"P" is for Plants

Every summer my Grandpa inevitably stops by to proudly display the products of his summer tomato patch. Luckily for him, environmental scientists at the University of Kuopio in Finland have recently examined the befits of a "natural" solution to heartier, more productive plants. Better yet, you probably have the ingredients for this new fertilizer in your home. According to the study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, urine and wood ash may serve as a potent substitute for traditional fertilizer. Urine contains the nitrogenous fertilizer urea while wood ash is an abundant source of potassium and calcium. Although plants treated with the solely urine fertilizer produced more tomatoes than the combo, the addition of ash produced larger plants and fruit with higher amounts magnesium and potassium. While a traditional mineral fertilizer produced the most fruit, the urine based treatments increased fruit production by four times that of unfertilized plants. Theoretically one could single handedly fertilize 6,300 tomato plants a year, equating to more than two tons of tomatoes. Since taste testers were not able to detect the difference between the two methods, why not do a little fertilizing of your own? On second thought, maybe I won't tell Grandpa.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=p-is-for-plants-human-urine-plus-as-2009-09-04

Posted by Justine Hoch