Using Urea to speed up compost?

Hi!  First off, I live in Colorado where green nitrogen material is hard to come by.  I've called golf courses and hunted for grass clippings but no luck.  I did find a horse stable which delivers me a ton of horse manure every spring.  I can't use food waste (if I had a plentiful source) because of bears.  I've spent years doing everything I can to accumulate organic material for my depleted soil.  The most plentiful source is wood chips from Chip Drop.  But it's so dry here, and I have so little green material to add to it, it takes a very long time to break down.  I need more nitrogen and Urea has the most bang for the buck.   Yes, I've started tons of green manure plants, but our growing season is short and, again, we get so little water, they aren't exactly bountiful.  

Though I don't like purchasing Urea considering how its production is not good for the environment, I tried doing the math on Urine vs Urea fertilizer and I imagine a 50kg sack of Urea is many orders of magnitude greater.  I believe I've read the body produces only around 20mg of Urea a day in Urine.  

Considering farmers are using this stuff like it's water, a sack a year for myself doesn't exactly make the world any worse.  The goal here is to create organic material to help retain water.  

I live in a forest and if this works I can rake up the forest floor for a ton of brown matter.  That is much needed because of the growing number of forest fires.  But could Urea cause a compost fire?

Do others have experience using Urea to speed up compost?  I see there are some posts where others suggested it, but wanted to ask specifically about using just Urea on piles of wood chips, or the brown material left on the floor in a pine forest.  I've seen the Johnson Su bioreactor but that doesn't address my dire need for nitrogen.

I have never purchased urea fertilizer. So, I don't really have an answer for you. Using urine is obviously no problem, but as you indicated, the quantities that occur in a normal household aren't very significant.

Generally speaking, woody material doesn't break down well in a normal compost heap in which microbes dominate. Perhaps you should try separate heaps of woody material that you inoculate with fungi, which are better at decomposing woody materials.

But if you look for a natural nitrogen source to mix with the carbon-rich brown material in your compost heap, you may consider manure. Pig's or cow's manure is probably better for the purpose than horse manure. Perhaps chicken manure would also do.  

If you have a problem with bears, can't you bury kitchen scraps at the bottom of the compost heap? You could keep the scraps in buckets until you have enough. Then you could empty the buckets on the ground and turn the compost heap so the kitchen scraps are covered. I don't know if the rotting smell from the half-composted material will deter the bears.

I'll second Dieter's suggestion about the chicken manure. Have you checked to see if there is a source close by for chicken manure? Do you live in an area that allows you to raise your own chickens, if that is something that you have interest in?

I can't help with your urea question.

I would like to suggest some alternatives since you can't get grass clippings.

Green leaves are green manure.  Of course, they are not available this time of year though it will be spring soon.

Also, I would like to suggest using coffee grounds to add moisture to your compost.  We are only two people with only one who drinks lots of coffee.  I save mine in a 5-gallon bucket which collects about once a month.

Bokashi composting would be good for your situation.  It sits in a nice container on your countertop.  add this to your compost to get some moisture.

What about growing a cover crop just to chop and drop for green manure.

Where there is awill there is a way.

Last spring I inoculated wood chips with Red Wine cap mushroom spawn because I learned that may be the best to help breakdown wood chips. I was told by a friend it took a year before he saw any mushrooms and indeed I haven’t seen any yet.

You may be right about microbes not doing well in wood chips, but I’d love to hear from anyone with experience using Urea to see if it supplies the needed nitrogen. I’m assuming the nitrogen is what is needed by the microbes?

I would love to have chickens but I travel for work 4 months out of the year and my wife isn’t on board just yet. I would love to source chicken manure if you all feel that would be a great source of nitrogen.  I’m curious why that may be better than cow manure, is it just easier to handle?

I live in a pine forest and green leaves are hard to come by. Green anything really except grass but no one is bagging anything they cut.  I am growing green manure but until I fix my soil I’m not getting much.  

I already use my coffee grounds in compost and will throw as much as I can find in there. I’ll do the same with food scraps underneath a pile of wood chips. We’ve got tons of snow otherwise I’d try an experiment myself, but I can’t help wonder if Urea could replace all those materials as food source for the microbes. I could certainly be wrong though.

This is the first time I’ve heard of Bokashi composting. I will look into it!

I just want to second the bokashi suggestion. I haven't done it myself, but I've seen some youtubers do it in large scale endeavors too, not just the counter-top container.

It's much faster at producing usable material than a traditional compost.

