This is a valid concern. We have only begun to study the affects that spent pharmaceuticals and personal care products on our environment. There have been USGS surveys of water, sediments, and fish tissue upstream and downstream from wastewater plants. The results are disturbing. Blake is right, some are measured in micrograms per liter or smaller, but some are found at higher levels. At any level, chronic effects are a concern. Some pollutants found include: antibiotics, Prozac, Viagra, nicotine, caffeine, deet, anti-seizure meds, fragrance compounds (a hormone disruptor to aquatic life), etc.

I guess we'll have lots of happy, hermaphroditic fish that are suddenly not so depressed about their erectile dysfunction. :lol:

Another thing you all might remember from elementary biology in school is that plants absorb nutrients only if these are soluble, and perhaps only in ionic form. Larger molecules might not diffuse through the roots.

This helps me to feel good about the plants being grown in rotting compost. Only the liquids formed will get into the orchid plant. Next thing is, one can recall orchids are mostly epiphytic -- they grow on trees, in the crooks of branches, where leaves gather as they fall, and then rot, so that orchids in the wild depend on compost anyway!

Any poisons or unwanted substances in urine probably won't get into the orchid as such but split up into ionic form. But some do and some don't, and it would be good someday to find out which would and which won't.

It is the same when we take food. I used to think apple is just water and sugar carried in a whole chunk of sclerenchyma cells. But now, common sense tells me that it is a cocktail of hundreds of chemicals -- vitamins, enzymes, anthocyanins, phytonutrients and what-have-you that all the health freaks are talking about nowadays. And things not yet discovered.

We take fruit juice at home everyday, where the pulp comes out one hole and the juice another. So there is ample pulp to bury in the back garden and let it rot naturally, together with peels and other plant stuff, like leaves. I wish I can buy worms to hasten the decaying process but maybe there are enough in the soil to do the job.

There are no nettles here to make nettle tea. But I had a whole garden of them when I was living in England. What a waste! LOL!

I have never even heard of a nettle what is it a type of shrub or something?

Stinging Nettles
Stinging nettles are horrible plants and they are everywhere here! If your skin comes in contact with a leaf or stem, the plant stings you. You're left with a very strong burning sensation on your skin for a few minutes. Once in a garden the plants take over because they have creeping rhizomes, and they are nearly impossible to kill. But they are very nutritious plants, so we make 'tea' for plants. For people they are one of the best medicinal plants since it has anti inflamatory, tonifying, and blood purifying properties, and you drink it as a 'normal' tea. Nettle soup made with young shoots is also delicious (tastes like spinach), although my grandma refuses to eat it since she ate a lot of it during WWII.

Once when I was mountain biking around home, my bike skidded on some gravel and I ended up in a patch of nettles. It was the most excruciating pain ever. I felt like I was on fire!

Very interesting I don't think we have nettles in the US. When you say drink it like a normal tee you mean you drink the fermented kind?

Ope I'm wrong we have red deadnettle. They don't sting or have the hairs like the European nettles.

Not the fermented kind!:gasp: No, it's a real tea. I think tisane is the word for it. Just dried or fresh leaves in boiling water. Nettles do exist in the US, they are just hard to find (unlike here where they take over everything) and only in certain regions. I don't know if they are the painful species though.
I read that in NZ there is a species of stinging nettle that allegedly has killed animals and at least one person. Scary!

Yeah that is very scary I am extremely allergic to things like poison ivy so I would probably be allergic to this lol.

Bull Nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus) is a native here, and it stings like crazy! Very pretty flower, but covered in spring-loaded poison-tipped hairs.

Stinging Nettles are pretty common in other areas too. Stinging nettle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Do you know if you can make tea out of that kind of nettle?