Hello. Any of you who have robust experience for the compatibility of the three: garlic, onion, and human urine, to isopods in garden and pot soil?

Maybe for 2 years I’ve been burying scraps into my small raised garden of about 1m long x 0.25m wide x 0.3m tall, located just under our front living room windows, for the hope to lure earthworms, but the isopods and beetles manifested instead. Beetles are only the size of silver pin heads, while the isopods have tinge of red, and adult size is about the length of a mung bean seed, of course not as thick. They’re really small and delicate.

After 2 years I got enticed to use human urine (our own) as fertilizer. I don’t really dilute it, I just dig a hole then pour the liquid and wait for it to fully settle down then re-cover with the dug soil.

Lately I noticed the population of the isopods really went down after less than a year. In fact I don’t see them anymore when I dig soil anywhere there. But I don’t really know if the urine affected them as my dig sites are often the same 2 locations since there are already existing plants. I only started to really see them again after I transplanted a Papaya from its pot to a bigger pot yesterday, which delighted me of their surviving small numbers there.

Still I don’t really know if the urine affected the bugs or if their population simply dwindled on its own. The urine surely would not spread across the entirety of my raised garden as those are 2 same locations, and so the bugs have way larger safe areas to go to.

My adult chili pepper plant in a separate big pot also died, and my suspect was the urine because I didn’t dilute it much, but I’m not really sure too, because that chili plant had been producing fruits continuously for maybe 3 months straight, and I don’t know if that chili pepper plant was in fact really a perennial because I got it from the wet market. So my 2 suspects are the urine and the true lifespan of the plant.

Then how about garlic and onion plants, are they compatible with the isopods? Right now I have on the table 2 garlic bulbs, 1 red onion, and 1 white onion with sprouts already so I placed it on water in a small cup.

Now after researching, I think my bugs are sow bugs because they don’t form a ball.

I really want the isopods to prosper because I noticed the buried materials were gone way, way faster.

Thanks in advance for any enlightenment.

  • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    That…is a lot of pee. There’s a difference between peeing on your compost pile or in your garden occasionally and pouring gallons of undiluted, dehydrated piss on your plants. That right there will kill all the microorganisms in your soil in addition to adding too many nutrients and too much salt. Probably stop doing that

    Isopods don’t care about garlic or onions, they care about organic matter to eat, shady spots to hide, and moisture

    • Arc🌰@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Thanks for the quick reply. So maybe indeed urine was the culprit of the sow bug’s demise after all. I thought they were robust enough for both feces and urine, as I have seen some internet pics of pill bugs feasting on I think dog poop, although those are big pill bugs and not the small sow bugs in mine, and of course those using isopods as clean up crews in tanks, hence I arrived to the wrong conclusion. Interestingly, the small pinhead-sized beetles are not affected.

      Just when I thought I got endless supply of fertilizer for almost per day. I was even dreaming of having a new raised enclosure just for the urine to be buried regularly (along with scraps) and thinking to have the sow bugs to have a feast, hence to have ready-to-use soil for pots. Before the appearance of these sow bugs, the last I’ve seen them were decades ago.

      Luckily I still have surviving numbers from the Papaya pot which I must take care to remultiply. Back quite a while, I remember whenever I scoop the soil from the raised bed, there were immediately numerous sow bugs but none today anymore. I’m glad back some months I scooped some and put in the papaya pot.

      Also glad that both onion and garlic plants have no effect on them as I remember reading they have antibacterial or something properties.

      Thanks again, my friend. 👍