The Strange Way Urine Might Help With Tree Stump Removal

Say you have an old tree in your yard that you need to remove for safety reasons, or you want to remove a tree to give you more sunlight to start a garden. You get the tree removed by a professional (or do it yourself), then you realize: Cutting down a tree was the easy part. Getting rid of the tree stump in your yard is the hard part. You can dig it out, grind it, burn it (if local laws allow that), treat it with chemicals, or you can take the easy way out and let nature do its thing and let it rot. The problem is that the easy way out is also the slow way out. It takes a long time for a tree stump to rot. Fortunately, you can accelerate the rotting process by pouring urine on it.

Will that work? Highly likely. Will it work quickly? No. Rotting takes time, especially in hardwood. Fungi (like mushrooms) are wood-rotting agents that will work to remove your tree stump, but they can only slowly turn your stump to crumbs by digesting the cells that make up the woody portion of a tree. How does urine help that process? Urine is some 95% water, but the second leading component of urine is urea, a nitrogen-rich compound that is frequently used as a fertilizer in agriculture. Nitrogen is often the main ingredient in lawn fertilizer (the N in the N-P-K on the fertilizer bag), and nitrogen can likewise promote the growth of fungi and microbial in the soil (which can help accelerate tree rot) and some (but not all) fungi that break down wood.

You probably don't need directions on how to collect human urine. Once you've collected it, you can accelerate the decay process by cutting down your tree stump as low to the ground as possible, then drilling holes in or scarring the remainder of it to better allow the urine to soak in. Now you're ready to apply the urine.

You'll want to start slowly, as too much nitrogen is not a good thing. Many dog owners know not to let their pup pee in the same spot of their lawn over and over, as this excess of urine will cause the grass to burn and die. Urine isn't an acid that will directly break down the stump, where the stronger the acid the better. High levels of urea can kill fungi. Urea is often used in the logging industry to actually protect the stumps of recently logged trees from fungal infections so that the fungi don't spread to the remaining living trees. But the amount of urea applied needs to be high enough to release ammonia (a nitrogen compound) and change the pH of the remaining wood and kill off the fungi. So don't go overboard in your application of urine. Dilute the early applications in a water-to-urine ratio of 4 to 1, then apply it daily to the stump, gradually increasing the strength to roughly 2 to 1. Results won't be immediate: urine can work with persistence and will allow you to naturally say goodbye to your tree stump. It may feel odd to use your urine this way, but it's got to be good for something.