The many uses of urine

I might as well group the gross posts together. Yesterday Stephanie, Charlotte and I had a very interesting talk about urine. I've been reading my homesteading blogs a lot this week (surprise, surprise) and one of the topics that was discussed was using urine as fertilizer in gardens. Urine has a huge amount of nitrogen in it (the number one ingredient in chemical fertilizers). People have had great success in applying urine to house plants and gardens and seeing much healthier, happier crops. An important note though, urine can be too strong for some plants and actually cause them to burn (thus the burned circles in your lawn where your pup pees). To apply urine fertilizer, water it down with 3 parts water first.

Imparting this information to my friends started a back and forth with interesting urine facts. Did you know that during the time of Pompeii, Romans used to use urine to wash their laundry? Urine naturally breaks down to ammonia which is a great cleaning product. Folks back then used to gather their household urine in a pot and leave it on the street to help keep smells out of the house. When it was time to wash your clothes you would walk outside, grab a ladle of your family's urine (or your neighbor's if you were running low!) and clean your laundry.

During World War I, soldiers would urinate on cloth masks and wear them over their mouths as a way to protect themselves against gas attacks. The urine would break down to ammonia and react with the chlorine of the gas, disabling it.

Urine was also popular in medicine. In his story "The Unusual Uses of Urine" Richard Sugg of The Guardian writes:

In about 1550 the Italian doctor Leonardo Fioravanti saw a man's nose sliced off in an argument, and promptly urinated on the fallen organ before stitching it back on. Henry VIII's surgeon Thomas Vicary recommended that all battle wounds should be washed in urine; and others advised the same for potentially gangrenous ulcers, or poisonous bites and stings.

As crazy as that might seem to us now, back then it actually was good advice. Unless someone has a urinary tract infection, urine is sterile. It probably would have been far more dangerous to use the local water during that time. Urine was also a very popular antiseptic for women; they would use it on their faces to help prevent breakouts.

While I'm not about to splash it on my face anytime soon, I think its use as a fertilizer is interesting. I'm looking forward to experimenting in the future!