Urine in compost tea

I’ve been playing around with brewing compost tea with some experimental additions. Using worm castings, molasses and kelp (no fish products or other additives) and brewed some nice smelling brews. I cant say for sure how much improvement I noticed it after foliar applications, but I know much of the microbial benefits may not be immediately apparent.

I started peeing in the bucket while it was bubbling away cause why not? I use dilute urine (10 parts water to 1 part urine) as fertigation on plants, so I figured why not?. After peeing in brew I noticed a definite off smell after 12 hrs or so. I opted for a soil drench with this batch as I trust my nose.

Does anyone else have experience with adding urine to a compost tea batch. If so how much? Do you notice any shifts? Would it be better served in a bacterial or fungally dominant brew I wonder.  

Urine is Urea, not the best thing in the world for microorganisms since fresh it has anti fungal/ anti bacterial properties which means the urine will kill off the bacteria and fungi you are trying to propagate in quantity.

Redhawk

RedHawk

Thanks for the input. I certainly will make better use of urine and compost tea ingredients in the future.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:Urine is Urea, not the best thing in the world for microorganisms since fresh it has anti fungal/ anti bacterial properties which means the urine will kill off the bacteria and fungi you are trying to propagate in quantity.

Redhawk

This is the first I've heard of urea in urine having detrimental effects on soil biology.  I've used undiluted urine on my vegetable garden with only positive results.

This article is discussing urine from grazing animals, but indicates that it INCREASED soil micro-organism functions, as measured by their CO2 respiration: http://www.soilhealth.com/research/microbes-urea/#:~:text=As%20expected%2C%20soil%20pH%2C%20availability,carbon%20available%20in%20the%20soil.

Ian, Fungi have a higher C:N ratio than bacteria (7:1 to 25:1 vs 5:1 to 7:1). From a simplistic view that means that for any feedstock with bioavailable C:N ratio less than 7:1 more bacteria biomass can be readily built than fungal biomass. Urine has a C:N ratio of around 0.8:1, meaning that it wouldn't take much urine to tip the balance of a compost tea toward bacterial domination.

Higher bioavailable nitrogen leads to faster multiplication of both the bacteria and fungi, but bacteria multiply faster than fungi. Multiplication consumes oxygen. Faster multiplication increases the risk of going anaerobic for a given amount of oxygenation, particularly in any corners or areas of the brewer that may have less circulation/aeration.