Suppose I have over-fertilized soil ( festival area - places with the big urine concentration) and I want to accumulate the nitrogen in plants to recycle it further and make it available for other plants. What kind of plant could help me to bind the nitrogen from soil (in similar way as leguminosae fix and accumulate the nitrogen from atmosphere)? Is there any solution to make a use of this natural fertilizer (urine I mean ) which has a peak only two times a year?
Dear Natalia,
I am not aware of nitrogen hyperaccumulating plants - yet - since I have just started to study this subject. Nevertheless, I can already tell you that redroot-pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus) - a plant successfully used to radiocesium/radiostrontium phytoremediation - seems to be a good candidate for uptaking ammonium from soil. There is also a general consensus about the potential of Brassicaceae family in up-taking solutes from soil: they extract large amounts of nutrients from agricultural soil. You will probably need to dry - mildly - those plants in order to store their biomass for future usage. If your place have any risks of contaminating water bodies - what I think unlikely, since urine is quite dilute in urea -, you should make a good use of water-hyacinth. Well, I hope you find a nice way to solve your problem. Please share it when you get there.
Dear Natalia,
First of all study the local flora of the place where you are planning to work. As native plants need less effort to establish and have less impact of local climate on their growth. Make list of plants then we can make out which could be best according to the suitablity of your place. If you are planning to construct wetland then Eicchornia have great potential to accumulate nitrogen and after harvesting it can be used in biogas plant as well for the production of manure. In my native place people are using it in biogas plant and organic manure formed is being used by farmers. Cyperus and Typha are also good options.
Alfalfa is often used to lower the inorganic N content of the soil. I know this seems surprising since alfalfa is a legume and is often used to increase the nitrogen content of soils low in nitrogen, but in the presence of inorganic N the nitrogen fixing capacity shuts down and the plant takes up soil inorganic N. The deep rooting system of alfalfa makes it particularly effective for reducing inorganic nitrogen that is deeper in the soil profile.
Thank You for all Yor answers!
Since the festival area is quite vast and there are some spontanously formed toilets, there are already some actions to make it less accidental eg.:
http://www.aandeboom.nl/P-Tree
Maybe with use of those tree toilets collecting urine before it reaches the soil would be possible and then reuse the urine fertilizer in the places of high demand of Nitrogen ( there are anticipated plantings of many adult trees).
I like the idea of usage of Alfalfa as it would be possible to inbland it into the grasses and keep the recreational purposes of the terrain. Would it be simillar with the Trifolium , Lupinus, Vicia sativa then? Would it be enough to collect them 2-3 times in growing season? and taking into account that main events are taking place in the end of May and second event in the begginig of July when should it be?
Would appreciate Your help once again
Natalia,
One of the big advantages of the alfalfa is the deep rooting system. I do not think Alfalfa would not do well in an area with a lot of foot rptraffic. Becuase of the traffic you may be restricted to grasses and clovers that can withstand this traffic. If you cut and remove sufficient biomass, grass itself can be very effective in nitrogen uptake and removal.
Natalia,
I think using legume crops (annuals) like Alfalfa, Broad bean, Cow pea, etc. as a crops used to increase the nitrogen content of soils which have a low in nitrogen, they will be the most efficient to store the nitrogen ?
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