MiracleGro VS Pee: Which Fertilizer Is Better? Surprising Results!

what's going on gardeners it's Sunday April 16th and it's a beautiful afternoon here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina and today's video is a video that so many of you have asked for over the years and I'm finally going to do it we are going to compare two fertilizers and we're going to see which one is better Miracle Grow or pea yeah I'm serious if you're new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spreadshot links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated over the years many of you have mentioned that human urine is a great source of fertilizer and while I've always known this to be true I've made videos on it in the past and I've seen the results with my very own eyes I've never actually considered it to be anywhere on par with real fertilizer just more of like maybe something a little extra you could add but what happens if we actually compare it to real fertilizer as an engineer I always love a good experiment so I did some research according to the veganic agricultural Network the NPK ratio of human urine is about 11 Parts nitrogen one part phosphorus and 2.5 Parts potassium Consulting the website lowimpact.org they have very similar proportions at 11 nitrogen two percent phosphorus 4 four percent potassium and finally according to the Stockholm environment Institute they Peg the NPK ratio of about ten one four so surprisingly all of these sources have pretty similar NPK ratios in order to develop a fair comparison between human urine and real fertilizer we need to compare it to a synthesized fertilizer because there are too many variables with Organic fertilizers that are derived from Whole Foods so we're going to use Miracle Grow all-purpose 24 816 but we're going to use that at half strength because that will be 12 4 8 which is very similar to what all these various websites agree is the NPK ratio of human urine so we will have a fair fight if we do this to make sure we're as Fair as possible we are not going to buy pre-bag potting mix because almost all of them have external fertilizers added and they will mess up our results so we're going to use one of these coconut core bricks as the foundation for our medium and then we're going to cut it with plain old perlite so all we're going to use is perlite and coconut core that means there will be absolutely no usable nutrition in this mix and the only fertilizer our plants get is what we're going to give them now we're going to compare two different types of plants a leafy green and a fruiting plant to be fair because human urine is mostly nitrogen so we want to test it on both types of plants because they have different NPK demands to see what it's really made of so first we're going to use this giant Caesar lettuce that I started from seed I have two seedlings in here that are virtually identical so we're going to pull them out and we're going to grow them in containers and the fruiting plant that we're going to compare to is this hot pepper plant it has very heavy yields of smaller fruit so this is a perfect candidate for a container grown pepper plant so we're going to use this as our fruiting plant to see how well these various fertilizers can encourage blooming the containers that we're going to use for our lettuce plants are one gallon Nursery containers and they're too deep for one plant per container I'm afraid it'll be too much mix and they could be susceptible to root rot so I made sure to fill the bottoms about maybe a third to half of the way with equal amounts of rocks that way I won't put so much medium in there and it'll still have excellent drainage then the peppers are going to be grown in these containers which are identical they're from two palm trees that I bought a year ago that were the exact same size now it says the weight is 1.72 gallons which is true gallons so this means this is probably a number two or a number three trade gallon size so these will be exactly the same for the two pepper plants so we're going to put two bricks of cocoa core in a wheelbarrow and use hot water to help speed up the hydration process then we're going to add a good amount of perlite to help increase the drainage and now while our potting mix is hydrating and cooling off we are going to have to collect our fertilizer samples [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] collecting the Miracle Grow sample is really easy all you have to do is take a hose and an empty jug and fill it about halfway with water according to the instructions on the back of the Miracle Grow package we have to give our outdoor plants a concentration of one and a half tablespoons of mix to one and a half gallons of water so that is one tablespoon per gallon since we are trying to achieve half concentration we want to give them half a tablespoon per gallon which is going to be exactly one half a tablespoon or seven grams so let's get seven grams precisely on the scale and now that we have achieved seven grams or exactly half a tablespoon we are going to pour that into our container so we're going to make sure that we shake up our concentrate completely so all that water-soluble fertilizer completely dissolves then after it's completely dissolved we are going to fill up the rest of the one gallon watering container because that is going to give us our half strength concentration that we so desire so this is going to be our control fertilizer which is half strength Miracle Grow all-purpose roughly an NPK of 1248 and this is the human urine sample this took me three days to collect and as far as human urine goes I think this is about as good as it gets I'm not on any medications I cook all my own food I eat a predominantly Whole Foods diet almost nothing processed and it's been sitting in my sun room to ferment for all three days so I think as far as urine goes this is like the Gray Goose of urine so now we have our two fertilizers let's put it to the test by up potting our plants so I upotted the experimental plants I chose virtually