Hair as garden fertilizer

Hello everyone,

I have been thinking recently of an unusual fertilizer—human hair.  I keep my hair very short—about 1/4 inch and I trim my hair on average once per week.  Aside from a roughly marble sized drop of shampoo, I don’t have anything special in my hair.  I usually trim my hair in the bathroom and throw it away.  However, I have been reading recently about hair being especially useful as a source of garden inputs.

I am striving to make my gardens completely free from the need for outside fertility.  I am well on my way as I use urine as a great, quick acting source of nitrogen with a little phosphorus and potassium to boot, and comfrey as a slightly slower acting source of much the same nutrients.  From what I understand, hair is a very rich source of nitrogen but in a very slow release form.  Better still, as my hair rarely gets to even a 1/2 inch, the clippings are very short and unlikely to form tangled or knots in the ground.

I am thinking about just applying to the surface, or maybe chopping it into the beds.  I am curious if anyone else has tried this and wondering if there is any other manner for spreading/applying.  For the record, my bed is extremely rich in fungal activity, having been inoculated with wine caps for over a year.

If anyone has any thoughts, I would love to hear them.

Thanks in advance,

Eric

I've put my hair and my dogs' hair in both my vermicompost bins and directly on the gardens.  I've heard that hair on the gardens can keep squirrels away, but I'm not sure of the efficacy.  The worms did break the hair down, though it took a while.

I like to recycle my used materials this way.  I figure every little bit helps, and it adds up.

Hair is primarily composed of protein, notably alpha-keratin.
Keratin is made up of polypeptide chains of amino acids such as glycine, alanine, and cysteine.
The individual amino acids are held together by polypeptide bonds, and there are multiple other complex bonds involved.
In one single strand of hair, three alpha helices are twisted together to form a protofibril.
Then, nine protofibril join together in a circle around two or more to form an 11 stranded cable that is called microfibril.
Then, hundreds of these microfibrils are cemented into an irregular fibrous bundle called macrofibril.
These macrofibrils are then joined to make the cortex or main body of the hair fiber.

Hair is just about insoluble in water, cold, hot, warm doesn't matter. You can place hair into a compost heap and 12 months later you have a strong probability of finding it still there.

I think you are better off letting the birds use it for their nests than to try and get it to be a garden amendment, there are not any enzymes that break it down, only strong acids or bases dissolve hair.

Redhawk

I have pretty long hair (mid-back length), plus a husband, 3 long-haired cats and a dog; all of our hair/fur goes into the compost and I've never seen any left over in otherwise finished compost. I've also placed scraps of fabric made out of animal hair fibers into the compost and they break down too. Not sure what's doing the job in my compost bin, but I know vermicomposting worms can break down both human hair and natural fabrics, and I would guess there are other creepy crawlies that can do the same.

I've always ran a buzz-cut and also always have put the trimmings in with the compost, my hair is never really more than a couple inches when I cut it so once it goes in the pile I never see it again, not that I'm looking terribly hard for it, it's just gone.

I cut my husband's, my son's, and my own hair;  all haircuts are performed outside:  no cleanup necessary.  I try to keep away from the edibles, though (trying to extricate year-old inch-long hairs from a bunch of thyme is not fun).  Like Redhawk suggests, the birds seem to like the longer trimmings.  

Meg Mitchell, long hair can become wrapped around the legs, feet, and toes of birds, rodents, and other smaller critters creating a tourniquet effect. I’m a registered veterinary nurse in California USA and have seen this firsthand in domestic pets. I have colleagues who work in wildlife rehab and they frequently advise against leaving hair, yarn bits, string, etc. out for wildlife to make use of for the same reasons.
People used to make elaborate collages and mandalas out of the hair of loved ones. A google search for “Victorian hair art” will show many examples. Or paintbrushes? Maybe something artistic would be a better option for your collected hair?

Raytoe Nagy wrote:Meg Mitchell, long hair can become wrapped around the legs, feet, and toes of birds, rodents, and other smaller critters creating a tourniquet effect. I’m a registered veterinary nurse in California USA and have seen this firsthand in domestic pets. I have colleagues who work in wildlife rehab and they frequently advise against leaving hair, yarn bits, string, etc. out for wildlife to make use of for the same reasons.
People used to make elaborate collages and mandalas out of the hair of loved ones. A google search for “Victorian hair art” will show many examples. Or paintbrushes? Maybe something artistic would be a better option for your collected hair?

Hi Raytoe, I think you are mixing two posts together. I'm not recommending anyone leave hair out for birds and rodents; I put mine in the compost bin. Cheers.

I wonder if hair could be used as a coconut coir or peat moss substitute...

Not human, but animal hair... In the Basque Country our local heirloom sheep that is adapted to our climate is called the "latxa" sheep, and latxa is Basque for "scratchy," basically.

As you can imagine, it is not highly prized for making textiles. Years ago, it was used for making the famous Basque berets (with a lining), some traditional wool socks (best to put on something else underneath) and mattress stuffing. Now all of these uses have declined almost to extinction and the wool is a waste product.

This wool is legendary for its indestructability. It will not burn. You can leave it outside in a pile for many years and it will be unchanged. You can bury it, compost it, whatever you like, and it does not seem to be affected in the least.

I wonder if latxa wool, shredded or cut into short pieces so as not to kill a lot of wildlife, might do what William is asking and be a good soil-lightening amendment, i.e. a substitute for coconut coir or peat?

