Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

Pissin’ about,
the re-blog…

September 16, 2010

Slim Pickins, fertilized with urine since 2009, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org
Didn’t go to the farmers’ market this Saturday

(First published 13 September, 2009 under the title: Not piss-poor anymore)

One of the reasons I gave my Amsterdam kitchen garden the name Slim Pickins was to show that even a postage stamp-sized garden with a relatively little crop could serve up a surprising amount of food. But the real reason was that it had piss poor soil and I always thought the garden looked scrawny. I used to blame the slow rate of growth on the location, but visits to many local organic farms and especially to the nearby school gardens had made it painfully clear that the anemia of my produce had nothing to do with living so close to the Polar Circle. Well maintained school gardens right in the middle of the city were lush because they had great soil.

Slim Pickins, fertilized with urine since 2009, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org
I’ll be chewing this cud all week

In the hope of increasing soil nutrients, I grew the green manures that were hugely successful in the Occitanian kitchen garden. But at Slim Pickins, the alfalfa, vetch, fenugreek and phacelia didn’t burgeon and produce huge mats of biomass like they did in the south, in a large part due to the blasted ground conditions. I’d been thinking about asking a farmer I knew if he’d bring me a load of composted manure, but I never ended up going ahead with this because I just don’t like the idea of importing large volumes of additives from afar. Searching for a solution closer to home, I considered making a worm composter and biking the castings over one recycled yoghurt container at a time, but there were already so many worms casting away in the garden that this plan just seemed bass-ackwards.

By the time I had returned to my garden in August I had basically resigned myself to a mediocre harvest. But two weeks ago I starting bumping into links about fertilizing with urine. I knew that pee was nutrient rich, balanced in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, and I had no problem with it in the animal manure. Why it hadn’t occurred to me to try using my own I’ll just chalk up to a deeply ingrained societal taboo against humanure. One YouTube video and 3 articles later and suddenly urine fertilizer seemed like a painless experiment with a material both abundant and free. I decided to give it a go. I might have even been giddy, biking over all those recycled yoghurt containers filled with pee.

Slim Pickins, fertilized with urine since 2009, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org
Not piss poor anymore

Following instructions, in a big bucket I diluted (DILUTE! DILUTE! OK!) 1 part fresh pee to 10 parts Amsterdam tap water, gave it a stir and poured it on my soil, trying to avoid splashing the leaves. It’s possible that there was some more giddiness at this point. Recycled yoghurt containers empty, I left the garden and returned one week later.

AND…
WOWWY!
KAZOWWY!
And now with jazz hands!

Pity I didn’t make scientific-style before and after pictures but you’ll have to believe me when I say that the results were striking. In one week’s time all of the plants suddenly produced a great deal of leaf, and the leaf-colour seemed to have deepened considerably. All of the plants, but especially the climbing ones (calabas and hokkaido), appear to have undergone an enormous growth spurt. This happened during a waning moon, and with ever cooling temperatures. At home in the window box my spindly vervain and green shiso that had always resembled bonsais, suddenly filled out in their pot.

Possibly you are thinking, “Hey Nut-Job, OY VEY, what about the SMELL, what about the TASTE?” I can report that there is no urine or amonia smell at all, even on my indoor plants. (When I saw the difference in just a few days on the herbs, I had to try it indoors.) Some of the net-lit studies suggest that insects (like aphids) can taste the difference and stay away. I can’t taste … any… urine. Well, how do you know what urine tastes like? I don’t know, how do you don’t? What? I don’t know. Shut up.

And to get back to the reason I did this in the first place, the Slim Pickins kitchen garden produced a two bike-bag bumper crop and it looks like next week will be the same. I had such an abundant harvest (chard, kohlrabi, kale, cavalo nero, various leafy herbs, tomatoes, chives) that I didn’t need to go to the Farmers’ Market. Although I don’t think the folks at Organic Farm the Knotwilg will have to get another day job, the results in my garden after just one week of urine fertilizing are impressive.

In case you were planning on coming over for a nibble of some Slim Pickins goodness, I’m harvesting on Saturdays and fertilizing on Mondays. You’ll probably pray for rain.

Slim Pickins, fertilized with urine since 2009, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org
The tomato that keeps on giving

debra at 19:01 | | post to del.icio.us

6 Comments »

  1. We need a winter post……! ?

    Comment by Jeff Pool — December 11, 2010 @ 20:25

  2. Please don’t tell my boyfriend, but I just poured pee on our plants.
    hehehehehe

    Comment by Joanna Swan — March 1, 2011 @ 5:22

  3. DILUTE DILUTE! DILUTE! DILUTE!
    1:10 or 1:5 TEST! TEST! TEST!

    Pee is an awesome fertiliser. I can’t believe we don’t harvest all of it all of the time. What a terrible waste.

    My boyfriend is also squeamish about pee - and he never donates! He thinks that the fact that he drinks beer will somehow harm the plants.

    DILUTE! DILUTE! DILUTE! DILUTE!
    1:10 or 1:5 TEST! TEST! TEST!

    Comment by Debra — March 1, 2011 @ 9:31

  4. Dilution occurred! Thanks for the tip, no root burning alllowed. Testing to follow. So excited.

    Comment by Joanna Swan — March 2, 2011 @ 11:37

  5. I’ll be saving pee this year….. Normally I just chuck it on the compost bin, don’t know why I didn’t think to water the plants with it……..

    Comment by Bethann — April 21, 2011 @ 1:15

  6. Wasting pee is a thing of the past.
    DILUTE DILUTE DILUTE!

    Comment by debra — April 21, 2011 @ 10:27


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