"Martin" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 May 2009 15:03:36 +0100, "wafflycat"
wrote:


"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.

A disadvantage that led Reading BC to stop flogging cheap sewage produced
fertilisers is that the stuff was full of heavy metals.
--

Martin


Perhaps they should be doing it as in Calcutta, using water hyacinths to
remove the nasties naturally!