I am not sure you could make compost from just leaves. That would be leaf mold, that is a good thing. Why not add other things like kitchen scraps? It is not like a super thing that makes compost great. If it was I would use it, but it's not.

I would say maybe around 3L of urine is enough. But before you try this you should make sure the urine do not come from someone taking certain medicines such as hypertension drug or anything as those chemical might go through the body and being discharged as urine.

I added kitchen scraps and coffee grounds, green garden waste, thatch, cornmeal, alfalfa pellets, steer manure, soil, pine bark fines, etc. I have a black plastic on top, I turn it every other day. It is a compost with lots of oak leaves in it.

com·post (kmpst)
n.
1. A mixture of decaying organic matter, as from leaves and manure, used to improve soil structure and provide nutrients.
2. A composition; a mixture.

Grass clippings have an NPK around 4- 0.5- 2 so urine has about 4.5 times as much Nitrogen as that missing ingredient. I just went ahead and added urine collected all day Wednesday to the pile, so I'll see how it goes.

If you got a good pile going so the only thing is too much moisture, so don't add water maybe. Keep checking too see that it's not getting too wet. If the pile is too wet, it will slow down. I thought you were just going to use nothing but Oak Leaves. The other consideration would be are Oak leaves allelopathic? I looked this up, but I can't really find a consensus. I would like to know if you are getting an improvement, so keep posting.

I doubt much quantitative experimentation has been done which is why there are no answers to your question. Most people will randomly visit the compost pile and make a deposit. If you do that, you'll know when it starts to heat up that you're reaching the critical point.

The 18-2-5 numbers might be on a dry weight basis, i.e. meausuring only the solids. I'm not sure.

No reason to age urine if you're putting it in the compost anyway. Letting it sit will only result in lost nitrogen as far as I can tell. This came up the other day, and I asked that poster what they thought aging did (they referred to it as 'chelating' which is a specific chemical process but gave no info on how, why or what it was doing).

Do report back on your results!

Oak leaves are not allelopathic.

I think the question is how much water to add to the urine.

Maybe 3 to 10 parts water per 1 part urine.

You may wish to read some of Cornell's info such as the On-Farm Handbook, or extracts, which have C:N ratios and lots of other stuff.

I am a firm believer in peeing on the pile... but using it as your primary source for greens doesn't sound like a great idea. Any benefit you could get from the nitrogen would be lost from the concentration of salts.

If you live in a city, just drive around the night before garbage day. You'll find plenty of greens aleady bagged and at the curve.

I would not dilute it with water unless the pile is not wet enough. There's really no need to add water except to balance the moisture content of the pile, and that will vary with weather, materials etc.

By "salts" do you mean sodium? Normal sodium levels in urine are around 1 g to 4.5 g/L. I'm healthy, I'm not on any drugs. If I added 3 L of my urine to a cubic yard of leaves that would be a total of 3g to almost 14g of sodium in the batch. I don't honestly think in grams and liters, but that sounds okay to me. I don't know if the sodium or any other type of "salts" would still be there after composting, but if I were to throw an order of french fries or some canned green beans in the heap I wouldn't worry about the salt.

I never said, and never implied that urine was going to be my sole source of nitrogen. I explained that I add coffee grounds, garden waste, kitchen waste, alfalfa tablets, corn meal, manure, soil, etc.

Eventually I will find some grass clippings. When the summer rains start the people who have lawns probably do things different because the grass grows fast. The people that I know are aware that I am looking for grass clippings, so maybe one of them will find some. When it gets too hot (soon) to spend my days working on this yard I will resume my scavenger hunt for more types of compost materials, and I will continue to add assorted materials I have on hand until the (just started) compost is finished. If oak leaves provided what my soil needs, I would already have good soil. My intent is that the oak leaves will be a small percentage of the end product.

My leaves are dried (brown, carbon) from live oak and water oak. They have a waxy coating on them and they resist decomposing because moisture can not penetrate the surface (shredding helps). Everything else in the compost pile has been added in attempts to break down those leaves, and to retain moisture in the pile, and get microbes working. The pile does usually get hot within two days, and when I turn it (and add more green stuff and add more water) I find that the leaves in the center of the pile are nicely wilted and black. When the pile doesn't get hot (for whatever reason) I find that it is a bunch of work that has little effect.

