A serious question about nightsoil

Hi Folks,

At the end of our street are some purpose built bungalows for the elderly and infirm, and in those bungalows are some of the wisest people I have ever met in my entire life.

It all started when a neighbour and I bumped into each other in the back alley collecting leaves, a woman in a wheelchair told me that even though there were stables around she wasn`t able to collect manure for her garden-and her husband wasn`t exactly able to either as they are both in their eighties.

I offered to get some bags for her but "no" she says. Instead, she tells me completely straght faced she uses nightsoil, she lets it steep for a few days then strains out the solids and uses the liquid that`s left, she says it`s full of nutrients-her garden is lovely-and I mean show standard plants. She is hardly sprightly so something must be working-and her soil is the same as mine-I checked.

Has anyone here ever done it? I am being very serious(although I do hear sniggering), there isn`t a smell around her garden of anything unpleasant-in fact her mahonia hedge smelled fantastic. She will also have enormous yellow peonies in the front garden soon.

And if it works?????

 

She did seem a very canny woman, I may have made a new friend there, I`ll drop off a bag of leaf mould and see what else she can tell me.

 

My parents moved to a house in 1960 and there was a small cottage there with well water and no sewerage. They grew fabulous vegetables ... so I reckon its just a forgotten art.

Can't see that nightsoil is very different to Cow/Pig/Chicken manure ...

... and what's the difference with a "Composting Loo"??

Just not very savoury, so to speak ...

 

I should tell her you dont want the bag back, just to be on the safe side.:D

 

I`m gonna give it a try, just need a steady bucket behind the leyllandii-knew it would come in useful. LOL

 

In many cities in the developed world human wastes(Night Soil) used to collected from storage tanks called privy vaults. The wastes were called "night soil" and were sold to farms as fertilizer. This practice continued until early in the twentieth century[/quote]
Nightsoil operators (collectors) were paid a good salary too!

I have a bucket outside the back door to collect urine for the composter.

Not sure about the process involved with nightsoil though, re straining as your neighbour does. I might just keep using the chicken waste instead

Isn't the word Nightsoil so euphemistic? :hehe:

 

When I first heard it I was mystified-it sounded like some exotic ingredient, it was when we were learning about the Black Death at school, one brilliant teacher found different ways of interesting bored schoolkids and I remember him telling us about this one wet afternoon. Apparently -if I remember a`right it was poured at night to avoid the smells.


Well at the risk of being vulgar, and because it was such a funny conversation I`ll tell you what she said to me.

She poos and wees into a bucket although she prefers her husbands wee ( I kid you not she said that, well in fact she used the more co a r s e terminology but it`s not repeatable or I`ll get told off on here, I had to bite my lip really hard to not laugh), leaves it a day or two and then pours it through a sieve into another bucket, then ditches the solids and uses the liquid that`s left as a feed for the plants.

 

I dont doubt it works, but you need to be a very keen "gardener" to get that involved.

The odd bucket of pee is a bit different, I think that has had many uses through the years, and diluted is probably a good liquid fertiliser.

But I'm not sure I would want to ferment number2 in pee.:skp::D

 

I s`pose with being hardly able to cart a load of manure back and forth it is the easiest option for them, but ..................her peonies do look the biz when out, after all I`ve changed nappies, I`ve even had to scrub clean the stuff off a baby walker once or twice after a few too many orange juices, I can sieve poo.

It`s a major operation for a woman going outside and once you are in the dreaded "crouch position" you may aswell-mind you............. the worry about getting spotted will probably put me off in the end.

 

Are your Leylandiis overlooked, Claire? :hehe::hehe:

 

I can remember visiting a great-aunt in Lancashire in the 1950s and she still had a dry closet at the bottom of the garden. It was emptied every so often by men who came round with a cart and shovels. I was scared stiff to use it as it looked like a bottomless pit!
Locally there was a bit of a stushie a couple of years ago when folk complained about treated sewage being spread on fields near their village.

Most of the advice regarding home composting indicates that faecal material from dogs and cats should not be added to compost heaps due to health hazards. Dogs and cats, like most humans are omnivores. Faecal material from herbivores such as rabbits, horses, sheep etc seems to be OK.

From what I've gleaned in the past, processed i.e. treated sewage sludge human faecal material does not present a health hazard. And in theory properly composted faeces are safe too. What risks there are appear to arise from water splash-up onto edible crops from the ground rather than from any uptake of pathogens.

A couple of links -

http://weblife.org/humanure/chapter7_2.html

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/whf/1993/vol14-no1/WHF_1993_14(1)_p67-70.pdf

 

Only by any 100ft tall giants

 

I`ll have to get wormed first then I think, but for flower gardens it seems reasonable to use raw nightsoil from a healthy individual, but treated if using it for veg and fruit. And to be careful if you live near ponds or streams.

 

I have no doubt that it works. I remember being told when I was at school that the chinese used human fertiliser. I will bet a lot still do today. If you think of horse manure, the solid material is more of a soil conditioner, but it needs to rot down rather than be used fresh. The fertiliser part comes mainly from the urine, which is high in nitrogen. It is recommended that it should be used diluted with water in a 1:10 ratio.

I found this http://www.ibiblio.org/london/permaculture/mailarchives/permaculture-Envirolink.2/msg00005.html

If you have a lot of woody material on the compost heap, I am sure a little urine would help to even up the Nitrogen Carbon balance. I would try it myself - but I just can't reach the compost heap from my bedroom window these days. :D