So, I haven't posted anything here in a bit, but for anyone who still reads my posts, here's an interesting tidbit, and a couple of screen captures from other people's experiments.
I've been getting into horticulture lately, hoping to be able to eventually grow most of the vegetables I eat, and not wanting to spend too much money on fertilizer, I remembered some articles I read one time on how we spent huge sums of money processing sewage to remove the nitrogen content, and then spend huge sums of money on petrolium-synthesized nitrogenous fertilizer. (Natural gas, usually derived from cracking heavier hydrocarbons, is converted into ammonia by some sort of nitrogen fixing process, and then converted into a less caustic fertilizer by some other reaction.) Mean while, all the nitrogen we fail to remove ends up causing algae blooms that choke the rivers and create dead zones when they decay and use up all the oxygen in the water. It occured to me that I should look into using urine as fertlizer, as gross as that sounds. If nobody knew, it would be a sort of "trade secret." (Not so much a secret now that I'm giving it away.)
The simplest solution to this is to keep urine out of the human waste stream, and use it as fertlizer. It sounds gross, but unless you've got some urinary tract infection or are taking prescription drugs, urine is sterile fresh out of the bladder and safe to use on food crops. Urine is such a concentrated fertilizer that it needs to be diluted to at least a 3:1 ratio of water to urine to be usable, 5:1 for most applications, and 10:1 for seedlings and delicate plants.
In an nutshell, we pee out concentrated fertlizer. Don't believe me? The results speak for themselves: (screen shots from this site: http://aquamor.tripod.com/KYOTO.htm )
Look at that! After seeing results like that from *free* concentrated fertlilzer I've literally flush down the toilet every day for years, I wish I had known this earlier. Normally, I'd be somewhat embarassed about talking about using my own piss for fertlilzer, but I've overcome that. Seriously, look at the results! I don't think I'm close enough with my friends and housemates to ask them to save their fertlizer for my garden without being given nasty looks and being judged as a kook, but I'm damn near tempted to.
You're probably thinking that you'd want to wash your food very thoroughly for fear of urine residue, but urea breaks down into ammonia, and evaporates away, and urine based fertilizer isn't supposed to be sprayed on the leaves anyways. In any case, some leaf exposure is going to happen, so give your plants a quick rinse after each application of diluted urine. Trust me, if you knew what went into synthetic fertlizers, you'd want to wash those too; urine isn't any worse if you're not pissing prescription drugs and don't have a urinary tract infection.
Am I going to buy liquid fertilizer ever again? Only if I can't pee enough.
I don't know if the makers of this shirt had the use of urine as fertilizer in mind, but this is what I was thinking:
Using urine as fertlilzer
Really easy: pee in a bucket rather than into your toilet. Put the urine into a watering can, and dilute it with water before using. Use within 48 hours; old urine not only smells bad, but the break down of urine that creates that smell also makes it less nutritious to your plants. Dilute it to at least a 1:3 ratio, 1:5 if you want to make it go further, since it is essentially concentrated fertlizer. Do not use it on any plant more than every other day. Keep it off the leaves, but if leaf contact is unavoidable, such as with seedlings, follow the application with a light watering of plain water to rinse off any residue on the leaves. Seedlings and sprouts should receive a very dilute blend, 10:1 of water to urine.
The average human produces a quart or more of urine per day; if diluted at a 5:1 ratio for a usable concentration, that's about gallon and a half of fertilizer per day, 45 gallons of fertilizer per month. And you're not even supposed to use it on a plant every single day; at most, applying it every other day.
If our movie theaters and ball parks would simply collect urine from the urinals in the men's restrooms and divert it to agricultural use, much of our agriculture could go organic. If our entire society recovered this resource, our entire agricultural system could go organic, while saving billions of gallons of water from being flushed down the toilet every year, on top of sparing our sewage plants the need for treatments that remove nitrogen from the waste.
How to turn the US into a police state before the next election:
Step 1: Stage a false-flag terrorist attack Step 2: Declare a national emergency to invoke presidential directives giving the President unchecked powers to do anything. Step 3: Blame Iran, attack them, getting us into another war. Step 4: Blame everyone who didn't support the expansion of unchecked presidential powers for letting the attack happen, demand further expansion of these powers Step 5: Sic a mercenary army (Blackwater), which is not accountable to any law enforcement, against critics, who are now labeled terrorists.
Please pray! Our republic has been subverted. We are becoming (if we haven't already become) a fascist state. Find out about how presidential directives seize the power to silence critics of the war.
1 Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born YHWH called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name. 2 He made my mouth like a sharpened sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me into a polished arrow and concealed me in his quiver.
3 He said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor."
4 But I said, "I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing. Yet what is due me is in YHWH's hand, and my reward is with my God."
5 And now YHWH says— he who formed me in the womb to be his servant to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of YHWH and my God has been my strength-
6 he says: "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."
7 This is what YHWH says— the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel— to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servant of rulers: "Kings will see you and rise up, princes will see and bow down, because of YHWH, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."
What is the true casualty count from this unrighteous war we are now engaged in? Add to thousands of our sons killed and maimed in Iraq the thousands who die after their deployments by their own hand. Add to that the thousands of mercenaries who have been killed, who are never part of the count.
Make eye contact and tell this young man whom you sent into harms way that you planned this unjust and unjustifiable war from the very first days of your administration, you cowardly liar!
Hebrews 10:26-31 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Make no mistake about it, the war was planned from the very first days of the administration. Watch this 60 minutes interview, where a former member of the administration reveals that the war was planned from the beginning of the administration, with oil maps on the table and foreign corporations interested in Iraqi oil in consideration.
