Most of us are aware by now of the impact of Carbon dioxide on the environment. We are also aware of how our life styles create Co2 to a more or lesser extent. But there is yet another important factor to consider and that is the Nitrogen emitted due to our life styles.
Nitrogen is an essential part of our lives, we are surrounded by it within the air and although we do not actually utilise the Nitrogen when we breath it is an important part of our atmosphere and environment.
Without Nitrogen plants simply would not grow, it is essential to their makeup and ours, it is where protein comes from.
But unfortunately we have been too proliferate with Nitrogen. Once we found the way to make artificial Nitrogen to add to fertilisers, we used it with careless abandon. Allowing the false principle, if a little is good a lot will be great. So too much has been added to soils for crops and much wasted as runoff to create problems elsewhere. This runoff ends up in rivers, lakes and the sea encouraging algal blooms that can poison waters. The Nitrogen itself can poison drinking water filling the water with Nitrates that can cause cancer and certainly causes Blue Baby syndrome where it decreases the haemoglobin in newly born babies that can lead to death.
Other factors that can add to the Nitrogen overload are from burning fossil fuels in engines such as vehicles and plane travel.
Our waste products are full of Nitrogen. The perversity of it is we use ever more expensive energy to extract the Nitrogen from the air while throwing Nitrogen down the toilet and use more energy to break it down to re release it back into the atmosphere.
Changing life styles can help reduce the burden of Nitrogen being released such as reducing meat consumption and cutting back on travel. Further things can be done to help. A helpful guide can be found here at N-Print where you can calculate your Nitrogen foot print and see what measures can be done to improve your life style. Lots of useful information to be found about Nitrogen and the impact on the environment.
Not only can you reduce the Nitrogen from what you use but also what you waste. One simple thing to do is to compost all your kitchen and garden waste. Compost properly and you lock Nitrogen up in useful material that can feed your plants and garden.
But what about the flushables? Whenever you go to the toilet you flush loads of Nitrogen down the pan! Okay the heavy parts can be a bit difficult to utilise unless you are set up properly with a good composting method that can deal with it, but the liquid factor is easy to use. Now it is Spring, well up here in the Northern regions it is. Plants are beginning to show life and are gasping for nutrients. So why not feed them freely with a liquid life giver.
These Violas were fed solely on urine once a week.
Urine is a great booster in the garden, virtually every plant will benefit from it. You can feed plants once a week with dilute urine and watch them thrive. Most plants can easily tolerate urine diluted at 10 parts water to one of urine. Some Nitrogen lovers can take it stronger. Cabbages can take it neat up to twice a week. Just water it onto the roots as with all plants.
A reasonable sized garden can take quite a bit of urine over the week. Larger gardens you may find you are tempted to drink more as you simply cannot produce enough to feed everything, especially when you see the results from feeding urine to the plants.
It's also a great additive to compost heaps, where you never seem to have enough to add. It helps break down the contents fantastically.
Smell? There is none as such with fresh urine. If it is kept hanging around for about three days it starts to smell a bit, but that is because it is losing the Nitrogen as it breaks down, not what you want. Once it hits the ground bacteria in the soil start breaking it down for plant use and you don't get smell while this is happening.
Got to go, where's that watering can?
