Once upon a time on usenet Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
On Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 6:39:55 PM UTC-8, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
On Monday, January 26, 2015 at 7:27:50 PM UTC-8, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet songbird wrote:
[snipped]
.... of course human manure composting will help increase
soil nutrients too. if your family is healthy and doesn't use
hormones or chemotherapeutics then composted poo/pee is a valuable
resource. hard to get people to accept it, but there is no reason
to not use such a valuable resource if you can learn to do it
safely (the humanure handbook is freely available on-line). it
just freaks out people though so most gardeners won't do it (but
they will use composted cow manure from sources they know much
less about than their own family, so go figure...). if you build
in a long enough cycle there is no problem from disease organisms
and if you are very paranoid you can even use it as a subsoil
amendment (buried deeply again) and that will cover all remaining
issues.

The amount of nutrient in human manure is minimal compared with
that in urine. I have been practicing 'micturition farming' for
decades now and have had excellent results. It is very easy to do
(especially when compared with the use of solid manure) and appeals
to my sense of the cyclic nature of things and my abhorrence of
waste in general.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ve-fertilizer/

I just keep a bucket next to the toilet and use it for urine,
emptying it into a watering can and diluting with water at least
10:1 (often with used aquarium water for that added nutrient
boost). The sooner it's used the better or the urea will degrade
into ammonia and become less bio-available. People who know me are
amazed at my horticultural successes but I don't often share my
secret as people can have totally irrational opinions of certain
things.

Err.... can't you just go out in the garden and....

I'm an invalid - chronic back injury and constant pain. The morning
pee is the biggest (most worth catching) and when freshly out of bed
I hobble for an hour or two. Making it to the garden and dangling
genitalia (in suburbia no less) isn't really an option.

Or if that would be too concentrated, dilute with dihydrogen
monoxide from a hose?

It does need diluting. Undiluted urine will kill plants. Also it's
easier to spread around where it's needed when diluted.......

Not presuming to ask who else shares facilities...

It's no presumption. I live alone these days.

Sorry about physical problems. The "constant pain" part is very
upsetting to hear about. AFAIK pain control is one of the most active
fields in medical research, so I hope your medical providers are on
top of current work. All good wishes,

HB

Thanks for the kind words. A sit-rep of my disability below, feel free to
not read it.....

I unjured myself in my mid 30s, not long after I'd sunk my life savings into
becoming self-employed in a line of work that was going to need a few years
hard work before seeing returns.
Long story short I popped a disc out, the lowest one where the spine meets
the pelvis (but didn't know at the time exactly what was going on as I'm a
tough ******* and didn't scream like a little girl - so was told to take
APAP four times a day).
After an intial couple of months of agony (I couldn't afford private
healthcare as I was financially fully commited - so availed myself of the
free medical care we have here in NZ) I saw a chiropractor who popped it
back in again. I was able to carry on, still painful but not bad enough to
prevent me from doing a ~6 hour day (when I really needed to be doing 10).
Every three months it got bad and I went back to the chiro and had to put
back but it got harder and harder to do - until they couldn't fix it.

I ended up losing everything, life savings and home. (There was almost zero
resale value in the 'plant' I'd invested in.) After a decade of pain getting
worse and worse I finally managed to get an MRI (!). I was told a disc had
ruptured and the 'jelly' had leaked out and been gradually absorbed by my
body (which is why the chiro found it harder and harder to 'fix' me). Now
I'm bone-on-bone with compressed nerves causing 'sciatica'. (The word hardly
does what I feel justice but it's one most people are familiar with.) I have
oesteophytes (bony protrusions) growing all around the area where my body is
trying to fuse my spine to protect itself.

The musco-skeletal specialist who I finally saw just over 10 years after my
accident (who got me into an MRI within 12 hours of the initial exam) says
my only paid-for option is a spinal fusion of the immediate area. However he
really doesn't recommend it as my MRI shows the two or three discs above are
also damaged (bulging into my spinal cord cavity but not ruptured at
present) and fusing the lower one may or may not fix the problem in that
area and would place much more strain on the already damaged vertebral
joints above. However he's at the limit of what he can do for me (I don't
want higher doses of opiods, I value my mind too much) and if / when I can
no longer stand it he'll send me on to the surgeon.

Hobson's choice. For now I'm just hoping to make it to old(er) age as he
told me that, in septugenarians and older the sort of injury I have doesn't
cause anywhere near as much pain as their nervous systems have also
degraded. So I've got a bit less than 20 years to go to find out...... If I
can hold off on the surgery. ;-)

Best,
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)