this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Composting
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Step 10- pee on it
Every frickin' day, comrade. I aim for the big ol' lizard that's been living in mine and eating the scrumptous bugs. Gives him his exercise.
Like, actually?
Yes, urine contains a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus and is an excellent fertilizer.
Long-time compost pee-er, here. I thought pee contains microbes that facilitate composting (in addition to the basic salts).
I’ve got two compost bins and I’ve always meant to pee on one and pour an equal volume of water on the other to check it’s true.
I'm not sure about the microbes.
However since it's nitrogen rich or needs more carbon (brown stuff) to balance it out. If it smells it needs more carbon.
I noticed that for my chicken, they have a small backyard area that tend to smell bad, however now that I've started to regularly add tree clipping in it the smell is gone.
I used to keep chickens, too. They had free range of my garden so used to spread their crap all over the place—it never got too concentrated. But I can imagine that it would smell otherwise.
I’d read that pee scares foxes off. Not sure how good the evidence is, but it seems plausible. I used to tip some pee near their coop. After a while I stopped and they got attacked. Just an anecdote, but I thought I should share it!
Sure. But it's even better to build a compost toilet and compost your pee, poo, menstrual fluid, toilet paper, and any other organic material that would normally go into a flush toilet, like the occasional vomit from food poisoning or whatever. (Any pathogens will be killed in a properly maintained compost bin.)
You can get free instructions for building a compost toilet and maintaining a proper compost bin from the author of The Humanure Handbook (click "read free online" and then scroll down):
https://slateroofwarehouse.com/Books/Joseph_Jenkins_Books/Humanure_Handbook
Just want to note that composting doesn't occur in the toilet, which is merely a receptacle. You empty the toilet contents in batch mode, like 5+ receptacles all at once, into your compost bin, then clean the receptacles all at once and cover the new material added to the bin with fresh cover material to prevent odors. I mostly use hay and yard scraps as a cover material outdoors, and shredded leaves as a cover material indoors.
I've read The Humanure Handbook maybe 5 times and consider it one of my holy books, along with Dune.
Thanks for the information!