Update on Dialysate as fertilizer

[obsidianom]

Earlier in the summer I posted about using the used dialysate form the home hemo machine for fertilizer on my fruit trees.
Now it is harvest time and I can see the results. AMAZING.
This is BY FAR my best crop of apples and peaches ever. The trees are loaded with big juicy fruit. I have 18 trees.
WE are actually thinking of ways to market the stuff some day. It is loaded with nitrogen .
I have been a small time farmer for years and nothing has worked as well as the dialysate. My wife jokes that she got kidney disease just for my trees.

[okarol]

Interesting! How much, how often?

[obsidianom]

My wife uses 20 liters , or about 5 gallons of dialysate per treatment. I would use about half or about 2.5 gallons per tree each time. I rotated around. I would guess each tree received the 2.5 gallons every 10 days. I started in early spring right after snow melt and went until mid August.  I will start up again this year in late fall after leaf drop to get some into the ground before it freezes for the winter so it will be there when spring thaw occurs next year.
It can be used on regular bushes and plants too. It doesnt have much of an odor. My place looks like the garden of eden it is so lush this year from all the dialysate.
It is so much better than dumping it down the drain.
Those on PD should be able to do it also. Instead of dumping it down the toilet, dump it into a bucket and spread it around outside on anything that grows. Its great way to recycle.

[Rerun]

So, is peeing on fruit trees okay?

                     

[Henry P Snicklesnorter]

Those on PD should be able to do it also. Instead of dumping it down the toilet, dump it into a bucket and spread it around outside on anything that grows. Its great way to recycle.

With PD, it will pay to dilute the contents of the drain bag first. The nitrogen concentration is likely to be high enough to burn and possibly even kill sensitive plants. (Don't ask me how I know this ........  )


I found a dilution of 1:5 with water seemed to give good results.


Henry P

[goofball]

Use it at full concentration to kill the weeds that grow between bricks on the path, haha.

[obsidianom]

So, is peeing on fruit trees okay?

                     

It would keep the deer away at least. We have a chronic deer issue here. I used to raise wolves and they kept the deer away from my fruit trees. Their urine worked well too.( they werent in dialysis) After they all died off the deer returned to eat my trees so I had to fence them in for protection. I considered using urine but decided on the old wolf fencing .
I didnt realize the PD solution was so strong to burn roots. I use the hemo dialysate full strength as it has a lot of water in it.

[Deanne]

I love this idea! I don't like pouring it down the shower drain. My bathroom is starting to stink, even though I chase it down with bleach. Will the nitrogen level always be high, even with a low UF? I use 1.5 bags and still pee, so my UF has been around 400 - 600 for the most part. I wonder if I can pour it in my veggie garden beds all winter to build them up for spring planting.

[obsidianom]

UF has nothing to do with nitrogen. It is just saline/water. My wife has NO UF taken off ever. We just dialyze the toxins/molocules /nitrogen. When you dialyze the BUN drops significantly. That is urea or almost pure nitrogen coming off. So you are normally dumping nitrogen down the drain or tiolet. So use it for your garden. Its better than manure as you dont need a cow.  If you put it in the ground all winter and spring I bet you will have a GREAT GARDEN.

[Henry P Snicklesnorter]

........ That is urea or almost pure nitrogen coming off. So you are normally dumping nitrogen down the drain or tiolet. So use it for your garden. Its better than manure as you dont need a cow.  If you put it in the ground all winter and spring I bet you will have a GREAT GARDEN.

My apologies for being contrary, but please don't.


Extra nitrogen is not a substitute for manure. Used sparingly during the growth/fruiting stage it can enhance growth of almost any plant. Beyond that, it may cause visible damage to many types of garden plants, (plasmolysis is one effect,) and over application may be highly counter productive. Soil fertility can suffer.


The environment also suffers, - much of this excess ends up in waterways, promoting algael blooms and other long term problems.


I would caution anyone who wants to make the best use of the nitrogen we produce from dialysis to do some research before doing so, particularly if you live in a rural environment. Contamination of groundwater used for human consumption can be a huge problem, with negative effects on the health of babies and the elderly.


The following is one of many articles that I think are worth reading
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/negative-effects-nitrogenrich-fertilizer-environment-72041.html


Henry P

[obsidianom]

........ That is urea or almost pure nitrogen coming off. So you are normally dumping nitrogen down the drain or tiolet. So use it for your garden. Its better than manure as you dont need a cow.  If you put it in the ground all winter and spring I bet you will have a GREAT GARDEN.

My apologies for being contrary, but please don't.


Extra nitrogen is not a substitute for manure. Used sparingly during the growth/fruiting stage it can enhance growth of almost any plant. Beyond that, it may cause visible damage to many types of garden plants, (plasmolysis is one effect,) and over application may be highly counter productive. Soil fertility can suffer.


The environment also suffers, - much of this excess ends up in waterways, promoting algael blooms and other long term problems.


I would caution anyone who wants to make the best use of the nitrogen we produce from dialysis to do some research before doing so, particularly if you live in a rural environment. Contamination of groundwater used for human consumption can be a huge problem, with negative effects on the health of babies and the elderly.