I do not know how bears will react to bokashi. Do they like fermented food?

Your urine is excellent fertilizer, it just needs to be dilluted with water at least 9-1. For brown material, save all cardboard. The worms concur that it is excellent.

S. Marshall wrote:I’m curious why that may be better than cow manure, is it just easier to handle?

Chicken manure has a lot of nitrogen, which is what you want if you have too much carbon-rich brown material. It also has a lot of phosphorus. Only rabbit manure beats chicken manure in nitrogen and phosphorus content, but you would need a lot of rabbits to get a sizable quantity.

Here are the nutritional values of different types of manure:

https://www.allotment-garden.org/composts-fertilisers/npk-nutritional-values-animal-manures-compost/

Most fungi that decompose wood don't produce edible fruit body. Growing edible mushrooms is of course an added advantage, but there may be plenty of other fungi in the woods near you that are better at decomposing the type of wood you have.

L johnson said, "I do not know how bears will react to bokashi. Do they like fermented food?

Though I didn't say it I mainly was talking about the liquid as it is full of microbes.

Here is a thread on Bokashi:

https://permies.com/t/78784/Bokashi-Composting

This might help with things that will add nitrogen:

https://www.dummies.com/article/home-auto-hobbies/garden-green-living/sustainability/composting/nitrogen-rich-materials-for-your-compost-pile-188766

Okay, I’m sold on Bokashi. I do have large worm bins doing their thing and it would be great to break down the stuff I can’t add to it. Adding the fermented material to the wood chip piles would be a great experiment.

I’ll also look into additional nitrogen sources from nearby chicken farms or cow farms.

I do think the fermenting smell would attract bears, but I can perhaps keep the buckets in my garage.

if the Bukashi process creates heat I may be able to even keep it in the garage during the winter months. We get freezing weather until June.

Consider alfalfa hay as a nitrogen source but beware herbicides.

Just a few thoughts.....
Would it be possible for you to use a lawn mower that collects the clippings and offer to cut a neighbors lawn in exchange for keeping the clippings.  If they are paying a lawn service it might be a good trade, cheaper for them and clippings for you.  Just make sure they are not using weed killer or pesticides on their lawn.

Could you take a day trip occasionally to an area with deciduous trees and rake up the leaves under the aspens or or whatever is growing in the area?

Could you plant Aspen or Birch in your area?  You would need to water them but if you did a cluster one water source would be enough for several trees once established.  That would take a few years but in about 5 years you would have a good source of leaves in the fall.  If possible run the drain line for your wash machine to the yard just uphill of the trees and they will get plenty of water all year.

What about planting a hedge row of fast growing bushes?  If you trim them up a few times a year you could put the clippings in the compost bin.

If you have a source for wood chips scatter them around in areas for a walking path or a parking area and they will break down into smaller pieces a lot faster.  Then rake up the smaller bits for the compost and replace with new, and repeat as often as possible.  They did away with our source for free wood chips but I had to refresh the yard and driveway a couple times a year as the old chips broke down.

S Marshall-- there are some good resources here on Bokashi, and if you have any questions i'd be happy to help, I have been doing it for about 5 years now.
Mice, cats and whatever else will get in it if they can, so surely bears will sniff it out as well (thank goodness that is the one critter I don't have here in the city).

Honestly, if I were you I would do both bokashi and use those chips with urea. I also live in a place with few safe browns (we don't have a lot of deciduous trees here, and my urban space is too small to plant much to obtain any-- which is why I like bokashi). I don't know what your urea source is, but the stuff I get here is a byproduct of fuel refining that happens nearby. It's not an ideal or green source by any means, but the way I see it you're not spreading it on your fields regularly, causing runoff problems, you're using it as an accelerant to improve your soil. Chicken waste would probably do just as well as urea, though, I like that suggestion.
Not sure about the fire aspect, but for it to break down you probably need to wet the chips anyway.

Thanks for the new suggestions!  There are zero lawns in the area so no neighbors to offer my lawn mowing services.  I have been collecting anything I can find.  In the fall it's great because people rake up their leaves and put them in bags for you!  So ridiculous, ha.  I put an add on craigslist for leaves and was overwhelmed with responses.  Glad people want to find better places to dispose of them.  Very good note on remembering about pesticides.  I get about 20-30 yards of horse manure donated to me every spring and I'm still not certain if the hay is pesticide free.  I have used it heavily in my garden and don't notice an issue.

