MiracleGro VS Pee_ Which Fertilizer Is Better Surprising Results!

What's going on, gardeners? It's Sunday, April 16th, and it's a beautiful afternoon here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. And today's video is a video that so many of you have asked for over the years, and I'm finally going to do it. We are going to compare two fertilizers, and we're going to see which one is better, Miracle-Gro or pea? Yeah, I'm serious. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe and hit the bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and Spreadshot links in the video description for everything I use in my garden Over the years, many of you have mentioned that human urine is a great source of fertilizer. And while I've always known this to be true, I've made videos on it in the past and I've seen the results with my very own eyes, I've never actually considered it to be anywhere on par with real fertilizer, just more of like maybe something a little extra you could add. But what happens if we actually compare it to real fertilizer? As an engineer, I always love a good experiment. So I did some research. According to the Veganic Agricultural Network, the NPK ratio of human urine is about 11 parts nitrogen, one part phosphorus and 2.5 parts potassium. Consulting the website lowimpact.org, they have very similar proportions at 11% nitrogen, 2% phosphorus, 4% potassium. And finally, according to the Stockholm Environment Institute, they peg the NPK ratio of about 10, 1, 4. So surprisingly, all of these sources have pretty similar NPK ratios. In order to develop a fair comparison between human urine and real fertilizer, we need to compare it to a synthesized fertilizer because there are too many variables with organic fertilizers that are derived from whole foods. So we're going to use Miracle-Gro All Purpose 24, 8, 16, but we're going to use that at half strength because that will be 12, 4, 8, which is very similar to what all these various websites agree is the NPK ratio of human urine. So we will have a fair fight if we do this. To make sure we're as fair as possible, we are not going to buy pre-bagged potting mix because almost all of them have external fertilizers added and they will mess up our results. So we're going to use one of these coconut core bricks as the foundation for our medium. And then we're going to cut it with plain old perlite. So all we're going to use is perlite and coconut core. That means there will be absolutely no usable nutrition in this mix and the only fertilizer our plants get is what we're going to give them. Now we're going to compare two different types of plants, a leafy green and a fruiting plant to be fair because human urine is mostly nitrogen. So we want to test it on both types of plants because they have different NPK demands to see what it's really made up. So first we're going to use this giant Caesar lettuce that I started from seed. I have two seedlings in here that are virtually identical. So we're going to pull them out and we're going to grow them in containers. And the fruiting plant that we're going to compare it to is this hot pepper plant. It has very heavy yields of smaller fruit. So this is a perfect candidate for a container grown pepper plant. So we're going to use this as our fruiting plant to see how well these various fertilizers can encourage blooming. The containers that we're going to use for our lettuce plants are one gallon nursery containers and they're too deep for one plant per container. I'm afraid it will be too much mix and they could be susceptible to root rot. So I made sure to fill the bottoms about maybe a third to half of the way with equal amounts of rocks. That way I won't put so much medium in there and it'll still have excellent drainage. Then the peppers are going to be grown in these containers which are identical. They're from two palm trees that I bought a year ago that were the exact same size. Now it says the weight is 1.72 gallons, which is true gallons. So this means this is probably a number two or a number three trade gallon size. So these will be exactly the same for the two pepper plants. So we're going to put two bricks of coco coir in a wheelbarrow and use hot water to help speed up the hydration process. Then we're going to add a good amount of perlite to help increase the drainage. And now while our potting mix is hydrating and cooling off, we are going to have to collect our fertilizer samples. Collecting the Miracle-Gro sample is really easy. All you have to do is take a hose and an empty jug and fill it about halfway with water. According to the instructions on the back of the Miracle-Gro package, we have to give our outdoor plants a concentration of one and a half tablespoons of mix to one and a half gallons of water. So that is one tablespoon per gallon. Since we are trying to achieve half concentration, we want to give them half a tablespoon per gallon, which is going to be exactly one half a tablespoon or seven grams. So let's get seven grams precisely on the scale. And now that we have achieved seven grams or exactly half a tablespoon, we are going to pour that into our container. So we're going to make sure that we shake up our concentrate completely so all that water-soluble fertilizer completely dissolves. Then after it's completely dissolved, we are going to fill up the rest of the one gallon watering container because that is going to give us our half strength concentration that we so desire. So this is going to be our control fertilizer, which is half strength Miracle-Gro All Purpose, roughly an NPK of 1248. And this is the human urine sample. This took me three days to collect. And as far as human urine goes, I think this is about as good as it gets. I'm not on any medications. I cook all my own food. I eat a predominantly whole foods diet, almost nothing processed. And it's been sitting in my sunroom to ferment for all three days. So I think as far as urine goes, this