Working with the earth and Earth’s creatures gives earthiness to modern farmers and ranchers.
There are few who haven’t come in direct contact with body fluids and excretions of some sort, both animal and human. Given this earthiness, it won’t shock anyone’s sensibilities to learn about goings on in Cambridgeshire, England.
According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, gardeners at a 400-acre National Trust property are encouraged to promote the composting process by urinating on bales of straw. The straw is then added to the compost heap, where it activates the bacterial process and produces more fertilizer in a shorter time.
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Head gardener Philip Whaites said he and his 70-member team of gardeners keep the bale latrine out of general view, “since we don’t want to scare the public,” the BBC reports.
But only 10 of those 70 are male, and I know what you’re thinking.
Says Whaites: “There are obvious logistical benefits to limiting it to male members of the team, but also male pee is preferable to women’s, as the male stuff is apparently less acidic.”
Growth promotion via human excrement is nothing new, of course. The Chinese have used it for centuries and it’s employed in various forms in North America.
The horticultural use of urine is less well documented. However, my paternal grandmother had four sons, and I do recall her observation that the best wild mushrooms on the homestead could be found in an area where her sons sometimes piddled.
If it promotes fungi, there’s no reason it won’t promote composting, as gardeners in England have found.
There are a couple of composters in my small-town back alley. They are square black units considered less smelly and more aesthetically pleasing than a compost pit or heap.
However, these tall boxes fail in their task. They refuse to produce compost. They’ve been watered and not watered, given dry matter and wet and treated with a mysterious granular “compost starter.” Four years into such efforts, and still the chain reaction of bacterial decomposition refuses to engage.
How I’m going to climb up there, without insulting anyone’s sensibilities, is quite beyond me.