I am currently starting an Aspen grove and looking forward to those leaves.  I'll consider birch too.  I really want to start a food forest but it's hard work to coordinate getting all the saplings, I can't afford trees from nurseries.  I'd love bushes too, not sure which are fast growing for the colorado mountains.  I would love to run the drain line of our washing machine.  Ideally I would LOVE a complete grey water system for our home, but that would be expensive.  For laundry machine grey water has anyone had problems with detergents?

I get as many truck loads of wood chips dropped off as I can handle because I need to hire a neighbor with his bobcat to move them all.  The chips are free but I spend $300 every time, twice last summer.  My wife and neighbors don't quite understand what I'm doing, otherwise I'd do more.  I spread them everywhere to break down.  Unfortunately most are coniferous but that's 99% of the trees in the mountains.  ChipDrop won't come up a mountain to drop off a heavy truck load of deciduous wood chips even if I offer $50.

I've started my Bokashi journey!  Bought a 40lb bag of bran to inoculate for spring and go nuts.  I also will start inoculating grain bags with Wine Cap mushrooms, and may try to spawn the mycelium I see crawling on the forest floor later in spring--I hope it will work but that would hardly be a sterile method of culture.

I've already started searching for chicken manure, but that may be a spring task.  The problem now is everything I have is buried in a foot of snow.  I stopped using my Urea on the wood chips even.  The chips are probably getting dry even though we're getting plenty of snow.  I'm assuming the snow mostly sublimates in our dry climate.  I do like the cap on our wood pile to help with warmth, but I would have to dig it off to add urea and using a hose in freezing conditions to water it in would be a pain.  I really wish I had a bobcat!!

The Urea I bought it agricultural stuff, little balls.  I'm guessing it's produced from Ammonia which is not green.  Although I did read recently about a Japanese(?) breakthrough were they found a green way of making it without Ammonia!

S. Marshall wrote:  I would love to run the drain line of our washing machine.  Ideally I would LOVE a complete grey water system for our home, but that would be expensive.  For laundry machine grey water has anyone had problems with detergents?

We usually get the clear type laundry detergent and usually only use half or a quarter of what the label suggests, but if I remember correctly the laundry detergent has phosphates which is a type of fertilizer so it wont/shouldn't hurt the trees.  The good thing about the laundry machine is it has a pump so if you connect it to a hose or water pipe (PVC or Pex)  it will pump the water a long ways as long as there is a slight downward slope.  It wouldn't be too difficult to drill a 1" hole out the side of the house (just avoid electric and water lines in the wall) to run a 3/4" pipe from the machine to the trees.  A little bit of all weather silicone caulk inside and out will seal it tight to prevent a draft or bugs from getting through.

Michael Fundaro wrote:... has phosphates which is a type of fertilizer so it wont/shouldn't hurt the trees.  The good thing about the laundry machine is it has a pump so if you connect it to a hose or water pipe (PVC or Pex)  it will pump the water a long ways as long as there is a slight downward slope....

All great info.  And this just helped me understand an issue I just fixed with my dishwasher.  Recently our dishes started having a white film and not looking clean.  I noticed also the dishwasher wasn't filling with water.  The fixes online, and confirmed by the manual, said to use Citric Acid and run a cycle to clean it out.  Not sure what was preventing the dishwasher from filling, I assumed it was some sort of build up?  But it totally worked.  

The manual stated that "This problem is likely caused by a low quality phosphate-free dishwasher detergent".  I did not know what that meant because I wasn't sure what phosphates had to do with it.  The warning did succeed in keeping me hooked on name brand detergent, Cascade, which comes in plastic bottles.  I contacted their customer service to complain about the plastic and they advised their dry version which comes in a cardboard box is just as good.

I would prefer a more environmentally safe option, but the warning of low quality detergent had me worried about damaging my appliances.  We use name brand laundry detergent that comes in plastic bottles too.  

But your reference to Phosphates got me to think.  I now remember as a kid seeing a picture in a school book showing an algae bloom and saying how detergents were creating these blooms that were bad for the environment.  I'm sure there's more to it than that, but I'm assuming the problems are these detergents were adding excessive fertilizers to run offs that ended up on creeks (at least for the image I remember)?   I imagine this is mostly bad in wet area, but it's so dry here there's no way my use would end up in any water.  I live on a dry mountain with very few neighbors, and even my well is 700' deep.

So if they banned phosphates for that reason, and that reason may not apply to me, I guess I can feel okay with using phosphates?  And using the grey water from it should be okay?  I'm talking this all out so I can reference it myself.  It's good to finally understand something that's been alluding me.