is like the gray goose of urine. So now we have our two fertilizers. Let's put it to the test by up-potting our plants. So I up-potted the experimental plants. I chose virtually identical seedlings. I placed them in identical mix and in the same size containers. Then after they were all planted, I watered them in with rainwater from my rain barrels only. There is no fertilizer in there. I did not want to compromise the experiment. So this medium is as inert as possible and the seedlings are about as equal as possible. So here is how this experiment is going to go. I have one pepper and one lettuce named P and I have one pepper and one lettuce named Mg for Miracle-Gro. So while these seedlings are young, I'm going to give the two peas half a cup of the urine plus half a cup of the rainwater from my water barrels to give them basically a half strength feeding. Then the Miracle-Gro ones are going to get half a cup of the Miracle-Gro concentrate and half a cup of rainwater to further dilute it because since they're young right now, they may not take too well to strong fertilizers and I don't know if the urine is going to burn. I don't have a lot of experience with this. Then as they get larger, I will step it up to one cup and one cup for each. So we'll increase the concentrations. But regardless, they are going to get the same amount of dosage and I'm going to feed them once every weekend, whatever is the day that isn't raining, Saturday or Sunday, because I don't want to flush the nutrients from the containers because the containers are completely inert. Once the nutrients wash out, there's nothing left in them. So I want to make this as fair as possible. So I'm going to start with the pea. I can't believe I'm doing this, but anything for science. And then I'm going to fill this up to the half cup with pea. Let's drizzle this over the roots and then the other half cup filled up to the middle line. It's going to go over the lettuce, put the cap back on there and get it out of here. Then we're going to dilute it with half a cup of rainwater and then half a cup of rainwater. And we're going to do the same thing with the Miracle-Gro. Shake that up. Half a cup, half a cup, half a cup of rainwater, half a cup of rainwater. Now I have the newly transplanted plants that have just been fertilized hiding in the shade behind my garden cart because the hot afternoon sun is too harsh for fresh transplants. So I want to keep them in the shade for a day until they have time to kind of grab root because it's very stressful to be transplanted. So I will keep an eye on these. I will fertilize them every single weekend like I already said I was going to and I will check in periodically and we'll see how they are performing. Unless we are fertilizing them, they will be getting nothing but either rainwater from my rain barrels or from the house spigot. So they will be getting the exact same water, no variables. And I truly have no idea what to expect from this experiment so it should be very interesting to follow along with this and see how it goes. It's Sunday, April 23rd and it's time to make another application of fertilizer. It's Sunday, April 30th and it's time to fertilize our plants again. And you're starting to see a distinct difference emerge in the different plants but overall I'm still pretty impressed. The lettuce looks almost identical. We have the pea lettuce here and then we have the Miracle-Gro lettuce here. And they look just as good as each other. In fact, right now the pea lettuce looks a little bit greener. And I would have thought that you would see the lettuce perform more evenly because lettuce needs primarily nitrogen. I'm seeing a clear difference emerge in the pepper plants though. Peppers need a more complete fertilizer. So you're seeing the Miracle-Gro pepper start to take off versus the pea pepper. However, things could change. Maybe it's just jitters while the plants are young. So we are going to give them the feeding as we have been. Well, it's Sunday, May 21st and I'm officially going to call an end to this human urine as fertilizer experiment because I've collected all the data that I can at this point. I will show you exactly what I'm talking about. So right here, you can see the Miracle-Gro head of lettuce and then you can see the human urine head of lettuce. And you'll notice that the Miracle-Gro head of lettuce looks pretty much picture perfect. It's filled out the entire container. There's not really anywhere else for this head of lettuce to go. If I were to let this get any larger, I could sell this at a grocery store. Really looks great. The human urine head of lettuce, on the other hand, I mean, it clearly grew. It was doing very well for a short period of time. It was keeping exact pace with the Miracle-Gro lettuce. And then it developed all of these deformities and it's just not looking all that great anymore. It's not very full. I mean, it's still completely edible. There's nothing wrong with it in terms of eating, but you can definitely see that they are not equal in terms of the quality that each quote unquote fertilizer produced. Here are the two pepper plants. As you can see, things did not go well for the human urine pepper plant. Whereas the Miracle-Gro pepper plant, I could sell this at a Home Depot or a Lowe's on the Bonnie stand for, what are they charging now? Like $30 for a single plant. But I digress, whatever it is, it's crazy. Both plants were doing very well for the first couple of weeks. And then this one started slowly withering away and going into decline. And now it looks like it's probably not going to make it. So over the past few weeks, I've been able to watch the plants that I was fertilizing with human urine slowly develop deformities and go into decline and start not looking so good. Whereas at the beginning, they look just as good as the plants that I was giving Miracle-Gro to. And I was trying to figure out exactly what was going on. I