Gardening – Grow as you go

Synthetic fertilisers have a huge greenhouse gas footprint and one of the most important changes we can make as home gardeners to cut methane emissions is to stop using synthetic fertilisers. In ancient China and Rome, as well as Japan, records show that urine was used to help grow crops. Urine’s power as a fertiliser is due to the nitrogen and phosphorous it contains, the same basic ingredients that are in a bag of fertiliser.

Fossil fuels are used in the intense Haber Bosch process to create nitrogen while the mining of phosphorous creates harmful amounts of toxic waste. Not only does using urine reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it reduces the amount of household water used to dilute our urine and send it along pipes to a treatment plant, and then pump it out into the environment where the typical destination is waterways , rivers and lakes, where the nutrients are taken up by algae. Our bodies create lots of nutrients and urine is sterile when it leaves the body and free of harmful bacteria.



Application can be carefully timed so that the plant can take up nutrients, typically during the active growth stage when it is bigger than a seedling but not yet fruiting. Peecycling is up-cycling your urine. It may not be the most obvious fertiliser, but it is the most readily available and could be the ingredient to help reduce the amount of water we need, especially during drought times.

Added to compost it speeds up the decomposition process. It fits as one of the “green” layers along with kitchen waste and grass clippings. It helps keep the compost moist which the bacteria and fungi need to work effectively.

As urine is rich in nitrogen, ensure to add more brown material – sawdust, leaves, cardboard, paper of straw. When diluted urine hits soil, it doesn’t stink because the microbes in the soil immediately turn it into nutrients helping to create the bio-nutrient garden economy. I don’t buy synthetic fertiliser, instead I use a mixture of chicken poo, sheep pellets and wool and liquid manures made with kelp and garden weeds.

I have used urine for years and dilute it with dish washing water. I have established deep mulch layers in the garden and pouring this mixture on the mulch creates a mini-compost system. You too can be like the volunteers in Paris who are collecting urine to help save the River Seine and fertilise wheat for their baguettes.

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