New research suggests that a slurry of wood ash and piss makes a good fertilizer for tomatoes. It's the nitrogen in urine and the calcium and magnesium in the ash that does the trick. After promising results in a greenhouse, University of Kuopio environmental scientist Surendra Pradhan and his colleagues plan a real world test in Nepal. From National Geographic:
Human urine and wood ash have each separately been used as fertilizer for centuries. But until now, no one had explored applying them together…
Urine can be collected from eco-friendly, urine-diverting toilets. Or farmers could just collect their pee in cans.
The researchers estimate a single person could supply enough urine to fertilize roughly 6,300 tomato plants a year–yielding some 2.4 tons of tomatoes.
The farmer would just need to give plants ash three days or more after applying urine…
One potential setback may be that pharmaceuticals and hormones excreted in human urine–such as remnants of birth control pills–could negatively impact crops, Pradhan said. For instance, such byproducts could promote antibiotic resistance in local bacteria or get absorbed by the plants.
"Human Pee With Ash Is a Natural Fertilizer, Study Says"
