Want keep your garden green and plants growing better than ever before? Well, here's a tip from Union Minister Nitin Gadkari: water them with urine.

Attending an event in Nagpur, Gadkari said he has been collecting his urine for a while now and had amassed it in a 50-litre plastic drum for watering his garden in his official bunglaow in Delhi. Ummm, yeah you read that right.

“Daily, I collect urine in a 50-litre can. It is then used for the plants in my New Delhi residence,” Gadkari was quoted as saying in the Indian Express. He claimed that plants that got “urine therapy” showed better growth than those that got “plain water”.

"I'm telling you, there was such a big difference, they (the urine watered ones) grew one-and-a-half times bigger than other plants," Gadkari said in a video uploaded on YouTube by ABP Majha.

The minister said that human urine's abundant urea and nitrogen compounds nourishes plants and it could be the next alternative to fertiliser.

"I am just telling you about urine, I'm not going any further than that. This is manure. You keep a 50-litre can in your house. You can try this out. This has urea and nitrogen. And, if you water an orange tree with this, you observe its growth rate. You observe the growth and number of flowers, fruit --- this is very good manure. To save money is to earn money. Being industrious and innovative is important," he was quoted as saying in the Telegraph.

While no one's questioning the minister's knowledge of science, who we really feel bad for is his gardener who had to water his one-acre Delhi plot with the collected urine. Gadkari said he had instructed his gardener to water one plant with urine and the other with the collected urine.

So if you're ever visiting Gadkari's gardens and see bigger trees than you expected, you know now why.

- Manohar