Depends on exactly what nutrients your plants are missing. Your own Compost usually works well
Tried and true.
Poop is natural. Just saying.
If you think about it, rotted or decomposed organic materials are basically insect, bacterium and mold poop...
Bacteria and fungi aren't animals, though!
The bacteria are alive and eat therefore they poop. :) just like they fart in bread or cake :D
That's what that classic internet clip was all about. "Mmmm cakefarts"
Bacteria arent animals?
Not OP, but in taxonomy most microorganisms (including bacteria) aren't filed under the "animal" Kingdom therefore aren't "animals"
Nope. Completey different domain of life.
True, but fungi aren't that distantly related from animals
Not gonna pretend I'm an expert or anything, but
What about compost?
I think I've read that seaweed can be good too, but I'm not sure if that's more of an addition rather than a replacement
I'm pretty sure most fertilisers you get come from either animal waste or petrochemicals
Yes, seaweed is good, and widely used where I live (Also not an expert though). It's best to let the rain wash some of the salt away first though.
Elaborating on why thats what you're looking for may help people give you more helpful answers that meet your needs :)
Depending on what you consider natural and efficient.
If mining is natural there is some volcanic stuff that is nutrient rich. If by natural you mean organic, compost piles produce good fertilisers but they are not as efficient as some might say. They take quite some time to complete their process and get it's nutrients available for growing plants. Not being efficient doesn't mean they aren't good. They are a great way to dispose or organic material and even if compost releases its nutrients very slowly it contributes to the soil health in many other ways that I would say are more important, like increasing biodiversity, making the soil more resistant to changes in pH and facilitating retention of nutrients so they don't wash out with rain.
If this is a practical question, would you consider something like vermicompost poop? Sure, it's gone through a worm, but at some point of tiny and low-energy that becomes pretty indistinguishable from microbial action.
Otherwise, yeah, plain old compost. There's still going to be microscopic worms in there, but I have no idea how much of it actually goes through their digestive tract, in the end.
fish guts, leafmold
People mine nutrients for industrial use, so yes.
Yeah, but a lot of the mining is mining bat and bird guano, which is animal poop.
Guano reserves ran out by 1900 IIRC. It's concentrations of nutrients in ancient mineral deposits now (and peak phosphorus is coming).
What? No they don't. My cousin runs a fertalizer mining operation down south (like, massive massive shit, not a small operation). Phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, etc. are mined from ore.
I can't say that nobody minds areas that would be rich in bat guano, but the vast majority of industrial mining operations for fertilizers as far as I'm aware come from mineral sources.
Compost piles are a thing, idk how efficient they are vs manure. One of the reasons farmers use manure is they have so much of it anyways and it's got to go somewhere. There's also various plants that do similar work when planted in the soil, something about nitrogen fixing. Whether or not something is natural or not gets hard to define but there are ways of getting plants nutrients that are mostly not animal. I say mostly because it also depends on how you're defining that and how you store and handle things one what ends up inside it but I imagine a meticulous person could manage it.
In my personal experience if you have to pick one, animal manure (I count human poop under that as well) works better than compost from just plant material (like plant cuttings, kitchen waste, weeds, wood chip ...). Best is a mix of both.
"Night soil" (human poop) fertilizer has a way higher risk of disease to humans than manure (animal poop) because it's rare for pathogens to infect multiple species. Some pathogens do cross species lines - avoiding nightsoil on human food crops is not a standalone protection - but it's an important way to significantly reduce risk.
Septic tank discharge fields are great places for flower gardens. No veggies.
Septic tank discharge fields are great places for flower gardens. No veggies.
And only salt-tolerant flowers at that. Septic field tend to build up in salinity over time due to our diets
But if you fully compost ( with temperature monitoring and like good com.post management) then composting will sterilize the soil.
Fish emulsion, plant compost.
https://theownerbuildernetwork.co/gardens/2025/10/09/electroculture-gardening/
I literally learned about this less than an hour ago.
My friend was telling me that she's going to put some copper piping from an old fridge in her backyard garden.
Apparently, this has been a thing for centuries, and only stopped being popular when WW2 demanded all the scrap metal on hand.
I'm not going to pretend to be a scientist, but I think they've gone the wrong way with the correlation vs causation on that one. :)
Copper is an essential nutrient in soils.
https://www.tfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/tfi-copper.pdf
I’d be very careful about using copper this way. While ingesting small amounts of copper is ok, and in fact a good part of a diet, Ingesting too much copper is not a good thing, and can be toxic.
Having copper piping, etc. in close proximity to a garden risks having it leach into the plants, which might then be ingested. Since copper is a fairly soft metal then rain could slowly corrode it and introduce it to the plants.
A bit more on copper toxicology here.
And that leaching will be vastly influenced by pH. So if your soil or rain is acidic you'll get a lot more.
The Plasma Channel just released a video about how water exposed to coronal discharge becomes an interesting sort of fertilizer.
If looking for poop alternatives.. it's something. Might be worth looking at aquaponics additives, probably the next alternative to poop is petrochemical though.
Potash
Human poop, using it as fertilizer has historically been a thing in some regions. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/recycling-animal-and-human-dung-is-the-key-to-sustainable-farming/
A properly maintained composting toilet produces what is effectively compost. It smells like soil, not poop. I believe the tradition is that you empty the toilet and then let it sit for a year while the decomposing reaction is going on and it's safe to use as fertilizer the next year.
I like to use a fish emulsion product. The brand available at several places where I am is "Alaska", there are probably other brands and you can even make it if you find yourself with a pile of leftover fish parts. It's generally 5-1-1 or 4-1-1, mostly nitrogen for green growth, and you just dilute it into water.
I don't know why people have downvoted you when what you said was probably the most accurate on here. I would also add that the Alaska brand has seaweed emulsion that works as an amazing fertilizer as well. I normally rotate through fish, seaweed, and a low level synthetic (10-10-10).
I remember growing up, my nan used to make nettle water, I hated the smell. Basically just chuck a bunch of nettle in water and let it macerate. You've been warned about the smell though!
Like Polyhalite, for example?
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