For the garden, obviously. lol

We have 2 potbellied pigs. Their poo makes great fertilizer *after* it has been in the compost heap for awhile...otherwise it has too much nitrogen and will burn the plants. But I've also discovered a way to use it immediately:

Take a few good size pieces (turds, I guess....can't think of a better word) and put them in a bucket of warm water. Let it steep for at least 24 hours, then use it to water plants as usual. It's amazing....you can practically sit and watch the plants grow. They love it!!

Just wanted to share this tidbit of info to the gardeners out there....if you have pigs or know someone who does, this is a great help for your garden!

I've heard of this with cow poo, too. :)

"Pig poo tea "
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hmmm , I think I'll skiptht cup of tea I had planned for tonight. :think:

There was something nagging at the back of my mind about this... I had to look it up. There are strong cautions against using fresh manure for fertilizer tea, because of bacteria and other pathogens.

Well aged animal manures are the best for all gardening tasks. If you only only have fresh manures, hot composting is definitely the answer to all these issues. However, if you hot compost any fresh animal manures to internal temperatures at or above 140 degrees F, for several days, mixed with enough high carbon materials, you can guarantee a safe, healthy, mature composted product, that has removed almost all of the potential pathogens, diseases, and weed seeds in the original animal manures.

...

Never use fresh animal manures in any aerobic tea brewing method either! Whatever pathogens, NaCl salts, or diseases in the original material will grow tremendously in the tea. It's best to use well aged compost or composted manures in any tea brew. Aerobic bacteria and fungi are the best microbes in composting and soil building that digest and destroy most disease causing bacteria. Some anaerobic bacteria is harmful to plants and soil organisms.

http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/organic/2003082510028156.html

I would compost it first, making sure it gets good and hot.

What a great thread title! I was almost scared to click on it.

:drool: Pig poo tea..... :drool:

Okay, I'm kidding. Ick.

I heart poo tea! For the garden, again, ahem. We do not have the gloriousness of our own potbellied pigs but you can get it in "bags" like teabags and I make batches of it in an old juice pitcher.

You mainly have to worry about e. coli and parasites if you use fresh poo. I'd be very careful about using fresh poo anywhere near veggies.

No, no seriously. This is a great idea. Nothin' like a little e-coli to spice things up, right?

Animal excrement is high in nitrogen, but it spreads disease from animals to humans, and increases the amount of heavy metals in the soil, which are taken up by the plants, and which can be toxic to humans in amounts that are not toxic to the plants.

Animal excrement can be tasted in the plants. This is not due to small amounts of excrement clinging to the plant, but is due to chemicals, metabolites, produced by the micro-organisms that live in the excrement, which are taken up by the plant's roots, and transferred to all parts of the plant by its vascular system. Each kind of animal excrement lends a different flavor to plants. This has been known for many years and has been written about. In old gardening texts it has been noted that cow excrement produces plants with a better flavor than that produced by chicken excrement, and chicken excrement, better than pork excrement -- but the diet of the animals affects the flavor too.

http://materials.addr.com/food3.html#excrement

Let's not forget that we may be wasting our time learning to depend on animal excrement as a plant food, because if we are successful at getting people to emulate our behavior and not raise animals for food, animal excrement will become increasingly rare. This was the case before the introduction of industrially produced nitrogen -- the supply of animal excrement was quickly depleted. It is only because we have cheap industrially produced N competing with animal excrement, that animal excrement has become abundant, and therefore not particularly expensive (tho still more expensive than industrially produced N -- which by the way imparts a better flavor -- the flavor of the plant shines thru).

Human excrement from vegan or veganoid humans who limit dairy and egg consumption to small amounts, is very close to pork excrement.

I just thought this thread was kinda gross, but soilman summed it up nicely.

And now I'm picturing some couple scooping up pig poop and slathering it all over their salads.

bon appetit.

Human excrement from vegan or veganoid humans who limit dairy and egg consumption to small amounts, is very close to pork excrement.

That reminded me of my grandma and how her toilet is broken :(. But she's very much omni. We don't eat the vegetables at her house 'cause of that >>.

Compost from plant material is usually all one needs, you don't really need poo of any kind, though composting your own poo is a good sustainable goal. I would put it around fruit and nut trees, though, not around veggies.

I hope to construct a composting toilet system eventually.

Spaz That reminded me of my grandma and how her toilet is broken . But she's very much omni. We don't eat the vegetables at her house 'cause of that

Interesting.

While this is considered safe, by many expert, if done properly, they all say you need to treat human waste a special way first, before using it to feed plants, in order to make sure all pathogen spores are rendered non-vital. I'm not sure what needs to be done though. This disregards the fact that excrement causes an increase in heavy metals, in the soil, and in plant uptake, esp if it is the result of a diet that contains lots of animal matter, that is, a carnivorous diet, or an omni diet that has lots of animal matter in it. Usually the excrement of largely carnivours animals, including those humans who are largely carnivorous, is considered unfit to feed food-plants, no matter what, within practicality, you do it.

Ludi "though composting your own poo is a good sustainable goal. I would put it around fruit and nut trees, though, not around veggies."

Personally, I would want to confine it to ornamentals, even if it is vegan poo. And perhaps golf courses, lawns, etcetera. That said, if you ever want to convert the land to vegetable growing, it may take a few years before all the heavy metals leave the soil. Since they wouldn't be there in huge amounts, it may be safe to simply allow time for them to go downward (into the groundwater??). Most materials go down, with each rain, some, like nitrogen, will go up and down.

You're right soilman, putting it around ornamentals would be safest.