identical seedlings I placed them in identical mix and in the same size containers then after they were all planted I watered them in with rain water from my rain barrels only there is no fertilizer in there I did not want to compromise the experiment so this medium is as inert as possible and the seedlings are about as equal as possible so here is how this experiment is going to go I have one pepper and one lettuce named pea and I have one pepper and one lettuce named mg for Miracle Grow so while these seedlings are young I'm going to give the two peas half a cup of the urine plus half a cup of the rain water from my water barrels to give them basically a half strength feeding then the Miracle Grow ones are going to get half a cup of the Miracle Grow concentrate and half a cup of rain water to further dilute it because since they're young right now they may not take too well to strong fertilizers and I don't know if the urine is going to burn I don't have a lot of experience with this then as they get larger I will step it up to one cup and one cup for each so we'll increase the concentrations but regardless they are going to get the same amount of dosage and I'm going to feed them once every weekend whatever is the day that isn't raining Saturday or Sunday because I don't want to flush the nutrients from the containers because the containers are completely inert once the nutrients wash out there's nothing left in them so I want to make this as Fair as possible so I'm going to start with the Pea I can't believe I'm doing this but anything for science and then I'm going to fill this up to the half cup with p let's drizzle this over the roots and then the other half cup filled up to the middle line it's going to go over the lettuce put the cap back on there and get it out of here then we're going to dilute it with half a cup of rain water and then half a cup of rain water and we're going to do the same thing with the Miracle Grow shake that up half a cup half a cup half cup of rain water half a cup of rain water now I have the newly transplanted plants that have just been fertilized hiding in the shade behind my garden cart because the hot afternoon sun is too harsh for fresh transplants so I want to keep them in the shade for a day until they have time to kind of grab root because it's very stressful to be transplanted so I will keep an eye on these I will fertilize them every single weekend like I already said I was going to and I will check in periodically and we'll see how they are performing unless we are fertilizing them they will be getting nothing but either rain water for my rain barrels or from the house spigot so they will be getting the exact same water no variables and I truly have no idea what to expect from this experiment so it should be very interesting to follow along with this and see how it goes it's Sunday April 23rd and it's time to make another application of fertilizer it's Sunday April 30th and it's time to fertilize our plants again and you're starting to see a distinct difference emerge in the different plants but overall I'm still pretty impressed the lettuce looks almost identical you have the Pea lettuce here and then we have the Miracle Grow lettuce here and they look just as good as each other in fact right now the Pea lettuce looks a little bit Greener and I would have thought that you would see the lettuce perform more evenly because lettuce needs primarily nitrogen I'm seeing a clear difference emerge in the pepper plants though Peppers need a more complete fertilizer so you're seeing the Miracle Grow pepper start to take off versus the Pea pepper however things could change maybe it's just Jitters while the plants are young so we are going to give them the feeding as we have been well it's Sunday May 21st and I'm officially going to call an end to this human urine as fertilizer experiment because I've collected all the data that I can at this point I will show you exactly what I'm talking about so right here you can see the Miracle Grow head of lettuce and then you can see the human urine head of lettuce and you'll notice that the Miracle Grow head of lettuce looks pretty much Picture Perfect it's filled out the entire container there's not really anywhere else for this head of lettuce to go if I were to let this get any larger I could sell this at a grocery store really looks great the human urine head of lettuce on the other hand I mean it clearly grew it was doing very well for a short period of time it was keeping exact Pace with the Miracle Grow lettuce and then it developed all of these deformities and it's just not looking all that great anymore it's not very full I mean it's still completely edible there's nothing wrong with it in terms of eating but you can definitely see that they are not equal in terms of the quality that each quote-unquote fertilizer produced here are the two pepper plants as you can see things did not go well for the human urine pepper plant whereas the Miracle Grow pepper plant I could sell this at a Home Depot or or a lows on the Bonnie stand for what are they charging now like thirty dollars for a single plant but I digress whatever it is it's crazy uh both plants were doing very well for the first couple weeks and then this one started slowly withering away and going into Decline and now it looks like it's probably not going to make it so over the past few weeks I've been able to watch the plants that I was fertilizing with human urine slowly developed deformities and go into Decline and and start not looking so good whereas at the beginning they look just as good as the plants that I was giving Miracle Grow to and I was trying to figure out exactly what was going on I thought well maybe I just didn't design a good enough experiment I should have had more controls I should have had three or four of each plant this isn't a big enough sample size I then thought well maybe I was just burning the plants with the human urine and I sat back and I was trying to figure out what was going on and I think a lot of you may not want to hear