This subject brings up a coming project here - and talking to a woman in Ireland who is successfully doing this. She has no running water or sewage system, it's entirely set up on permaculture. It's called Beltaine Cottage as some of you have probably come across on youtube. She planted a whole 3 acre forest from seed by herself - and she mentions using urine like everyone else in Europe. 10:1 is the general ratio - and she does use heavy duty plastic garbage cans, I think 10 of them, for humanure. I can't remember if it's all mixed with grass and kitchen waste or not. I do know she has spirea shrubs that are over 15 ft tall, and her fruit trees and berry plants are skyrockets compared with mine and we have black loam orchard soil here. And we use compost.
Somebody mentioned mixing wood ash with urine - its mentioned off and on. We also make lye for soap. Yesterday I watched a video on what to do with all the hardwood ash and it was a mile long list including grass, and making "ash tea" by putting it in a pillow case in a plastic garbage can and using 1 cup in a circle around your plants. the exception being rhododendrons/azaleas which don't like that kind of soil. Everything else does including food.
If you ever watched Paul Gautschi Back to Eden he talked about the book called "Dead Doctors Don't Lie" where the guy researched how villages of people around the world lived so long and so healthy and found 3 things; they cooked on wood stoves, grew their own food; and put the ashes back in the garden.
So we just move the wood chips aside in late fall and dig trenches down on both sides everywhere and put the ashes down, then put the chips back over it. The rain/snow will take it down into the soil replenishing the soil. The potassium/potash and trace amounts of zinc etc is way way cheaper than buying Azomite. I would love to buy that much Azomite but its a limited resource. The old villages didn't buy that crap, so I'm trying to do it closest to the older villages, I just don't have the wood cook stove yet. Just a regular wood stove.
My take on it - stop over-analyzing it. Some guy in Wa state near where we are who sells rhododendrons just put out a video on how urine made his zucchini plant grow so big he couldn't believe it. I'm betting a lot of people are doing it and just not mentioning it.
Somebody mentioned using urine against critters - we do that also. Male urine I'm wondering if it would stop the squirrels who eat the plants - seriously, I'm going to do something desperate. When the hawks come, squirrels go away permanently. But I know that male urine would mark the area and should keep critters away - course there's always rogue ones that it may not work.
All for doing things the old-fashioned way.
t
