By Gabrielle Williams.
After a breakfast of porridge and a good slug of caffeine, I head outside for the first task of the day: pouring pee. I’m weird? You’re weird! We have an additional ‘water feature’ in our bathroom: a big yellow watering can. Jealous? Our trees have only been in the ground a few weeks and we’re keen to give them every possible assistance to grow well. Urine makes an excellent plant fertiliser, mixed 10/1 with water. It has the added advantage of acting as a deterrent to deer, who would love to nibble on those tender buds and shoots. There’s not a lot of deer pressure in our area of Caithness, but it makes sense to be cautious. Those beasts can jump and our fencing is woeful at the moment. It lets the animals know that humans are here, plus it’s free and plentiful, so the price is right (urine the money! I’m not even sorry). Ideally, avoid pee which contains oestrogen from contraceptives, or any other pharmaceuticals, as this can contaminate your soil. A morning walk round the saplings is a good way to keep a close eye on their progress too and become aware quickly of any issues. Today, I noticed that rodents have been rearranging and nibbling on some of the mulch, so that’s something we’ll be addressing very soon and will be detailed in a future post. A pee days!
I love what you are doing and good luck to you! I pee on my plants all the time, I pee in my watering can and fill it up with rain water, however I didn’t know about the estrogen thing, now i’m sad because as a woman of a certain age then HRT comes into play. Maybe I should now start peeing in the toilet 🙁
Opinions seem to vary, with most people tending to err on the side of caution. I’ve certainly not been able to find anything definitive suggesting it’s a bad idea. It seems to be agreed more unanimously that it getting into watercourses is bad, but to be honest I’d probably not worry too much about it with plants. It’s a personal decision of course.
Thanks for that, I think I shall just pee on the grass for now, it thrives on it 🙂