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Thats right. A pee post.
I tried to think of different ways to talk about this, and just settled on the direct approach.
Ive been researching pee. Sounds weird, I know, but you will understand why in a moment.
Its about fertilizer, and gardening. And being self sufficient.
I came across a document from the mid-1800s which described the process of extracting nitrates from urine for the purpouses of gun powder production. Yes. This is a thing. And while I do find it interesting, my pursuit is not to make gun power from my pee. I am more interested in finding a good source of nitrogen and phosphorus for the purpouses of growing food. Particularly with what is happening globally with fertilizer. The research I was doing looking for naturally occuring sources of these elements, led me down this weird path of studying pee. It turns out, there is alot of nitrogen in urine. As well as phosphorus, trace minerals, and salts. In fact, urine is such a good source of nitrogen, that when Europe began transitioning from crossbows to canons, nitrogen became such a hot commodity, that you could make decent money extracting the nitrogen from pee, and selling it to governments. There is some sort of strange poetic justice about this. There were actually people known as "Saltpetres" that would roam around collecting sources of nitrogen anywhere they could find it, to sell it to gun powder manufacturers. But enough about the weird history of pee and explosives.
It turns out the process of making nitrogen rich mulch for use in gardening is very simple, and has been done for a very long time. All you need is pee, wood chips or biomatter, and wood ashes. There is a mechanism built into creation that governs decomposition of living matter. It has to do with the balance between carbon, and nitrogen. If you have even seen a compost pile steaming, what you are seeing is the carbon, nitrogen, moisture, and biomatter ratios reach the right balance to start creating heat to accelerate the breakdown of the materials. These temperatures can actually reach 140 degrees F. In fact, people have done experiments with heating water using compost piles.
The best I can tell, from people who have actually tried this, the method of creating nitrogen rich fertilizer from urine and wood/leaves/biomatter is to get a large drum, drill holes into the bottom, fill it full of wood chips and leaves, and then pour pee over it fairly frequently for about 5 months. At which point you cover the top of the drum loosely, and let it sit for another 5 months. And at the end of that period, what is left is nitrogen rich black soil suitable for garden use. It doesnt get much more simple than that. So I think I am going to do a test. As it appears more and more people are going to be transitioning to growing at least some food for themselves in the near future, knowing how to produce natural fertilizer from waste sounds like a big win. So I guess Ill talk to you about it in a year.
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