparagus makes your pee smell funny, take revenge and pee on your asparagus! Nutrient hungry, deep rooted, perennial and salt-tolerant, asparagus might be the ideal crop to fertilize with pee. If you grow your asparagus under a thick layer of carbonaceous mulch, like straw or wood chips, use the Direct Mulch Direct Application technique, otherwise dilute 2:1 if your asparagus is in the sandy soil it prefers, or 4:1 in heavier soil. Apply throughout the growing season, along with a good source of potassium, like bone meal, in the early spring.
Pee-cycling Sexism
So Adam and Eve are standing in the Garden of Eden right after the Creation and God is handing out the last of the talents, qualities and features he has for each of them. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a slip of paper.
“Ability to Pee Standing Up,” booms God. “Okay, who wants this one?”
“Oh, pick me!” yells Adam, “Pick me! Peeing while standing up sounds like such a very male thing to do, God. I really think that one has to go to me. Sorry Eve, but I really think I need this one.”
God looks at Eve, who just shrugs. “Sure, if it’s that important to him, give Adam the peeing thing. I don’t really care.”
God hands Adam the slip of paper and says, “Forevermore, Adam, by your choice shall men be endowed with the ability to pee whilst standing.”
Adam grins and God reaches to the very bottom of his bag. “Just one more, and I guess since Adam got Peeing While Standing Up, this last one goes to you, eh, Eve? Let’s see…”
God unfolds his final slip of paper. “Okay, here you go Eve: Multiple Orgasms is all yours.”
{ba-dum-bum}
It is a fact of life that men are better equipped to pee all over things. If you are a male gardener, combine your skills and start marking your veg territory with pride. The Deep Mulch Direct Application method will be simplest if you want to water directly from the hose, so to speak.
Ladies, I highly recommend you use Adam’s gift to all men to your advantage, too. Got a husband? Boyfriend? Better yet, a son or two? Give them carte blanche permission to pee on the compost pile. Direct that natural ability (and, dare I say, inclination) for outdoor pee marksmanship towards something good for your garden.
But don’t let the guys have all the fun. You’ll notice that most of the techniques for applying urine as a fertilizer call for dilution anyway, which means a watering can or container is going to be involved. Most women with regular access to lady-specific medical care have had plenty of practice peeing in cups – put that experience to use, for the good of your garden.
Do you already pee on the compost, or does the very idea of pee-cycling leave you pissed!?
198
All spring and summer, my husband pees into a milk bottle that I empty every day—either diluted onto plants or stright into the compost pile. It performs miracles if you have a nitrogen deficient plant. No problem in over 6 years of doing this.
Now, one of the National Trust gardens in Britain has installed a “pee bale” and are asking male staffers to relieve themselves on straw bales that are then used to jump-start the compost heap. According to the lead gardener, the men only do this after visiting hours because “we don’t want to scare the public…there are obvious logistical benefits to limiting it to male members of the team, but also male pee is preferable to women’s, as the male stuff is apparently less acidic.” According to their calculations, “The 10 men from the 70-strong garden and estates team will make more 1,000 individual trips to the pee bale…it will have saved up to 30% of its daily water use by not having to flush the loo so many times.”
I have been following the comments with great interest, and this one, I admit, gave me a chuckle. The logistics of ladies adding to the straw bales might be a tad more complicated that it is for the men 😉
As for the acidity, they might want to reconsider that. This got me curious, and I did a quick search, and found an interesting study – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20502420 – that seems to indicate that relative acidity has more to do with age and diet than gender. Omnivores seem to produce a more acidic urine than veggies, for example. Just another tidbit to add to the discussion 😉
I apologize, but I’m not terribly good at figuring ratios. When you say the urine needs to be diluted 20:1, is that 20 parts urine to 1 part water? Or is the 20 parts water to 1 part urine? Or am I way off and it’s something else entirely?
20 water to 1 urine
Question: What about urine made right after taking vitamin or mineral supplements? Or other medications? I’m picturing that bright yellow urine right after a high-dose of vitamin C and thinking, “Would this be better or worse for my veggie garden?”
It works quite well for me! I take lots of vitamins . As they said make sure you water it down some
Great idea. But what about horse pee? Can I pour the pee of my horses on the compost too??
I just wanna say thanks for the good info on dilution factors and such. I have an empty milk jug waiting in the bathroom (been thinking about this for a while), and with the particulars discussed here, I’ll begin today! I’ll start with the compost pile since no veggies are in the ground, just seedlings under lights indoors. I wonder: If the raised beds were doused from now to planting time (last frost date), would they hold the nitrogen for future use? Rain is not an issue here, unfortunately, so leaching isn’t a factor.
If soil is high in organic material, it will hold onto much of the nitrogen. Thin soils won’t. If the soil gets really dry, nitrogen can evaporate as ammonia vapor. Maybe keep the beds covered with thick mulch, which could be pulled aside while adding pee, then put back in place afterwards.