The obvious solution would be to turn the pile less often and accept the idea that oak leaves do not compost well. However, I have already seen that they can work. I don't know exactly how long I've been working at getting these leaves going in a compost, it seems like maybe two weeks? It is already smelling like good compost, and maybe about half of the leaves are well on their way. The more it decomposes the more moisture retaining, microbe infested material clings to the dry leaves. But I added more leaves the other day in the course of regular yard work, and when it didn't get hot I went to the Internet to find suggestions on Nitrogen sources that I might have around the house.

Urea (NH2)2CO is a chemical that comes from the breakdown of proteins. It is the main source of Nitrogen in urine and is excreted by the body as a waste. I could buy Urea from cow urine or I could buy synthetic Urea, or I could buy Milorganite from sewer sludge and nobody would think anything of me mixing one of these "fertilizers" with my pile of leaves. Again, that is not what I am doing... I would just add fertilizer to the leaves where they fell if I thought that would accomplish something, and it would save me a lot of work moving the leaves around.

The pile was toasty hot again today for whatever reason, but I'd like to think that the urine helped. Would urine work that fast?

Why ask why? :-)

You said: "I add coffee grounds, garden waste, kitchen waste, alfalfa tablets, corn meal, manure, soil, etc"

and the results = pile was toasty hot again today

Sounds like "something" is working. Don't sweat it too much unless you're planning on submitting a research paper to the farming journals :-)

Me, I pee on my pile all the time. At the beginning, when its hot, when it finished, etc.

There is no one thing that will do the work for you. Not that you have to work a lot, but leaves are kind of slow to breakdown. In the fall when I have leaves I have to change the bin several times to get them broken down. I don't know why people want to do less work. I could see having a maid and doing less housework, but composting is fun.

Coffee grounds are the one thing that I found will make a difference quickly, but still you need to add the browns to those. Just adding coffee grounds won't heat you up without browns. A clipper shearer can grind up the leaves. Leaves resist breaking down when they are left whole.

LOL @tn Gardening. Sounds like you are a guy. The female of your species tends to mark garden territory by planting flowers, and we are less generous with urine.

You are right though. I am being paranoid about the neighbor behind me who told me (by the time I had emptied three hefty bags of leaves into a pile) not to do it, and said it was going to stink and look ugly. I need to just ignore him. His kitchen window seems to be extra close to the property line, and I placed the compost heap about 20 feet into my property, as far away from buildings as I could put it. I'm pretty sure that I'm not breaking any rules or laws, even if he isn't happy about it.

Just ignore the neighbor. Every time I turn my pile and add more greens/browns, I cover the newly-reassembled pile with shredded oak leaves. No smell whatsoever.

And I have been known to add very diluted, non-sudsy household ammonia to the pile -- couple times a season. Works better than urine. Kimmser may say this is a no-no. My pile is mainly fungal and too hot for worms. My worms love my raised beds.
Sunny

Actually, Tox, I did answer you with a link in that other thread but I guess you did not peruse it. Saving and using of urine is widespread in Sweden and there have been extensive studies there.

Saved urine equals aged urine, would you agree? Studies showed that there is very little loss of N to off-gassing if it is stored air-tight and then applied non-diluted directly to the soil just before planting, which rather makes sense, doesn't it? They sometimes even inject it like the corn growers do with ammonia gas. Whether the fertilizer value was in fact increased by aging wasn't clear from what I read. The fact remains, though, that if one wants to take maximum advantage of urine gathered during the non-growing seasons one has to store it air-tight.

The second-best option would be to sequester it in a material like chopped leaves or straw. For those of us living where endless numbers of plastic containers with tight-fitting lids are tossed away as garbage, there is no reason not to make use of them.

I add all my urine to my compost pile(s). I make about 3 cubic yards of finished compost a year. It is a fantastic addition.

