GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - Wash your hands after handling that muck. Legionella longbeachae

Janet · 29-05-2012, 08:18 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

In article ,
says...

On 29/05/2012 19:14, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Tue, 29 May 2012 16:04:43 +0100, "Bob
wrote:

he's even heard a rumour of trials to make
composts out of chopped straw mixed with sewage sludge, would anyone want to
handle that?

You're too squeamish! When my BH lived in Gloucester, ~40 years ago,
she and her then husband used to get sewage sludge from the local
sewage works. There were great piles of the stuff, and the two of them
just shoveled it into bags before loading them into the car. Lovely
stuff, she said, very friable, but it always produced a crop of tomato
plants from the seeds in it that survived the passage through people's
guts!

In the old days they would go around Hong Kong collecting "Night soil"
which was then taken to "The New Territories" where it was used as
manure for the fruit and veg grown to supply Hong Kong.
This went on into the 60's.

Later than that. I used a rural Chinese communal public lav in the 80's
which was a long , immaculately tiled shallow channel where a whole row of
people squatted nose to tail, so to speak. (Because western females were
present, male users were briefly excluded). The urine drained off into a
collector; and if anyone poohed a little old lady rushed over and scooped
it up out of the channel with a little shovel.It all went onto the
commune's crops.

My childhood home in Herefordshire in the 60's, had only a bucket in a
shed for a lav and the contents were emptied into a trench in the veg
garden. My grandfather had been rotating the sewage trench round the
garden for about 50 years, with wonderful results.

Janet

When I was young we would dig out a trench and empty the cesspit into it
by bucket and recover with soil, this would then be where we grew our
runner beans and peas.
David @ the parched end of Swansea Bay