Great article – thanks for sharing this. My herb garden is desperately in need of some nutrients, so since reading this I’ve started saving pee at least once a day. Unfortunately my kids are old enough to think the idea is gross rather than cool, so they need a little more persuading to join in the endeavour!
Great post and a timely reminder that our fertilizer supplies are going to run out, so we need to be finding, and getting used to using, alternatives.
There’s a very good paper here:
http://www.wrc.org.za/Knowledge%20Hub%20Documents/Water%20SA%20Journals/Manuscripts/1998/02/WaterSA_1998_02_apr98_p157.pdf
with more information.
I just that using urine in the garden is just a myth! A very good alternative to fertilizers.
When you dillute the urine 20:1, you are using more water than your toilet.
Yes (or close, at least), but:
–you can use rain barrel water or grey water instead of drinking water
–you were going to add that much water to your plants anyway, by watering them
Erica
just found this site. what a blessing. I love the pee advice and the joke. i will be having my two boys (4&2) take aim. do you have any advice for homemade apple cider vinegar with mother and no pasteurization.
It may sound gross to some, but we have and older toilet that uses almost 6 gallons of water per flush. I drink a lot of coffee and soda pop, and urinate about 20+ times a day. I started thinking “What a waste. Flushing 6 gallons of pure, fresh water just to get rid of a half cup of pee”. So I started peeing in 4 litre milk jugs (the hole is the perfect size for my “fit”). Every 3 days, I have 3 full milk jugs of urine which is then poured evenly over our veggie garden, then diluted with a garden hose. After 2 months of doing this, I noticed a huge improvement in our crops of peppers and tomatoes. I have also noticed since I started doing this that we have at least 10 times more earthworms in the soil. Some may call me cheap and disgusting for saving my pee, but I hate the idea of wasting toilet water, and hate the idea of throwing away “free” fertilizer. The author states that one should not use urine if you are on medication. Does aspirin count? That is all I take.
Dave you are right, It is very expensive to waste gallons and gallons of water every time we pee. This is the best way to conserved water. In our area we are limited by our city to water the lawn and we have to water our plant and lawn in a certain day according to were we live. it is very sad to say that water is getting hard to get to be able to use it abundantly in some areas.
I have been using my pee to water my yard in that reason. I have a bucket 3/4 full of water and I put it behind my bed. I set on the bucket at night time to pee. Then when I wake up in the morning I pee for the last time and I pour my bucket on the yard. I then now flush the bucket and put it inside our garage and put about 3/4 of water on it. When I’m home I still pee on my bucket in our garage and empty in our yard in the afternoon. It sound so much work to do but I don’t mind doing it. Then I get to find out by searching in the internet if urine is good also to water my trees and vegetables. I am glad to find this as good fertilizer as well. I will start using it in my trees and vegie as well. Thanks everybody, especially to you Dave by posting how to conserve water, and waste a good fertilizer.
Came clueless, left worried. Thanks for the post. – All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. Youd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men. Attributed to Isaac Asimov
This is great! We only have one bathroom for six people in this house, and after deciding to homeschool all my kids next year, I decided to invest in a toilet seat that would fit on a 5 gallon bucket for all the times we have more than one person needing the bathroom at the same time. Now I have a better idea – it will become the pee bucket!
I just watered my plant starts with diluted urine! I’m hoping it will stop the leaf yellowing before I can get them out into the garden later this month. I was so excited that I finally did it that I wanted to share, but then realized no one would want to hear about that… except maybe you! Hahaha! 🙂
Guldkannan Towa is equal parts chamber pot and watering pot … Pee makes for excellent fertilizer. It’s got lots of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphate — all important nutrients for growing healthy plants. One study showed that tomato vines fertilized with a urine mixture bore more than four times as much fruit as plants grown using traditional fertilizer. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663056/almost-genius-a-watering-can-that-uses-your-pee
Hello! I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out from New Caney Tx! Just wanted to say keep up the excellent work!
Already doing it with great success.
Definitely avoid doing this if you are on hormonal BC. Studies have shown that the hormones come through in urine (and there’s a lot of debate surrounding that, because nothing in water treatment gets that back out, which is *very* bad news for the environment).
pstyle — girls can pee standing up too.
I haven’t implemented yet, but this is definitely on my gardening radar!
Thanks for this post, it has been amazing for my fruit trees and roses, also it has kept the carpenter ants out of the roots of my trees and berry bushes! Thanks so much, I cannot express my gratitude enough for this idea/information!
Oh, and my fruit trees and roses are doing to well because of this, amazing!
What’s the big deal. I’ve been peeing in the compost pile for over 30 years.