Don't worry about pharmaceuticals- the compost microorganisms will take care of that.

I collect in gallon milk jugs and add the resulting three quarts or so every other day or so.

Nancy: Thanks for the info about the pharmaceuticals.

I would think that all the organisms and earthworms would be lagging like zombies if all the meds passed through my urine to them...hehehe

urine is good because of its urea content which give you the really high nitrogen ratio. Use you urine quickly because it begins to turn into ammonia within about 5-10 minutes which is not good for the plants or the environment. Also make sure, as stated above, that you do not have any diseases and that you are not taking medications of any kind. Fresh urine is bacteria free so its really not as gross to use as it sounds at first just dont let your neighbors see you peeing on your plants and then go offering them tomatoes at the end of the growing season..

Ammonia is harmful to plants? The Hosta forum recommended an ammonia solution that you can spray on your plants to eliminate slugs and it works great with no apparent harm to the plants! They said use 25% ammonia which is pretty acrid but I reduced it to 12.5% and that still worked fine.

Geez I can't imagine how many containers you would need to store up all your urine over the winter. I just poured whatever I collected on the stumps all winter.

By late winter I have 30-40 2-liter jugs sitting out by the pile. As planting time approaches I start applying it direct to areas soon to be planted, usually when the ground is good and wet, some goes in the pile, and most is applied dilute to plants later.

You should change your name from pnbrown to PEEINbrown...Lol

Since my initials are pb I used to sign myself pbottle. Except on business proposals. Clients probably don't need to know about it....

Just to get nebulous on you, the plastic bottles are slowly leaching carcinogens into your stored pee. Yuk. I say, use it or lose it, any man that can't pee in his backyard and save a couple of pennies a flush needs a hedge.

Mackel

It's personal. Took the hat off for a moment. Caincha juggle, TC? I thankyou in advance...

Mackel

I doubt it. Any way, there are carcinogens everywhere we look and touch these days. The urine must be stored, just pissing on the ground all winter is not very effective. I'll take the small risk.

I said that with tongue in cheek, in case anyone missed the smiley.

Re: winter, I guess in MA there would be no biological action to speak of to use or fix nitrogen, so it would just leach away in the rain and snow. I agree with your approach. (not that you needed my approval!)

To keep the squeamish from harm, I use the non-transparent milk jugs, gallons, and simply label them UREA with a Magic Marker.

When my wife's uncle passed away, he left many gallons of urine in the garage. They were a couple years old by the time we got to cleaning the place out. Guess which urine-storage expert got assigned to empty them?

Ooof, I bet that was fun!

You show me one link anywhere that piss is appropriate in large amounts to make compost- you won't find it from a legitimate source. Piss is a wrench in a four foot high tool box. The obsession with piss I can hardly understand, when there's free nitrogen in the soil everywhere that you can harness. This is popular culture at it's best and harmless, but not scientifically sound...it's a waste product to be used sparingly, with it's high amounts of sodium and chlorine. All civilaztions fall when they salt the earth- If it makes no sense on a macro level, why does it make sense on a micro level? Coffee table talk, and suggesting someone drink urine becuase they point out plastic has carcinogens. What a hoot. This place is a cult, and a sociological study in primate hehavior. Very fertile grounds for any man of study...dern I cain't wait to get out of bed soon...

Truth is not a democratic process, fellow Americans. You cannot take a vote and conclude you have the real story. That's the problem nowadays, everyone forgot how we learn- through diligence and removing fanciful whims from our pursuits of discovery...

