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  • From: David <david@h4c.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] A Golden Opportunity
  • Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:28:18 -0800


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)





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