AfriGadget

Food Gardens Foundation has been promoting an alternate approach ( http://www.foodgardensfoundation.org.za/images/food.jpg ) to household production in small gardens with limited water for many years.

All are simple but effective ways of improving household well being.

Wonderful idea, thanks for passing it on .. one back at you .. http://avifvolunteers.blogspot.com/2008/07/suncookers.html
I also spread word about these fab posters by Sam Rich too, available for download by anyone who can print & distribute:
http://www.fourthway.co.uk/posters/

Urine? hmm… food crops? How does one prevent someone who catches an STD, from transmitting that through the food chain?

Also, how does on get past the “ick” factor?

Daniel - To my knowledge, I am unfamiliar with any STD that is transmitted in urine, much less urine filtered by dirt, time & a plant before eating it. It’s highly possible that they were referring to animal urine and not human urine, but I’m not sure out that. Feces is actually far more toxic than urine (a human will get quite ill, and possibly die, eating feces while they can drink urine just fine). So the filtering process before it gets to the ‘fruit’ should weed out anything that would be bad for the body. The great thing about God’s awesome process!

As to the ‘ick’ factor: you’re already putting manure on it and people living in these communities rarely need to get past the ‘ick’ factor as their lives are surrounded by these realities in every part of their daily routine already.

Yes that’s a valid question. There actually is a “Guideline for the safe use of wastewater, excreta and greywater” which provides some rules of thumb on the reuse of urine. I did in fact refer to human urine which would of course be stored for some time (at least 1 month) and then be diluted with water to work as a natural fertilizer with a safe timely distance of 4 weeks prior to harvest.
As for STDs, I think they can not be transmitted through urine (which is very clean btw) and even through the storing process, any additional pathogens will be reduced to a minimum.
With rising prices for fertilizers and subsidized fertilizer projects as seen in Malawi during the last few years, the reuse of biological nutrients in wastewater is a smart approach to closing the loop, i think.
For more information on this, especially to a rural African context, pls check out this nice booklet by Peter Morgan.

@Alison: those posters are cool, thx!

Urine is usually very sterile but bladder infections, and some STDs could be a concern. Maybe it should be diluted first and then stored.

If a non food crop could be proposed which would provide some benefit (like the plant based pesticides the boy was making) then urine could be used for that and some of the plant waste could be diverted to the food based gardens.

editor: Well, from a process engineering perspective, I think it makes sense to store liquids first and then have them diluted.

Urine is in fact very sterile - bladder infections and STDs are after appropriate treatment (described by JKE) no problem.

For me it makes much more sense to use the urine for the food crops - these need the nutrients, the non-food crops only very little.

It is of high importance to finally overcome the lacking acceptance for using urine, humanure or whatever it’s called - these products are often more hygienic than any sewage and feacal sludge and even chemical fertilizer.

[...] Green : Keyhole gardens [...]

[...] Keyhole Gardens Filed under: Gardening, Howto, Recycling — depatty @ 10:48 pm Tags: Gardening, Keyhole Gardens, Recycling AfriGadget » Blog Archive » Keyhole Gardens [...]

HEY, be careful!you will give people the wrong idea, the author of this report was asking if they use urine, the report/film said nothing about “blackwater” which is urine and feces, just greywater from washing up and dishwater.

editor: Yes indeed, the film is just about keyhole gardens and using greywater only.
The reuse of urine and recreation of fertile topsoil seem to be very appropriate to the situation in Lesotho though - hence this further discussion regarding any additional use of yellow- and brownwater (not blackwater).

[...] In doing research on dry climate gardening, Eric also came across a fascinating gardening technique called "Keyhole Gardening" [...]

Strategies to Cope with the Food Crisis : Small-Scale Farming…

To soften the blow of the food crisis and climate change on those in the global south, there has been a move to support small-scale farmers in Africa; arguably a move that can reap positive benefits, considering more than 60…

I live in Oklahoma - very hot & dry. I’m making raised beds (we have clay soil)- the keyhole garden sounds doable - advantageous. Thanks.

We put this video together at Send a Cow to inform school pupils in the UK about life in some African countries. It seems like the video and other resources are quite popular outside of this context too. As the UK education (ie UK schoools) manager, I’m not able to comment with knowledge about the grey/yellow/black water topic, but I do know that many farmers are experimenting with some of these methods. For instance, in Uganda I know of a farmer who moves his latrines (not sure if shallow or deep pit?), leaves them for a period of time and then plants bananas, which do very, very well.
Back to keyhole gardens, they do very well in many locations, especially those with heavy rain as well as dry seasons too, so good for the UK. In East Africa (where they originated at St Judes Organic training centre in Uganda) they look different, as per the fourthway link provided by another poster. So, best to adapt them, although the multi-layered approach seems to work very well. If anyone tries them in other countries, please email education@sendacow.org.uk - many thanks!
By the way, we also have a video about Bag Gardens and will be making one about Tip-Taps too…

editor: thx for your comment, John! Those moving shallow pit latrines are btw called Arborloo - see also our post on the VIP).