I am new here, so I don't know Mackel. The "one link" requested would be:

Urine contains large quantities of nitrogen (mostly as urea), as well as significant quantities of dissolved phosphates and potassium, the main macronutrients required by plants, with urine having plant macronutrient percentages (i.e. NPK) of approximately 11-1-2 by one study[18] or 15-1-2 by another report,[19] illustrating that exact composition varies with diet. Undiluted, it can chemically burn the roots of some plants, but it can be used safely as a source of complementary nitrogen in carbon-rich compost.[20]
When diluted with water (at a 1:5 ratio for container-grown annual crops with fresh growing medium each season,[21] or a 1:8 ratio for more general use[20]), it can be applied directly to soil as a fertilizer. The fertilization effect of urine has been found to be comparable to that of commercial fertilizers with an equivalent NPK rating.[22] Urine contains most (94% according to Wolgast[18]) of the NPK nutrients excreted by the human body. Conversely, concentrations of heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium, commonly found in solid human waste, are much lower in urine (though not low enough to qualify for use in organic agriculture under current EU rules).[23] The more general limitations to using urine as fertilizer then depend mainly on the potential for buildup of excess nitrogen (due to the high ratio of that macronutrient),[21] and inorganic salts such as sodium chloride, which are also part of the wastes excreted by the renal system. The degree to which these factors impact the effectiveness depends on the term of use, salinity tolerance of the plant, soil composition, addition of other fertilizing compounds, and quantity of rainfall or other irrigation.
Urine typically contains 70% of the nitrogen and more than half the phosphorus and potassium found in urban waste water flows, while making up less than 1% of the overall volume. Thus far, source separation, or urine diversion and on-site treatment has been implemented in South Africa, China, and Sweden among other countries with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided some of the funding implemenations.[24] China reportedly had 685,000 operating source separation toilets spread out among 17 provinces in 2003.[25]
"Urine management" is a relatively new way to view closing the cycle of agricultural nutrient flows and reducing sewage treatment costs and ecological consequences such as eutrophication resulting from the influx of nutrient rich effluent into aquatic or marine ecosystems.[19] Proponents of urine as a natural source of agricultural fertilizer claim the risks to be negligible or acceptable. Their views seem to be backed by research showing there are more environmental problems when it is treated and disposed of compared with when it is used as a resource.[26]
It is unclear whether source separation, urine diversion, and on-site urine treatment can be made cost effective; nor whether required behavioral changes would be regarded as socially acceptable, as the largely successful trials performed in Sweden may not readily generalize to other industrialized societies.[22] In developing countries the use of whole raw sewage (night soil) has been common throughout history, yet the application of pure urine to crops is rare. Increasingly there are calls for urine's use as a fertilizer, such as a Scientific American article "Human urine is an effective fertilizer".[27]

Footnoted article on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine such as:
^ a b Ganrot, Zsofia (2005). Ph.D. Thesis: Urine processing for efficient nutrient recovery and reuse in agriculture. Goteborg, Sweden: Goteborg University. p. 170.
^ a b Steinfeld, Carol (2004). Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants. Ecowaters Books. ISBN 978-0-9666783-1-4.
^ a b Morgan, Peter (2004). "10. The Usefulness of urine". An Ecological Approach to Sanitation in Africa: A Compilation of Experiences (CD release ed.). Aquamor, Harare, Zimbabwe. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
^ a b M. Johansson; J�nsson, H.; H�glund, C.; Richert Stintzing, A.; Rodhe, L. (2001). "Urine Separation � Closing the Nitrogen Cycle" (PDF). Stockholm Water Company.
^ H�kan J�nsson (2001-10-01). "Urine Separation � Swedish Experiences". EcoEng Newsletter 1.
^ South African city looks to turn urine into fertilizer, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, November 2010. Sanitationfinance.org (2010-11-13). Retrieved on 2011-12-07.
^ water- and sanitation-related activities of GTZ � focus on ecosan projects. (PDF) Retrieved on 2011-12-07.
^ UDD-Toilets and urine management. (PDF). ecosanservices.org. Retrieved on 2011-12-07.
^ Mara Grunbaum Shown to be an effective agricultural fertilizer, Scientific American, July 2010. Retrieved on 2011-12-07.

"Conversely, concentrations of heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium, commonly found in solid human waste, are much lower in urine (though not low enough to qualify for use in organic agriculture under current EU rules)."

That link was not about compost. Nor did it contain data. Nor was it a peer reviewed study. Nor was it any kind of study. It says, "Proponents"- (democracy in this case rears it's ugly head)

"... of urine as a natural source of agricultural fertilizer claim the risks to be negligible or acceptable".

