We had an opportunity to visit with a friend today at his home. He is a retired Vietnam Huey/Cobra Helicopter pilot who is very involved in emergency preparedness.
**I apologize for the picture quality… I didn’t think of taking my good camera, (duh! smack to forhead!) so I made do with my iphone camera**
The first project he showed us is one he’s currently working on…PeePee stations!
You can see a screen covering the hole, it is being used to keep unwanted bugs and critters out.
He’s making these out of hardware store supplies. This is a basically a funnel, large enough for a body to sit on, with a screen taped in above the hole, and foam lining the rim.
He then plans to dig a hole deep enough to accommodate the green tubing on the left, and a couple of feet of gravel below it. Once the tube is set, one of the green ‘sprinkler’ covers on the right will be placed on top of it to conceal it until needed. The seat can be installed when needed.
The urine will filter through the gravel and leech back into the soil underground.
I’ve found a bunch of conflicting info. about using urine to water/feed plants with, for example:
“Urine is an excellent source of minerals including potassium, magnesium, and especially nitrogen, albeit not in the correct form right away. Diluting urine and watering plants is good.
The salts that are in urine will be broken down by the "microherd" residing in your gardens and compost heaps.”
And:
Keep a watering can near the door and outside tap. Collect urine in (marked)Nalgene containers, which have screw-on tops that really do not leak, even if dropped. mix 1 jar with a watering can of water, and water selected plants. Comfrey and rhubarb, which are both nitrogen loving plants can take a very strong solution. Most other plants require a much more dilute preparation, as the acid will burn them. I do not use urine on food plants where the urine will contact the part eaten withing 2-4 weeks of picking.
It's best uses are for bushes, shrubs, and trees, the comfrey patches, ornamentals, for compost, and for off-season fertilization when sheet mulching, etc.
Both comments were posted
HERE
So basically what I’m getting out of it is; it is safe to leach urine, just don’t water food plants with it either directly or close enough for it to soak into them.
Onto the next subject….
This is his garden. IT IS BEAUTIFUL! I didn’t get pictures to do it justice, but you can see it being built on his website.
He uses ‘depression’ beds, which are basically 3 inch deep squares/rectangles where he plants his veggies. He floods them to water them, somewhat like rice paddies…
Each ‘patch’ is in a 3” depressed bed.
He grows his squash vertically in these wire frames he’s made out of concrete wire mesh. He makes them 12, 10, and 8 squares wide, then they stack inside each other for winter storage.
Beds of carrots, bush beans, and an empty bed where his peas were this spring. (volunteer beans here and there)
The whole garden is elevated and surrounded by raspberry bushes. The garden itself sits on top of the bomb/earthquake shelter. You can see one of the 2 vents from his shelter in the raspberries here…(the rounded brown thing almost smack in the middle of the picture. And no, that is not his house in the backgroud)
Speaking of shelters… we found the hatch!
The shelter is built to Nuclear Bomb ‘specs’ but is not insulated/buried deep enough to qualify as a one. The hatch slopes down into the ground at about a 60/65 degree angle, with a steel extension ladder to back down on.
At the bottom of the entry tube is a 90 degree angle and a 10 (or so) foot pipe leading into the shelter.
The shelter itself runs 90 degrees to the entry pipe. The entrance is actually tucked back to the right of this picture, behind the 4 white boxes stacked on the right.
The shelter itself is a long corrugated tube about 9’ x 24’. and is made out of a culvert pipe. Take note of the braces for the lighting. He built them with a “single pin” in each corner to allow flexibility/compression in the shelter in an earthquake.
I should have made sure this shot wasn’t fuzzy. This is looking down the length of the shelter from the access point. Say Hi!
The far end of the tube. The table converts to beds of course, and 1/2 of the supplies leading to this end can be moved into the opening of the shelter to create more bed space. He said he can sleep 12 people in this shelter.
That number brought up the discussion of sanitation of course. He showed us some of his PooPoo solutions down below.
This is a Sanitation kit for 50 people. You can see the contents here. He told us he paid $15 for it at Smith and Edwards. I don’t know how long ago that was, or if they still stock them, but if you’re out and about, it’d be a good thing to keep an eye out for!
Here’s another product I hadn’t seen before. The EZ Towel. These are paper/cloth towels compacted into tablets. just unwrap the tablet and add water. Very durable, he had one out that we stretched and pulled without ripping it.
I found them on Amazon ranging from $3 – $8/bag of 50.
And these are holders/reflectors for glow sticks. (See the yellow one on the right). You clip the glow sticks into these and reflect more light from them. Clever! He said he got them online (I believe?).. I’ll have to ask again because I can’t find them. May be relatively easy to make however!
And last, I forgot to mention the bees he keeps. This is a home for Mason bees. Each of the females in this family is fertile. They lay their eggs in hollow reeds or mud, or any long narrow tube. They do not produce honey or beeswax, but they do pollinate for you! And they don’t sting. He drilled holes in a couple of blocks of 4x4’s (all the way through, using a 3/8” bit) and you can see how some of them have been filled with eggs for next year. The males hatch first, hang out for the females to emerge, mate with them, then die. The females then gather nectar to feed the eggs, lay an egg on a mound of nectar, close the hold with mud, then repeats until the cavity is full of eggs. Great way to get your garden pollinated!