The following is one of many articles that I think are worth reading
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/negative-effects-nitrogenrich-fertilizer-environment-72041.html


Henry P

There is one flaw in your argument , especially for rural areas. When we dump the same dialysate into the drain it STILL  ENDS   UP In THE GROUND.
It goes into the septic tank and flows into the leach bed out into my back yard. So either way it ends up iun the same place. The only difference is that it goes first to the tree roots then into the ground. Its all in the same general area anyway.
If I were in an area with city water and sewage that would be different. I live out in the woods as do many people in rural towns . Anybody with a septic system is still dumping into the ground ultimatly.  Dont forget this is not extra fertilizer brought in commercially but the same stuff that has to go down the drain or toilet anyway. WE are stuck with it one way or another, so i just recycle it for use before it goes into the ground.
 With trees it has worked wonders. I am not an expert on smaller growth but have been growing fruit for 20 years . I cleared my own land and planted these trees . They are my "babies" . I saw a huge improvement this year with the dialysate. The foliage is thicker and the fruit is twice or more what I usually grow.
 I think your point on commercial fertilizer is valid. I lived in Iowa 5 years and saw what you are talking about on a large scale.

[Henry P Snicklesnorter]

.

[obsidianom]

There is one flaw in your argument , especially for rural areas. When we dump the same dialysate into the drain it STILL  ENDS   UP In THE GROUND.


It goes into the septic tank and flows into the leach bed out into my back yard. So either way it ends up iun the same place. The only difference is that it goes first to the tree roots then into the ground. Its all in the same general area anyway.
If I were in an area with city water and sewage that would be different. I live out in the woods as do many people in rural towns . Anybody with a septic system is still dumping into the ground ultimatly.  Dont forget this is not extra fertilizer brought in commercially but the same stuff that has to go down the drain or toilet anyway. WE are stuck with it one way or another, so i just recycle it for use before it goes into the ground.
 With trees it has worked wonders. I am not an expert on smaller growth but have been growing fruit for 20 years . I cleared my own land and planted these trees . They are my "babies" . I saw a huge improvement this year with the dialysate. The foliage is thicker and the fruit is twice or more what I usually grow.
 I think your point on commercial fertilizer is valid. I lived in Iowa 5 years and saw what you are talking about on a large scale.

Only one flaw? 


I was raised in and lived in a rural environment. (Large scale grain and sheep farming.) We have occupied those holdings for a hundred years. (It's only in the last 12 years or so that I have lived in a city.)
We didn't even have septic systems on the farms until the 50's and they underwent several iterations until we settled on evaporative type leach drains because of the high clay content of much of our soils.


One thing that was always a common feature of all of our waste disposal systems was that the effluent was not able to enter the watersheds, or the recharge areas of underground water. We were't trying to be environmentally responsible in those days,  it was plain common sense and good hygiene.


With all due respect, a septic system, (or any effluent disposal system,) that doesn't meet these conditions is improperly constructed.


These days, a licence will not be granted to construct a septic system unless those conditions are met. I believe it will not be long before devices such as Nitrex filters for the removal of nitrogen from septic systems become mandatory. It is that big a problem.


For all that, we applied increasing amounts of nitrogen to tens of thousands of acres of grain crops in an effort to increase yields, without any idea we might have been contributing to environmental degradation, not to mention the cost of the amount of nitrogen that was wasted. We, along with our peers, contributed to significant environmental damage to waterways.


These days we analyse our plants and soils and determine optimum amounts of application in line with expected rainfall. Even then, we can sometimes get it wrong when mother nature doesn't co-operate. But we are trying.


Henry P

I love your name by the way. Its hysterical.
I beleive you are in Australia, is that correct?
I dont think the septic systems here are like you described. I am not an environmental engineer but I have talked at legth with the septic guy when he pumps our tank. The leech bed carries all liquid away from the tank and that in cludes the dialysate i would dump down the sink. The only thing in the tank is the solids. That allows the liquid to run into the land behind our house. There does not appear to be anything to stop it from leeching out into the soil and groundwater. That is why we have rules on distance of septic systems from well water . My well is out front and the septic is in back going away from the house.
Any way I applaud your environmental awareness  and how you are doing things on your farm.

Getting back to the original issue of the dialysate. I looked at the sack ingredients form Nxstage that we use. The sak starts with a concentrate that is about a liter. It contains lactate which is a buffer(to neutralize acid), calcium , magnesium, potasium , sodium , chloride and glucose. The ph is above 7.
Now to that we add 60 liters of water so it is very dilute. That is the dialysate. The ph is helpful here in my area as we suffer from acid soil issues. So it nuetralizes that some.
Now during dialysis the person being dialyzed adds some amount of nitrogen in the form of urea. There are other trace elements added but for arguments sake , it is mostly urea. Now I dont have a way to measrure it but the amount of nitrogen added to the 60 liters of dialysate cant be that much from one person in a few hours of dialysis.
So in effect it is a dilute mixture of the orignal chemicals and some small added urea. We are not talking about concentrated stuff here. The magnesium actually is helpful too as fruit trees need it and I often spray epsom salt in water on them for the magnesium. It is common here for fruit tree orchards to do that . I learned it from a pro grower.

 
So bottom line, I dont think I am doing any environmental damage . My trees certainly like it and showed their appreciation with all the fruit I am picking and eating.

[justme15]

What about using it on grass? Will I have a greener lawn?

[obsidianom]

What about using it on grass? Will I have a greener lawn?

All I can say is that the area around my trees where I dump the dialysate is thicker and lusher than ever . There is grass and other greenery. I had to work extra hard all summer to cut it as my lawmmower kept stalling out from all the thick lush greenery when I tried to cut it. Most of it was grass. It really made it grow fast. 

[obsidianom]

UPDATE:  I am harvesting my BEST crop of apples EVER. People who I have given apples to are RAVING about the size and taste. The dialysate fertilizer has been a big success. 
I still have peaches on my young tree that I fertilzed a lot with dialysate. That is unheard of this far north in October. AMAZING!
Those who home dialyse should try it next year or even this fall after leaf drop for next season.