Mackel

The topic-

"The more general limitations to using urine as fertilizer then depend mainly on the potential for buildup of excess nitrogen (due to the high ratio of that macronutrient),[21] and inorganic salts such as sodium chloride, which are also part of the wastes excreted by the renal system."

It appears to agree that there are limits to urine.

Mackel

So, human poop and urine have heavy metals that accumlate in your compost- yuk. I don't care if I use it for daisies or what, I frankly want it off my property unless I'm having a beer outside with the fellers, ya know what I mean?

Flush it, it's what great civilizations do...

Mackel

Mackel, not sure what you are on about other than you have the very common irrational fear of human effluent.

I am here to tell you and anyone else that "flushing it" is idiocy on a grand scale. If you bother to look at some history what you will find is that civilizations wear out their resources by disconnecting natural cycles, like taking biological effluent from animals - such as ourselves (and since in many places we are the dominant producers of effluent) -and putting it in places where it can do harm instead of stimulating plant growth.

There isn't the slightest chance that one or two people's worth of urine perpetually applied could cause enough build-up of sodium or any other element in the soil of even a few hundred square feet to be any sort of problem for plant growth. Quite the contrary.

Now, you get enough of the numchuks saving their wastes, and we will have a post-industrial urban heavy metal issue, Part Two. I's just a mtter of years and number of numchuks. It's malthusian mathematics turned inside out.

Mackel

If you study agricultural history, you cannot conclude what you've stated, most lands have gone kaput from irrigation practices (salt buildup and erosion) along with reliance on high nitrogen fertilizers (salt buildup). If it's history that's your thang, we can explore as deep into the topic as you want to go. We can start out somewhere near the mediterranean or maybe china, what it'll be?

Mackel

Man, I thankyou Pops for allowing me to be a student of the world...God Bless You Papa

Love,
Mackel

Sure, let's start with China. Have you read 'farmers of forty centuries'? My understanding is that the agriculture there was extremely sustainable until the combo of over-population and chemical fertilizers wore out soils in a relative eye-blink, and pesticides and manufacturing destroyed the surface waters. 4000 years of pissing was not the problem. So far as I know, there is no causal link from urination to high population density.

Also, let's be realistic: the great majority of NA currently has low population density. We can piss with impunity.

Here is a question for you: do septic systems in your neck of the woods get pumped out ever? Where does that effluent go?

I don't even know where to start with this train wreck. I am an expert on heavy metals, though, so I'll stop by to say that the concept that they would build up from the application of *any* sort of normal average manure (human or otherwise) is implausible on its face.

You ignore the Malthusian Mathematics, Cruisader. A billion people in the European Union are open ears... if you are indeed a master debator and a cunning linguist that an appeal to authority often requires, take it up with the EU on their organic certification requirements....They will simultaneously translate and broadcast any oral thesis into ninety-nine languages, somebody will be listening, still others will be wanting the hard data. As far as my own "toxic credentials", I've only been a heavy metal student since the early eighties, check out the animated film, "Heavy Metal", with Sammy Hagar. Rock on, TC...

Mackel

China, the EU, hard rock, it's all so very relevant to whether using one's urine for crop production is any kind of problem, isn't it?

Mackel, on this thread you have made the claim that using urine in a compost pile or on soil will ruin the soil for crops. Back that claim up with some verifiable examples or admit that you have no experience in the matter and are simply talking out of your a$$.

I said,"Urine is just a wrench in a four foot toolbox"... pointed out that that sodium and chlorine build-up in soil is not desireable.... noted that one is creating a closed loop where heavy metals localize by not getting rid of waste...I'll add that the Usda states that excessive levels of nitrogen, potassium or sulfur kill mycorrhiza...you can quote me always, but breathe deeply and read carefully...as I pee on the petunias...yuk yuk yuk...

Mackel

So, I've eliminated the temptation to store my wastes and am getting all nitrogen from plant material and the microflora itself...when everybody starts to store their own poop and pee is when it will in theory, becomes a problem...when the participants are limited to a small cult website, it could do little harm...

The Cultered Cultist