[permaculture] A Golden Opportunity

David david at h4c.org
Thu Dec 13 15:28:18 EST 2007


Friends,

I've been lurking for a while now on the list, and will start posting 
more as time permits. While I hope to learn (take) and already have, I 
would also hope to offer. While I have spent the last decade immersed in 
issues which have no relationship to permaculture, I am the author of 
The Complete Biogas Handbook (www.completebiogas.com: the site is being 
revamped and will be up in a few days), co-author of Wind and 
Windspinners (about wind-electric systems), founder of earthmind, a 
non-profit corporation that was active for a few years in the early 
1970's, etc. and yada yada.

Right now I am working on changing my 20 acres in the Wilmette Valley of 
Oregon (about 20 mi S of Portland) into an organic farm. I've got 11 
acres tillable, with the rest in pasture and woods.

I wanted to mention this, then make a short comment on the specific 
question with regard to the need to dilute urine before putting it on 
plants. George Anna has offered a really sterling resource in the WHO 
manuals, compared to which my contribution does not even glimmer, but 
here it is:

It should be clear that it makes a great deal of difference what plants 
one is pouring the urine on. The grasses-- which include corn, for 
example-- developed in an eco niche where they were often drenched in 
urine, and indeed covered with manure. Part of what makes these plants 
thrive, in fact, as some experience with intensive grazing shows (see 
for example articles in The Stockman Grass Farmer 
<http://stockmangrassfarmer.net/>), is sort of counter intuitive: let 
them be chewed, trampled, and heaped with excrement and urine-- within 
reason, for brief periods and only occasionally, as would happen on the 
prairie-- and the sward responds by growing strong. The incidence of 
noxious weeds (and please don't make me define that term) is reduced, 
and plant diversity increases. Other plants such as many ornamentals, 
most cacti, or certainly epiphytes 
<http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/epiphyte> such as some of the orchids, 
would not do well if presented with the golden opportunity (to echo the 
thread title).

I'm not arguing, by the way, that any of us must or should or would be 
wise to do this or that. Rather, I'm simply offering a few tidbits which 
I feel reasonably confident are correct and true, and leaving it at 
that. YMMV. Use, ponder, or ignore as is appropriate for you in your 
particular ecosystem.


George Anna Clark wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I've worked in what we call "ecological sanitation" for the past about 18 years...
>
> ...you can find more info from the World Health Organization...[at]
> http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/wastewater/gsuweg4/en/index.html 
>
> Bob Waldrop wrote:
>   
>> Shouldn't urine generally be diluted before being applied to plants?
>>     
d.

-- 
David William House
	503-678-5162 (home)
	503-206-1001 (cell)

	"The Complete Biogas Handbook" www.completebiogas.com

	"Make no search for water.   But find thirst,
	And water from the very ground will burst."
	   (Rumi, a Persian mystic poet, quoted in Delight of Hearts, p. 77)




More information about the permaculture mailing list