I live in the same region and do the same thing for the same reason.  

Unquestionably chicken manure is better if you can get it.  I know, because we inadvertently turned a caliche outcropping by the chicken coop into a permaculture jungle when I was a kid.  

I use it on wood chips. You have to take into account that it takes a few days for the wood chips to develop absorbency.

Make sure all the chips are wet and in contact with Urea in solution, sure.  But disproportionately load most of the Urea from the top.

I start out with maybe a half pound three quarter pounds per heaping wheelbarrow full.  Some of it is tossed in as prills  rather than dissolved.

Keep it damp especially as the pile heats up.  After a few day, gradually add more Urea solution.  Maybe 3-4 oz. of dissolved Urea at a time every couple of days.  (For a pile consisting of 13 wheelbarrows full—-a pickup truck load).

After a few weeks and the pile is cooling down , turn it over adding a pound or two to the interior along the way.  

After the pile substantially cools again go to once a week maintenance.  Dissolve about one ounce of urea in a five gallon bucket of water and pour over the top of the pile once a week.  Halfway through the summer you might turn it over, but continue with the regimen.  

A pile of wood chips like that is a very long term N sink.  Not just for a few weeks but months or years  even if it is “finished”  as described in gardening books. That maintenance dose can go on almost indefinitely.  Continue to feed the bacteria.

Jim Brewer wrote:I live in the same region and do the same thing for the same reason…

Hi Jim, thanks for sharing what you’ve learned!  It’s good to know This idea isn’t absurd. I will certainly go on a hunt for chicken manure. Considering urea contains more nitrogen do you say the chicken manure is better because of all the other things they contain?

What role do you feel nitrogen has on fungi for decomposition? My other thought was to inoculate wood piles with red wine cap mushrooms. Do you have experience with using fungi versus Urea and bacteria?

Thank you so much

Hugel trenches speed up everything because they don't dry out, they are dark, damp and warmer than above-ground compost piles.  Mycelium forms on the wood, everybody in the soil comes running.  You can add pee to the wood in a hugel trench, when you first make it, and then through a PVC pipe on top of the wood that's been drilled every foot or so with a small hole so each addition of pee goes the whole length of the pipe, so the pipe length needs to take into consideration the liquid getting all the way to the end.  Put a 90 degree angle on it and a pipe to add the pee to.  Make sure the wood is soaked with at least water before you bury it.  Some kind of thick mulch over the top, like wood chips, keeps it damp underneath.

Urea fertilizer is lab-made and your soil critters/mycelium won't be able to thrive because it's not just urea, it's other lab chemicals, it's too strong, it's too alkaline.

You and your significant others are a walking/talking source of what you need.  Just collect it in milk jugs or closeable containers.  About a gallon a day is not unusual if you drink enough water, and goes a long way in a garden.  And all that flushing doesn't happen, saving a lot of water, using a valuable resource.

I can think of maybe a half-dozen reasons why Chicken manure might be better.  Start with the Potassium and Phosphorus content.  Probably quite a few micros in there too.  That it’s been through an animal’s gut might help with availability and provide useful biota.  

Also a physical advantage perhaps.  The Urea  in manure might be ever so  slightly less susceptible to washing away before being absorbable by the compost.  

When I had my compost tested it was fine as you would expect on N P K.  Deficient to non-existent on about half the minors.  

I visualized my pile spread out about 3 inches deep on the ground, guesstimated the square footage and added the minors based on that, in two separate applications ( half now,  wait a few weeks keeping it damp; turn over and add the other half of the minors). That seemed to really give the pile potency.

I’ve had a bunch of what looked like wine Caps come up after my pile cooked  But I was too chicken to eat them.  My point would be that a pile isn’t disqualified from fungal decomposition by virtue of a Urea composting.

S. Marshall wrote:Last spring I inoculated wood chips with Red Wine cap mushroom spawn because I learned that may be the best to help breakdown wood chips. I was told by a friend it took a year before he saw any mushrooms and indeed I haven’t seen any yet.

I've got a few different containers of woodchips that I inoculated with Wine Cap spawn. The only one that fruited had layers of straw and wood chips instead of just wood chips. Field and Forest recommends using layers of both instead of just one of either. I think the layers of straw help aerate the mycelium, but that's just conjecture.

In another container, I mixed the woodchips with dirt. A few thistles started growing in it. When I pulled up one of them, it looked like there was a lot of mycelium growing around the roots.