thought, well, maybe I just didn't design a good enough experiment. I should have had more controls. I should have had three or four of each plant. This isn't a big enough sample size. I then thought, well, maybe I was just burning the plants with the human urine. And I sat back and I was trying to figure out what was going on. And I think a lot of you may not want to hear what I'm thinking because I wanted to believe that human urine made a fantastic fertilizer as many of you claim. But I think what is going on is this. Fertilizers like Miracle-Gro are specifically formulated to have a whole lot of different micronutrients in them that support the biological processes of a plant. While human urine definitely does contain NP and K, which are the macronutrients and it can get the plants off to growing, human urine clearly lacks a lot of the micronutrients that the plants need to grow. So I think what started happening was because I used a completely inert medium in the coco coir and perlite where there were no micronutrients in there at all, once the coating on the outside of the seed itself was naturally digested and all of those micronutrients that come packed in the coating of the seed went away and the plants used them, the plants started developing all of these deformities because while they were getting NP and K, they probably weren't getting boron or manganese or sulfur or magnesium or some type of trace micronutrient that assists in their proper development that was put into the Miracle-Gro. So these are healthy plants because they were getting NP and K and all of the micronutrients essential for life. But in this inert medium, once the coating wore off of the seed and all those initial micronutrients in the seed itself were exhausted, I started getting all of these deformities in the plant. And I think that something very simple like lettuce that mostly thrives on just a handful of micronutrients and nitrogen, it held out a lot longer and it grew a lot better without all of the micronutrients than something super complex like a fruiting pepper plant that needs a lot more nutrition and a lot more micronutrients than a simple head of lettuce. So I think the pepper was able to exacerbate the deficiencies in human urine and the fact that there just aren't enough micronutrients in there to use them as a standalone fertilizer. Now, had I used a potting mix that was pre-fortified with fertilizers or had I planted them outside in my garden in real soil that has the micronutrients in there organically and I would have used human urine, these deficiencies probably wouldn't have shown up. But that is exactly why I wanted to use this inert medium. I wanted to be able to find out is human urine really a complete standalone fertilizer? I didn't want any of those variables in there. And I think that the answer to that question is a resounding no. You can't just use human urine. You're going to have to supplement that with other types of fertilizers or at least compost and mulch and a whole lot of organic matter that is going to slowly decompose and give those micronutrients to the plants. You can't just grow it in coco coir or peat moss and perlite or some other inert medium because the plants are not going to get what they need. So I think I'm going to give this head of lettuce a drink of actual real fertilizer. I'll give it some Miracle-Gro and that'll probably clear up the micronutrient deficiency and I'll be able to eat this in a week or two. I think it's probably too late to save the pepper plant. While I'm sure this is not a perfect experiment, I think that my reasoning for why it went the way it did is sound and logical. I could be wrong. I could just have flaws in the design. Maybe I'll try again next year with an enhanced sample size where I'll use two or three of each plant, but I wanted to show you the honest results of this. I thought about just deleting it because maybe I made a mistake and not posting these results, but it wouldn't be fair. I think my explanation is valid. And at the very least, it will give you something to think about. And hopefully you found the video a little humorous and entertaining as well. And that right there are my honest results in the human urine as fertilizer experiment. Do I think that human urine is a fertilizer? Yes, absolutely. I think it clearly is a fertilizer, but it also clearly is not a complete fertilizer. So if you choose to use human urine as a fertilizer, look at it more like a component like blood meal would be, where you're basically adding nitrogen, but it is not a complete fertilizer in and of itself. So if you're doing things like composting and mulching and maybe adding other granulated all-purpose fertilizers or all-purpose water-soluble fertilizers here and there to give the other trace micronutrients that the plants need, I think you can use human urine to reduce costs, but it certainly is not an end-all be-all one size fits all product. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful and you also found it a little bit fun and entertaining. If you did, please make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring that notification bell so you're notified when we release more videos like these. If you're curious about any of the products that I use in my garden in general, I have them all linked down below in my Amazon storefront in the video description. So expand the video description and click on the Amazon link to see everything I use in real life. And while you're there, check out my spreadshop for custom merch if you wanna support the channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Yeah, he's on his long lead at the beach. He's having fun, I'm throwing. Go get it. Yeah, he's going in the water. He doesn't know what to do. He's actually going in the water. This is a breakthrough. Go buddy, go. Oh, it's so good. Get it, Dale. Get it, get it, get it. Dale is enjoying another beach vacation and it is a beautiful day.