Just what the title says, I have a baby pomegranate tree planted next to a bird bath. I change the water in the birdbath daily. Is it OK to water the tree with bird poop soup or will that be too strong for the tree. (We are in a drought, so I’d like to reuse the water if possible.
Probably make the tree grow like crazy.
Sounds like a great idea for a science experiment. Let us know how it turns out.
Great minds and all. Planting that tree was a real pain so I moved a large plant container to the other side of the birdbath and will be watering the mature lavender with the bird shit soup instead. I don’t want to lose that plant either, but it will be much easier to replace if I kill it.
I’m really hoping someone who knows about plants and bird poop will show up, I know the science has already been done but my google-fu sucks at times.
I am not a fertilizer expert but I do know that bird guano is frequently used as a fertilizer for plants including fruit trees.
Apparently fresh chicken manure is potentially problematic as an orchard fertilizer because of its high ammonia levels, which can increase nitrogen input to the point of stimulating excess foliage rather than flowers and fruit. But I suspect that if you’re just using slightly dirty birdbath water that you change every day or so, you’re not getting levels of nitrogen that would be anywhere near excessive for your tree.
Thank you. Once I saw nitrogen I was able to do some research and learned that you are totally correct. My baby tree might notice the small amounts of nitrogen I am giving it, a bigger tree won’t.
A baby tree will usually notice the nitrogen by using it to grow into a bigger tree that has no problem sucking that nitrogen up. And plants can slurp up a LOT of nutrients, most aren’t fussy enough for a mild feeding like that to matter.
Thank you! I used to pour the water on a mature oak without thinking twice, but my baby tree was the last tree I will ever plant, hubs and I both almost killed ourselves digging and planting. Getting old sucks.
It does indeed–the best that can be said for it is that it’s infinitely better than the alternative! And a babby tree planted in the ground is also quite impervious to excess fertilizing–if it was in a pot it might be more of an issue but growing outdoors in the ground it will just think the bird poo is a nice light snack. My dad once planted a three foot long pike under a rosebush that had been struggling to survive and in one year it ran all the way up the 8x8 foot trellis, filled it side to side and went halfway up the pitch of the roof, dad had to get up there and chop it back with shears a couple of times before it calmed down, having finally absorbed all the fish.
That must be a bunch of dirty birds, to crap in their bath water.
Shouldn’t be a whole lot of nitrogen etc., not enough to burn a plant, but if you’re concerned, alternate with clean water.
I see that people use fish tank water for plants (obtained when they’re making water changes) with no problem.
If the birds weren’t crapping in your birdbath water they’d be crapping on the ground around your plants. In both cases, the plants are getting a bird poop snack.
Concentrated bird poop can be a problem, but typical bird bath water doesn’t have that sort of concentrate.
Anything growing around my bird bath would get a bath anyway from the birds and when I change the water. Not scooping it to dispose of anywhere else it just got swept out of the bath.
I once lived in an old rental house with a very slow sink drain. Nothing could touch it to make it drain faster so I washed dishes in dish tub and dumped the dirty flat no suds water outside on a few dinky coconut palm saplings growing outside the side door.
When we moved a year later those palms were taller thicker with lots of fronds. Really too close to the house but nmp.
Thanks everyone for the reassurance. I will happily feed my babby tree bird poop soup while knowing that I am giving it a bit of a treat. The tree also gets hose water because it needs more than a couple of gallons of water a day which is diluting the nitrogen even more.
Before we got our litter bots, I would dump the litter boxes weekly, fill them with water and a few glugs of bleach and let them soak in the sun before pouring the cat pee bleach water on some weeds. I didn’t understand why those weeds were growing so well until a landscaper friend heard my tale of woe and had a hard time not laughing at me.
Apparently the sun was cooking off the bleach so I was watering and feeding the weeds. Of course they were happy weeds. Since then, I’ve always tried to check before trying one of my great ideas involving poop, water and plants.
OP, I don’t see a problem with that at all.
I water plants with fish poop soup (the water removed from water changes) on a regular basis. People say it’s good for the plants. I haven’t done any real side-by-side studies, but the plants are all doing fine.
Of course, most of my tanks have plants in them, so they probably suck up a good deal of the nutrients anyway.