Urine for compost Grow Your Own - Growing, How To Grow Tomatoes Growing Fruit & Veg - Recipe Advice, Organic food Gardening, Chickens, Seeds for Sale

Urine for compost Grow Your Own - Growing, How To Grow Tomatoes Growing Fruit & Veg - Recipe Advice, Organic food Gardening, Chickens, Seeds for Sale: "Pet poo helps too, especially from veggie pets such as rabbits, guinea pigs and birds! I wouldn't use cat or dog poo - it stinks and can contain all sorts of nasties, such as toxicara. Putting wee on the compost is obviously much easier for the male members of the Vine as they can do it direct (as long as no-one is looking). I use a bucket inside my shed and empty that onto the compost heap before I leave the lottie."

Urine for compost Grow Your Own - Growing, How To Grow Tomatoes Growing Fruit & Veg - Recipe Advice, Organic food Gardening, Chickens, Seeds for Sale

Urine for compost Grow Your Own - Growing, How To Grow Tomatoes Growing Fruit & Veg - Recipe Advice, Organic food Gardening, Chickens, Seeds for Sale: "Think I've mentioned this before, buy one of my friends gets her little boy (infant school age) to wee into a plastic bottle and pour it on the compost heap. He thinks it's totally normal but it confused his teacher when he tried doing it in a pop bottle at school - she was called in to discuss his development."

Print Page - household ammonia to speed up the compost pile?

Print Page - household ammonia to speed up the compost pile?: "There is no reason that you couldn't use ammonia, except that the concentration is too high. Ammonia is only harmful to microbes/earthworms/plants above a certain concentration. This not because ammonia is 'toxic' but because it causes a change in turgor pressure, which is osmotic pressure(water pressure) inside the cell. Water, like everything else, diffuses from an area of high concentration to low concentration. Solutions with a high concentration of ammonia have a low concentration of water. Because the concentration of water is now higher inside the cell, water flows out of the cell and it becomes dehydrated. Water will literally out of roots into the soil.

That being said, the solution is dilution. If you dilute ammonia enough(10:1) it can be safely added to compost. Household ammonia is all biodegradable. You should still use your urine, but I think this is a good idea. The ideal carbon/nitrogen ratio is 13:1, while leaves and tree waste are typically 200:1. It is unlikely you could ever get a pile of leaves to an ideal ratio by simply peeing on it. If you add ammonia that is diluted enough so it doesn't kill the microbes, over time they will absorb it,and then reproduce. This will result in the nitrogen being converted by microbes into an organic form that be available in the soil over a longer period of time."

Simple Composting How-To

Simple Composting How-To: "You need to toss on a shovel full of dirt every now and again to supply the bacteria needed to break down the compost, and you need to keep it moist (about the consistency of a wrung out sponge, not sopping wet). It will break down faster if you go out there with a fork every now and again and turn it over. If your pile ends up being mostly carbon (usually in the fall, when all you have are dead leaves), fill your hose end sprayer to the top with plain old household ammonia and spray it every time you add a layer of leaves to the pile (ammonia supplies a lot of nitrogen).

It's also nice, but not absolutely necessary, to shred everything before adding to the pile (run your lawnmower over it) because smaller pieces break down faster. And if you live in a cold winter area and your leaves aren't completely composted by spring, use them as mulch around your plants and dig them in later.
Cindy in Newbury, OH"