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Old 25-05-2009, 03:03 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
wafflycat wafflycat is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2009
Posts: 241
Default should I wee on my tomato plants?


"moghouse" wrote in message
...
On May 24, 1:52 pm, "dido22" wrote:
I read that urine is a good fertiliser and gardeners sometimes use their
urine as a fertiliser.?


Having exhausted the uses of urine how about a debate on night soil?
There must be a few old codgers like me who were brought up in the
country in the forties or earlier who have some first hand experience.
Being only a little lad with a protective mother I was not allowed to
know how the contents of the privy were processed but Grandad had the
best vegetable garden in the village!


Certainly used to be the case in parts I grew up in that not too many years
before that, human & animal solid waste was mixed up & rotted, with plant
material, and used as fertiliser on the fields. In my early teens, an early
biology field trip was to the local sewage treatment works. Once the waste
coming into the plant had been processed, and the cleaned effluent fed into
the river, the solid waste was left to dry out and people were allowed to
come and take it for fertiliser. One benefit was that it was a source of
free tomato plants, as tomato seeds passed through human gut unchanged.
Watching a documentary recently, it was about rural farming orund the edge
of Calcutta - where the sewage enters one end of a wetland, and is cleaned
naturally as it progresses through the area. Water hyacinths remove most of
the heavy metals, and other plants absorb grease & oils... what is left is
rich in nutrients for algae which supports a huge number and variety of
fishes, and enough good stuff to grow vegetables. It was *fascinating*.