UK Gardeners Urged To Pee In Watering Cans For 2 Surprising Benefits

The UK’s recent heatwave has ended (for now), meaning watering and mowing rules have gone back to normal for gardeners. 

Still, a bowl of water left in your garden remains useful for animals like hedgehogs, and though this week is safer than last for trimming your grass, you might want to keep your cut shreds on the lawn. 

And according to author and former garden manager for various Royal Horticultural Society and National Trust sites, Simon Akeroyd, apparently, we should be peeing in our watering cans too. 

“Sorry if this horrifies you,” a recent Instagram Reel of his read, “But the key to successfully growing plants is natural fertiliser.” 

Why pay for specially-made products, the gardener argued, when “you have free access to the best natural stuff out there” – pee?

How could pee possibly help plants grow?

Calling your very own liquid gold the “best plant food” out there, Akeroyd shared that wee is “high in the three main plant nutrients needed for healthy plant growth – nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

“It’s particularly high in nitrogen,” he continued. 

Nitrogen is key to plant health as it provides the building blocks of their DNA (though too much isn’t great for them either – nitrogen created by sewage can throw off the ecosystems of waterways, leading to too much algae). 

That may be why Akeroyd recommends diluting your free plant feed “at a rate of about ten parts water to one part wee.” 

Once placed in a watering can, t can be used to treat plants “once a week,” he added. 

The expert isn’t alone – a 2017 paper published in Environmental Science and Technology reads, “Human urine contains significant amounts of N (nitrogen) and P (phosphorus); therefore, it has been successfully used as fertiliser in different crops.”

“Humans have been collecting urine and using it for fertiliser for a long, long time, but then in the west that really stopped with the invention of [the] sewage system,” Dr Krista Wigginton, who researched the topic, told The Guardian.

“We are just trying now to figure out with this infrastructure system that we have, how do we pull back and think differently about what goes into this sewage system and capture some of those valuable products before [they] get mixed and diluted with everything else?”

Does pee get rid of foxes?

Some people report that male human pee, and especially the first one of the day, can repel foxes by interrupting their scent markers. 

“Once the fox’s scent has been masked, they will feel more vulnerable and leave your garden altogether. This is a free, effective, if not a bit strange way to get rid of foxes without killing them,” Shield Pest Control wrote. 

As Black Foxes UK said, there’s no empirical evidence to prove this definitely works yet. 

But hey – if you’re using it to feed your plants anyway, it might be a welcome side-effect.