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Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants
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| List Price: | £4.95 |
| Price: | £3.59 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details |
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk
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Average customer review:
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #51816 in Books
- Published on: 2004-01-01
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 128 pages
Editorial Reviews
Synopsis
Don't flush it down the loo - save your pee and fertilize your garden! Because it is not recycled, our urine is wasted and pollutes the water system. Yet it could provide 50 per cent-100 per cent of the nutrients needed to grow our food. Use your pee to make a liquid manure: recycle, save water and energy, and prevent pollution, all at the same time! In the 19th century you could sell your urine for a penny a bucket - or 1.5 pennies if you were a redhead Early Romans used urine as mouthwash In some cultures, urine is used to clean wounds and as a health tonic Urine can be used in curing leather, and as a tattoo pigment Discover the delights of the urine-diverting composting toilet, the activists' urinal, and the urinal for women; find out about customs and rituals connected with urine, the science and technology of its use, and profiles of liquid gold at work all over the world in farms and gardens. Take to the fresh air when nature calls and fertilize your garden for free with Carol Steinfeld's entertaining and fact-filled book!
From the Inside Flap
Grow with the flow. Liquid Gold tells you how! Every day we urinate nutrients that could be used as fertilizer for plants, which in turn could be used to make beautiful landscapes, food, fuel, and fibre. Instead, these nutrients are flushed away, either to be treated at high cost or discharged to waters where they pollute and choke off aquatic life. Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants tells you how urine – which contains most of the nutrients in domestic wastewater and usually carries no disease risk – can be utilized as a resource. Starting with a short history of urine use – from ritual to medicinal, to even culinary – and a look at some unexpected urinals, Liquid Gold shows how urine is used worldwide to grow food and plants, while protecting the environment, saving its users the cost of fertilizer, and reconnecting people to the land and the nutrient cycles that sustain them. That’s real flower power!
About the Author
Carol Steinfeld is a writer, researcher and resource-recycling specialist writing about ecological resource management solutions. She is co-author of The Composting Toilet System Book and Reusing the Resource: Adventures in Ecological Wastewater Recycling.
Customer Reviews
Liquid gold : it's not mad really!!
A very interesting, if short, book for a person who is interested in recycling, growing your own veg, eutrophication, science etc. At first it really does sound like a mad idea, but what did we all do before the invention of the loo? I like the "urine stories" which are nice if you happen to be a biology teacher and want to spice up your kidney or nitrogen cycle lessons. also the experiments of growing crops with and without urine are proof it works. To sum up, it was quite afun read and it gives some food for thought, and some huge onions this year so far!!!
(not) illogical captain!
Doreen and I have been cultivating a variety of plants over a number of years now. In the past we had always used peat but (thanks to the riots at Clonycavan) prices soared and we were left helpless. It was at this time that we turned to the pioneering research of Carol Steinfeld and fortunately she did not disappoint. We had a couple of messy accidents (before Doreen started going through a funnel), but now our indoor plants are growing better than ever before!
PS. Anyone who disputes the logic of using human-fluids to grow plants, need only turn to the actions of the grandfather of logic: Dr. Spock (not to be confused with the child psychologist Mr. Spock!). Who could forget the episode of Star Trek in which he relieves himself into the ship's yucca plant?
Will inspire you to save your pee for your plants!
What a great little book! The first couple of sections are about different urinals and what people do or have done with urine, not really about plants. However it gets really interesting after that, and shows real examples of how applying diluted urine improves plants, explains different ways of collecting it and should convince you that flushing it away is the worst option.
I gave my book away to a friend who has a farm abroad, he wants to try it out, so now I'm buying another copy!
I told another friend about it and I never heard anything else until... one night his wife found a rather strange looking jug with something liquid & frothy hidden away in one corner! He'd been saving it and secretly using it diluted to water some lifeless bamboo in a large pot in the garden. Result??? Vigorous new growth in the bamboo, where previously is was pretty lifeless! Who got it in the neck for his secrete deeds?... Me for telling him about it!!!
