Eco Youths Network Uganda@haraldgeyer Quick update from our #SustainableFarming work: we applied about 1000ml of #urinefertilizer to drying #tomatoes, hoping to revive them—but sadly they dried up completely. Likely #fertilizerburn from too much at once. Lesson learned! We'll try smaller doses + more water next time. Farming teaches us through each mistake. 🌱 #EcoAgriculture #SoilHealth #LearningByDoing
Harald Geyer@econetwork That's a very unfortunate misunderstanding.
Tomatoes are actually a good crop to start working with urine, because they are very chloride resistant and also quite resistant to fertilizer poisoning. I had very good results with tomatoes.
But still: If they are already very dry, then urine is exactly the wrong thing, because it makes plants even more thirsty. - It's like sea water. It might be water, but drinking it will make one thirsty.
This soil won't need fertilizer for a while.
@econetwork If you are applying urine to drying plants, I would use no more then 100ml on 10l of water.
If I work with pure urine for a crop, that I usually water with 6l/m², then I do something like:
1. 2l/m² water to get the soil moist
2. 2l/m² pure urine
3. 2l/m² water to get the urine into the soil
Then water the plants every day as usual and wait at least a week before using urine again. The 3-patches method is useful in figuring out, how often urine should be applied.
@econetwork When working with kept urine, its actually even more important to apply it in small amounts only, because ammonia enters plants more quickly and thus puts them under more stress then fresh urine.
Also, I see your people are applying urine with buckets. If at all possible, I'd recommend applying with a watering can, because that way you can put it close to the ground and avoid splashing the leaves that much.
@econetwork Maybe you can work out a scheme, where one person uses a bucket with water, the next one a watering can with urine and the final person a bucket with water again, if you have few watering cans only.
Also: Do you have a way how to get the urine from you big container into a watering can without spilling everywhere?
If you have a piece of flexible tube, using it as improvised siphon might help you. (Maybe try with water first, if it works.)
@haraldgeyer As I told you, we are not good financially at the moment, but as far as possible we have tried to find a way forward we’ve talked to someone from Germany who is going to help us by organizing a GoFundMe for our projects, where we shall be receiving donations from individuals who like or support our work.
@econetwork If watering cans are not available or not affordable, we should figure out an other solution.
I think, it is very important to come up with solutions, that work with locally available resources. Otherwise you can't share it with farmers and other groups.
I'd need to know more about what is available locally.
Did you know, that most plastics can be welded easily at ~120°C? Maybe one of your crafty members can build tools from plastic waste that way?
Do you have local pottery?
@haraldgeyer Thank you so much Mr. Halard for your thoughtful message and great ideas we really appreciate your support and encouragement currently we have some plastic materials available locally like old jerricans buckets and cups which we often reuse for different purposes unfortunately we don’t have local pottery near us but since you mentioned it and it might be useful we are willing to walk and find it if needed please feel free to share with us the idea ....
@haraldgeyer and how it works we shall make sure that we try it out and do our best to make it happen with the little we have
@econetwork Well, if the next pottery is far away, than it probably is not worth the hassle. Though I'll keep in mind, that is available in principle.
Then probably building watering cans by welding plastic parts onto old buckets is easier. I'll try to write up some ideas. But it will take some time.
Can you think of an easy way for you to generate about 120°C of heat? - It shouldn't get too hot, because burning would degrade the quality of the plastic drastically.
@haraldgeyer Thank you so much! Yes, the next pottery is really far, so I agree it’s not worth the hassle for now. But I really appreciate that you’ll still keep it in mind. I will try to talk to one of the boys in our group who is very innovative maybe he can help us figure out a way to generate around 120°C safely. I also have hope that once we get the fundraiser started, people will support us, and we’ll be able to buy most of the necessities we need. Thanks again for thinking with us!
@econetwork Are other members of your team on mastodon too?
@haraldgeyer No sir, it’s only us here. We use Mastodon mainly to promote our organization’s work, and this is the one official account we all use and agreed to focus on. We also chose Mastodon because we hope to connect with professional individuals like you who can support us in different ways and guide us with knowledge, just like you’ve been doing.
@haraldgeyer Thanks so much for pointing that out, it’s very understandable and really helpful to know that kept urine needs to be applied more carefully because of the higher ammonia effect we truly didn’t know that before. And yes, it’s true we are currently using buckets 🪣 to apply because we’re not yet well financially to afford every necessity, but we really hope to buy some proper watering cans in the days to come so we can do it better..
@haraldgeyer Thank you so much for this detailed explanation, exactly 💯 this is the information we lacked at first! We didn’t know the proper way to apply urine and especially not the idea of moistening the soil before and after with water. The 3-step method and the 3-patches approach make a lot of sense now. I really appreciate your guidance this will help us avoid the same mistake and improve our next trial.
@econetwork Sorry for not explaining things better. I have put a stronger warning into the text now, to make the danger of too much urine clearer.
Thank you so much for your feedback.
@haraldgeyer Sorry for the delay in reply and thank you so much for the explanation, I honestly never knew that urine can actually make crops even more thirsty if they are already dry, it’s really like you said—just like seawater! That was a very unfortunate misunderstanding because I tried everything together with my group and we were so shocked when our tomatoes got dry, but now it makes sense and I’ve really learned from this experience.