Here is the perfect device for every lady gardener and lover of the great outdoors.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ANM6C8/ref=s9_bbs_gw_d0_g364_ir02?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0J538QVR96VEQJDSHYY5&pf_
Wow… I just visited the manufacturer’s website… $92 and change for one of these… cuz its from Sweden… can you imagine the duties that would probably have to be paid on top of that? WAY cheaper just to fashion something similar on your own and that’s custom sized for you…
I have a conventional flush toilet, and I hate using it! Such a waste of water and nutrients.
I don’t have any means of safely processing number 2s, so for the time being, they go into the sewer.
Hi ! Very useful information. I just found out about pee-fertilizing and it sounds like the right way to go.
I am a new member of an urban garden/orchard: we have occupied a piece of land that is empty awaiting construction that never happens. So, we are at a very rudimentary stage, we self-manage and have no resources (no water or electricity). Toilet facilities are an issue and this solves at least half of the problem while providing excellent source for the growth or our veggies and flowers.
The only query I am left with is that I have read somewhere that the pee & water solution should also be mixed with wood ash. If this is so, do you know what proportion should we use ? I shall be grateful for your help.
Marta.
So i guess peeing on weeds was a bad idea…..
I have been using my pee for years on my veggie garden! provides the best crops ever!
You skipped the reason our great grandfathers marked the perimeters
of their gardens. It keeps the rabbits away. Rabbits can tell if the area is marked by a preditor, i.e. a meat eater. Works pretty well.
Your article says, “if you are on medication, don’t fertilize with your [urine]. I’m curious as to what the effect on the plants could be? I am growing cherry tomatoes and roses, and they appear to have responded well to being “fertilized” with my urine. I’m just pee-ing into a 2 1/2 gal. bucket (about 8 – 10 oz) each time and filling the bucket with water from the hose, then pouring half on the tomatoes growing in a pot and the rest on a rose bush. I then water further with the hose. My meds are Omeprazole (generic Prilosec) 20 mg. 1x/day, Omeprazole (generic Lopid) 600 mg. 2x/day, and Lisinopril, 40 mg. 1x/day. Plus a daily aspirin tablet (250 mg), a “senior” multivitamin, and the occasional Loratadine (10 mg) for my allergies. What could happen?
I listed “omeprazole” twice, second one should have been Gemfibrozil (generic Lopid). Omeprazole is for acid reflux, Gemfibrozole is for high blood lipids, and Lisinopril is for blood pressure.
I now know where to direct my son when his sister is in the bathroom and he has to go really bad. The compost heap!
There is a hilarious thread on permies.com about this. I highly recommend it. You might want to save up until you need a laughter prescription.
I would recommend for the Lady’s, Just get a five gallon bucket and a spare toilet lid and its just as easy as ever.
I don’t need to sit on a toilet seat to pee. Probably because I’m a woman, not a Lady 😉
Some of us grew up in the country, and have done a lot of wilderness camping. In these situations, five gallon buckets and toilet seats are a bit of an encumbrance.
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Hello, Erika.
I have one additional datum to add on the topic of dilution.
When you go out and piddle on a garden bed, you concentrate all the mineral goodness in that one space and the next time the same in another location, which means that the beneficial application is spread hap-hazardly throughout the yard, some plots receiving more, some less and some none.
Dilution of the urine helps ensure even distribution of those beneficial minerals, etc throughout your garden or compost pile or bin.
TIP:
One way you can evenly distribute your urine is if you have drip irrigation, you can add it in at the filter or if you have an additive feeding ssystem, feed it in that way.
And Ladies, remember the saying “Good fences make good neighbors.”
The way I see it, if you have good fences, it seems like there’s no reason you need be shy about going out to add to the garden’s bounty.
Unless of course you’re embarrassed knowing that when you lift your skirts to water the compost pile, that’ll make it eccited! ;-D
OhPervyOne
Matthew K.
Los Angeles
There is a thread of comments on permies.com that I find to be absolutely hilarious reading on the topic of peeing, specifically on how women can do this. I highly recommend reading it.
With havin so much content and articles do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright infringement?
My blog has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either created myself or outsourced but it appears a
lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my authorization.
Do you know any ways to help reduce content from being ripped off?
I’d definitely appreciate it.
don’t worry about being acidic as women’s pee contains abundant supply of pro-biotic bacteria. . i think that would help in any ways. .
“women’s pee contains abundant supply of pro-biotic bacteria”
Only if the woman in question has a nasty bladder infection. Bacteria don’t live in healthy urinary tracts – regardless of sex.
Prior to the 20th century all country women peed standing up. That was why women traditionally wore skirts. Only since indoor plumbing and general use of panties have “civilized” woman “had to” squat. Most standing women can actually pee more distance than most men because shorter plumbing makes higher stream velocity. As long as you don’t always pee on the same bush, plant, tree, or patch of lawn there is really no need for dilution. If would save billions of gallons of water if rural and suburban folks went out to the yard or garden instead of wasting water indoors.
Shhh… don’t tell everyone! But yes it’s true.
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