In this video, I find out which fertilizer is better: MiracleGro fertilizer or pee! Some natural gardeners promote human urine as free homemade fertilizer, and human urine has an NPK ratio surprisingly similar to MiracleGro All Purpose (24-8-16). But how does it stack up in a controlled experiment? I designed an experiment to put human urine fertilizer to the test. In the end, we got shocking and surprising results!
With recent increases in fertilizer costs, finding ways to make homemade fertilizers and reduce costs is attractive. Using pee as fertilizer has a long history of use, but how does this free fertilizer stack up against “real” fertilizers sold at stores? This experiment was filmed over 5 weeks from design to final results. Be sure to stay until the end to see an explanation of the findings.
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Jobe’s Organic Fertilizer (4 lbs)*: https://amzn.to/3BTNJ8G
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Amazon Store Soluble Fertilizers*: https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener/list/3THJ10L7MKAMV
The following articles were consulted:
https://www.lowimpact.org/posts/taking-the-pee
TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Using Urine As Fertilizer
2:05 Setting Up The Experiment
4:05 Making The Fertilizers (Rocky Montage)
6:25 Experiment Rules And Fertilizing Plants
9:58 Follow-Up Fertilizing And Progress
10:52 Experiment Results!
12:24 My Explanation Of The Results
17:56 Adventures With Dale
If you have any questions about how to use human urine as fertilizer for plants, have questions about growing fruit trees or want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!
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19 Comments
Perhaps what you failed to consider was when filling your pee bottle and when dispensing it as fertilizer that every time it was opened the nitrogen in the bottle was released into to air as a gas unlike the slow release nitrogen in the miracle grow. The micro nutrient argument may also be an issue however restriction of nitrogen from the pee plants is certainly an issue for robust growth.
You should have done a control with just water .
1 Tbsp of clorox into a wide mouth gallon jug (like Mainstays) and then just pee in a beaker, and pour into the jug. Easiest way to do it. That small amount of clorox will keep the urine from "turning" for a couple weeks, and if worried that might affect the plants, can neutralize any remaining sodium hypochlorite with a tsps of vinegar before using on plants.
Too much of either will burn your plants.. But to most Americans ito pee outside is a crime. Jesus didn't pee outside.
My decorative grass and bulb flowers have grown almost 100% since using urine at a 90% water to 10
% urea ratio in the last 12 months. Thanks for the comment.
do you drink alot of high fructtose corn syrup in your diet or soy or wheat? that contains roundup and would make the leaves go weird. if you just ate healthy then itt may be a better experiment. food for thought
Can you try again with pee and human feces?
After a certain amount of time. A few hours I believe. Urea in urine oxidizes in to ammonia and that will cause all kinds of issues. Fresh urine properly diluted will work well.
🤣 great video
This is a number 2 pot 😂
Should have label MG and ME.
Survival mode
Too much sodium in pee 😬
next test put in human poo also
My wife tells me not to whizz on her potted plants and flowers. Jeez, a guy has to go somewhere! Like the "scientific" comparison. Really liked your asparagus hints.
If used fresh (and diluted) urine is great. However if it's stored outside the body for an hour or more THEN the urea converts to ammonia. Ammonia is very volatile and reactive and not good as a fertiliser. To be any good needs to be converted (with the help of nitrosomonas and nitrobater bacteria in an aerobic environment) into nitrate, as is done in oxidation ponds in waste water treatment.
The reason this failed is because he 'let it ferment' and the urea turned into ammonia. It only takes a few hours or less depending temperature. For best results as a fertiliser in a home situation urine should be used straight from the urethra into a bucket, then diluted with water. I dilute 1:10 and it works extremely well. I've been doing it for years and doing my own experiments.
tldr: Urea in aged urine has turned to ammonia which then burns plants roots.
Great video and well thought out experiment. I often wondered how effective urine is as a fertilizer.
It's not compete until you harvest and sample the product to see which tastes better. Come on, take one for the team. 🙂 Btw, the P should have been kept on the fridge, because warm temps damage any vitamins and minerals that may have been in it. I would also guess that fermented P can't be a good fert either.
I just pee on my compost. The best compost I ever had was when I had a kitchen rabbit, whose weekly refuse was amazingly complete. And Bunnifah loved to get little kisses and pets.