Posted 09.04.2009 at 7:53 am
13 Comments
Tomatoes
C.P.Storm (CC licensed)
You say tomayto, I say tomahto.
You say Miracle-Gro, I say ... pee.
Apparently, human urine works remarkably well as a fertilizer for tomatoes, according to a new study out of Finland.
Plants fertilized with a mixture of stored human urine and wood ash produced 4.2 times more fruit than plants without the pee, the study found. The urine-fertilized tomatoes had more beta-carotene than unfertilized ones, and much more protein than traditionally fertilized plants.
And the tomatoes were just as good as those grown with traditional fertilizer, according to a panel of 20 brave tasters.
Healthy human urine is rich in nutrients like nitrogen, potassium and phosphate, all key ingredients for healthy plants. As long as the pee doesn't contain any fecal matter, it's usually free of any microorganisms.
Surendra K. Pradhan, K. Holopainen and Helvi Heinonen-Tanski of the University of Kuopio in Finland collected human urine during the winter of 2007-2008 from several eco-toilets in private homes. The urine was stored for about six months at 45 degrees F and tested for microbes and bacteria. The team mixed it with wood ash collected from a household furnace, and found the mixture was just as good as -- or better than -- conventional chemical fertilizer.
In taste tests, the urine-fertilized tomatoes tasted different from those fertilized with urine and ash, but tasters didn't have a preference -- "all tomato samples were evaluated as being equally good by the tasters," the study says. The results are reported in the latest Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
The same team had previously tested human pee as a fertilizer for cucumber and cabbage, and a South African team reported last year that urine had successfully fertilized maize. The Finnish team said they tried tomatoes because they're grown all over the world and are a staple ingredient in many recipes.
Related Articles
 | The Power of Pee |
 | The Future of Farming: Eight Solutions For a Hungry World |
 | Tomato of the Sea |
Tags
The Environment, Rebecca Boyle, agriculture, farming, fertilizer, food, Future of Food, gardening, tomatoes, urineThe study "may contribute to the development of positive attitudes about the use of urine and ash as fertilizer as a way to both increase crop yield and reduce water pollution," the authors wrote.
It may not be necessary to go all NASA with our pee and start drinking it. But if we can safely and efficiently grow food with it, why not?
Want to learn more about the environment, solar energy, sustainability, and more? Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!
13 Comments
To comment, please Login.
Popular Tags
The Environment on Popular Science
138 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.
Innovation Challenges
Popular Science+ For iPad
Each issue has been completely reimagined for your iPad. See our amazing new vision for magazines that goes far beyond the printed page
Download Our App
Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone or Android phone with full articles, images and offline viewing
Follow Us On Twitter
Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed
January 2012: The New Science of Stealth
The first issue of 2012 is a great one: we've got stories on how to make planes, tanks, subs, and soldiers invisible. Also, how the U.S. is reengineering homeland security at the southern border, inside the deepest mine in the world, and our predictions for the year to come.
Popular on Popsci
Most Viewed
The Environment
Most Emailed
The Environment
Most Commented
The Environment
Today on PopSci.com
Copyright © 2009 Popular Science
A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
I think it is not widely used less due to the "ick" factor as for liability and cost reasons. The only way to safely do this on a large (eg commercial) scale would require sterilizing the urea which would be expensive. Mostly safe is not good enough.
Also, there is no pee infrastructure in-place. How would it be possible obtain massive amounts of urea with existing septic systems? It would most like require a separate collection system. And then it would have to be trucked around.
As with just about everything, it boils down to ROI (return on investment).
I think it is not widely used less due to the "ick" factor as for liability and cost reasons. The only way to safely do this on a large (eg commercial) scale would require sterilizing the urea which would be expensive. Mostly safe is not good enough.
Also, there is no pee infrastructure in-place. How would it be possible obtain massive amounts of urea with existing septic systems? It would most like require a separate collection system. And then it would have to be trucked around.
As with just about everything, it boils down to ROI (return on investment).
Maybe harvesting Milk Cow pee. You don't want to be eating food with pharmaceutical or trace elicit drug remnants in the urine.
Recycling phosphorus is good seeing as we're going to run out of the mined variety at some point.
Here, I want you to taste this for me ...
I pee in my garden a lot
I don't understand why folk feel, it must be done by some giant corporation, and then one pays for it....that makes it less "icky????"
everyone pees for free...pee in a pail...and then put it on your outside flowers..if one feels icky about it...
I've used it on my houseplants for years...5 min after I've peed....
I even did a test...pee'd houseplants, non-pee'd house plants...it wasn't too hard to see which ones got the so called "icky" stuff...they grew like gangbusters...
but just my opinion on first paragraph up above...
Have used pee to fertilize my garden for years! Asked my Doctor about safety He said pee was sterile solution when fresh. I pee on a bed of sawdust in a plastic container, then mulch with it for tremendous growth and remarkable garden results every time. No wasted "Luxury Lawn Area" either - all food garden for a hungry world, creating "real wealth" for America! Look on Google Earth. What do you think those greener circle areas around large Asian cities is? They Humanure all the time and have the body parasites to prove it! This can be avoided, Sweden has dry composting toilet systems in use as we speak, and don't waste 16 gallons of good,clean, filtered, sterilized drinking water for every poop while farm-land goes begging for moisture, like foolhardy Americans do! Oslo, in Norway actually bio-gasses sewage to fuel for their city buses, and save tremendously on the imported diesel bill! They use the remaining sludge, treated to safety, to fertilize and ameliorate top-soil, a Win-Win, Americans, rich, arrogant "Entitled" Americans pass by! Americans pollute their own drinking water with their own Shiite and wonder why they fall behind in a much more realistic and practical world! There is a rumor, that in America's Shanty towns and hidden Hoovervilles, and among the tent cities we hide, folks are humanuring their garden plots to survive! Check this out on the net for verification. It may be a new trend in a broken and crumbling America looking for a way out of huge foreign oil bills and survival in the 21st Century, the age of Asian growth through thrift and frugality, hard work and honesty, and mostly a humility unparalleled in America!
That's interesting research, so what we are eating Tomatoes or ????
www.bestfreesms.com/tag/good-morning-wishes-quotes/
I pee in my garden a lot
Here, I want you to taste this for me ...
www.cici-wedding.blogspot.com
www.ciciwedding.wordpress.com
www.ciciwedding.multiply.com
Sound real strange but once you break down whats in the pee it actually make sense. Now if i go outside and pee on my tomatoes do i have to worry about being arrested by the police? More importantly will my friends eat my tomatoes if i told them i peed on it?
supersteve @ htpp://roboticvacuumsinfo.com
Would think there's to much salts in urine to actually be a useful fertilizer.
-Charles
Interesting research for sure--don't envy those interns though that had to collect and mix the fertilizer.
On a related note:In Japan a couple hundred years ago farmers would set up outhouses along the highways for travelers to use. They'd then use the refuse from the toilets as fertilizers for the field. Japan has never had much arable land which meant there were never much livestock around so they had to use the only source of fertilizer available.
I've been using pee to fertilze a LOT of plants both in the ground and in containers for a few years. It definitely works well! (love that nitrogen!!) It has greened-up one plant in particular almost overnight (the leaves had become slightly yellowed prior to the urine treatment.) I use it on all kinds of plants (banana tree's, palm tree's in containers, flowering and non-flowering plants....in containers & in the ground.
It also saves BIG Time on my water bill (by not having a lot of flushes each day.)
It's a total win-win thing to do. (one can pee into a container overnight......then use it in the a.m. around plants......just don't let it sit for 3 or 4 days......best if used as soon as it's generated. : )