what I'm thinking because I wanted to believe that human urine made a fantastic fertilizer as many of you claim but I think what is going on is this fertilizers like Miracle Grow are specifically formulated to have a whole lot of different micronutrients in them that support the biological processes of a plant while human urine definitely does contain NP and K which are the macronutrients and it can get the plants off to Growing human urine clearly lacks a lot of the micronutrients that the plants need to grow so I think what started happening was because I used a completely inert medium in the cocoa core and perlite where there were no micronutrients in there at all once the coating on the outside of the seed itself was naturally digested and all of those micronutrients that come packed in the coating of the seed went away and the plants use them the plants started developing all of these deformities because they while they were getting NP and K they probably weren't getting Boron or manganese or sulfur or magnesium or some some type of Trace micronutrient that assists in their proper development that was put into the Miracle Grow so these are healthy plants because they were getting npnk and all of the micronutrients essential for life but in this inert medium once the coating wore off of the seed and all those initial micronutrients in the seed itself were exhausted I started getting all of these deformities in the plant and I think that's something very simple like lettuce that mostly thrives on just a handful of micronutrients and nitrogen it held out a lot longer and it grew a lot better without all the micronutrients than something super complex like a fruiting pepper plant that needs a lot more nutrition and a lot more micronutrients than a simple head of lettuce so I think the the pepper was able to exacerbate the deficiencies in human urine and the fact that there just aren't enough micronutrients in there to use them as a standalone fertilizer now had I use a potting mix that was pre-fortified with fertilizers or had I plant them outside in my garden in real soil that has the micronutrients in there organically and I would have used human urine these deficiencies probably wouldn't have shown up but that is exactly why I wanted to use this inert medium I wanted to be able to find out is human urine really a complete Standalone fertilizer I didn't want any of those variables in there and I think that the answer to that question is a resounding no you can't just use human urine you're going to have to supplement that with other types of fertilizers or at least compost and Mulch and a whole lot of organic matter that is going to slowly decompose and give those micronutrients to the plants you can't just grow it in Coco core or peat moss and perlite or some other inert medium because the plants are not going to get what they need so I think I'm going to give this head of lettuce a drink of actual real fertilizer I'll give it some Miracle Grow and that'll probably clear up the micronutrient deficiency and I'll be able to eat this in a week or two I think it's probably too late to say save the pepper plant while I'm sure this is not a perfect experiment I think that my reasoning for why it went the way it did is sound and logical I could be wrong I could just have flaws in the design maybe I'll try again next year with an enhanced sample size where I'll use two of three of each plant but I wanted to show you the honest results of this I thought about just deleting it because maybe I made a mistake and not posting these results but it wouldn't be fair I think my explanation is valid and at the very least it will give you something to think about and hopefully you found the video a little humorous and entertaining as well and that right there are my honest results in the human urine as fertilizer experiment do I think that human urine is a fertilizer yes absolutely I think it clearly is a fertilizer but it also clearly is not a complete fertilizer so if you choose to use human urine as a fertilizer look at it more like a component like blood meal would be where you're basically adding nitrogen but it is not a complete fertilizer in and of itself so if you're doing things like composting and mulching and maybe adding other granulated all-purpose fertilizers or all-purpose water-soluble fertilizers here and there to give the other Trace micronutrients that the plants need I think you can use human urine to reduce costs but it certainly is not an end-all be all one size fits all product so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful and you also found it a little bit fun and entertaining if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification Bell so you're notified when we release more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products that I use in my garden in general I have them all linked Down Below in my Amazon storefront in the video description so expand the video description and click on the Amazon link to see everything I use in real life and while you're there check out my spreadshop for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video Daily's on his long lead at the beach oh there it goes go get it yeah he's going in the water he doesn't know what to do he's actually going in the water this is a breakthrough go buddy go oh it's so good get it down Dale is enjoying another Beach vacation and it is a beautiful day thank you

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 391,560

Keywords: how to use human urine as fertilizer, human urine fertilizer, urine as fertilizer, pee as fertilizer, free fertilizer, free homemade fertilizer, homemade fertilizer, homemade fertilizers, human urine, fertilizer, fertilizing, garden, gardening, raised bed, vegetable garden, organic gardening, gardening tips, garden tips, gardening tips and tricks, gardening hacks, garden hacks, food forest, growing, plants, vegetables, how to, diy, millennial gardener, the millennial gardener

Id: vGeH-i8C2pE

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2023