I have seen for sale wool pellets designed as a slug repellent.  They are said to naturally break down and act as a fertiliser.  You can also buy wool compost which also contains bracken - two otherwise under-utilised products of the uplands marketed as a replacement for precious peat which is far better left where it is than pandering to urban appetites for pretty flowers.  It's likely to be from Herdwick sheep, the wool from which is so coarse it was pretty much only ever any good for carpets.  They sound like those Basque sheep.  

I also put hair trimmings in the compost and have never seen them again, but my eldest son at university, with very long hair, put all his combings out the window and by the end of the year there was a sort of mat on the ground.  Ugh.

I raise Angoras & other wool breeds in my show rabbit herd, and almost always use the wool in the garden after seasonal clipping since I'm not a proficient spinner, yet, and end up with a few wheelbarrow loads of clipped wool every 3 months.
I've found it works well as mulch, in compost, and to keep soil from coming out the bottom of pots. I've recently started using it in my buried hugels as a nitrogen source, and because it holds water like a sponge.
I also use it for nesting box material for my poultry (Angora rabbit wool is the warmest natural fiber).
It definitely does break down (eventually)... But more slowly than other organic materials. It seems to break down more quickly when it's mixed with wood chips mulch, manure, or compost. Of course, rabbit wool is different in texture/density than human hair, so I don't know how that may impact the ability for it to break down.

I have a friend who runs a small herd of sheep and goats she uses for fiber arts stuff. She regularly uses scrap/waste fiber as mulch in her garden. She puts most straw and wood chips on top as they come available. It doesn't seem to build up in her soil and her veggies bump so there's another data point

nearly three years ago in January, my daughter and her boyfriend both shaved their heads. They put the hair in my garden but apparently didn`t bury it deep enough, or maybe even just spread it around, because to this day I am finding clumps of long hair. I always put dog hair and other random hair (hairballs, from sweeping the floor, lint from the washing machine, etc) into my organic trash, which goes into bokashi and then gets buried, and I never see it again, but this hair is still kicking around. (when I find it, I bury it.) I see people on youtube using large amounts of hair or feathers, but it seems to be overwintered under mulch or a tarp.

I've recently been using wool/hair as a "screen" around the compost cage in my keyhole project in an effort to keep the sandy soil from falling through the openings and filling the cage before I get the compost built up. (http://permies.com/t/130581/permaculture-projects/Sunken-Raised-Hugel-Keyhole-Lasagna)
In my observations I've noticed that the hair at the bottom has already broken down quite a bit after only a few weeks. I assume this is due, in part, to the rabbit manure I used in filling the bed, as well as the high moisture level in the bottom of the bed/cage. While the bed isn't "hot," I would think the nitrogen in the manure, combined with the wool, shredded leaves, and woody bits, has allowed it to warm up a little; especially on the days I pour the contents of the urine jug over the hair.
Since the wool I use on the surface of the garden, as mulch, tends to go months before breaking down, maybe it's the combo of the moisture and the heat that is the key to getting it to compost quickly?

I also put some balled up rabbit wool in the worm bins a few days ago to see how it does as bedding/food. The worms seem to love laying their cocoons in balls of long-fibered sphagnum, so I'm curious to see if they'll do the same with the wool balls.

As far As I can remember from my 20-years-ago-classes the hair creatinine has a strong propensity for absorbing heavy metals due to tiol group pesence  ( te -SH group
with excellent chelating properties).
Thus their concentration in hair can  be as much as 50 times higher  than in blood and urine.

Eric Hanson wrote:
I am thinking about just applying to the surface, or maybe chopping it into the beds.  I am curious if anyone else has tried this and wondering if there is any other manner for spreading/applying.  For the record, my bed is extremely rich in fungal activity, having been inoculated with wine caps for over a year.

If anyone has any thoughts, I would love to hear them.

Thanks in advance,

Eric

I use the hair that builds up on my hairbrush in the bottom of flowerpots as a net to keep the soil inside.

Growing up, my grandfather would cut all of the boys of the families hair. He would use it on the perimeter of his garden. He stated that it helped deter animals from the garden because of the people smell.

I can't attest to the effectiveness of the technique, but its very vivid in my memory.

If one wanted the hair "gone" quicker, or a faster release of nutrients, I wonder if hair char might be a way? I have tried charring hair or wool, just to see what would happen, by stuffing a tin can as full as possible, turning it upside down, burying the opening slightly in sand and making a fire on top. The result is a black, bubbly, brittle and evil-smelling mass. The individual strands of hair melt completely. I take the smell (which persists on the char for a long time) to be a sign that at least some of the sulphur is still in there, since various sulphur compounds are what's responsible for the nasty smell of burnt hair. To what degree the nitrogen persists, I can't say, but I suspect at least some of it does, and possibly in more immediately accessible forms than in the hair itself. Whether that's desirable or not depends on the situation, I suppose.

The thing about hair containing heavy metals might be a concern, but then again, the heavy metals in your body all came from your diet in the first place. Putting your hair in the soil in whatever shape won't add a larger total amount of heavy metals to the ground than if you'd composted all your food.

My hair all goes into my lazy compost and then the garden. That's just my philosophy regarding any organic matter. It kind of all vanishes in a couple years. If it isn't being metabolized away to base nutrients, then it's being broken up and supplying textural variety. It's all good either way.

We collect our great pyrenees’ fur for use as insulation for the chicken coop I am finishing up, and for use in cob. I have also seen birds come pick it up when left on the ground, which I hope helps them out. I would bet it would help with predator deterrence by camouflaging their scent. Human hair may do likewise, as predators generally fear people.

Despite what I said above about our local sheep breed's seemingly indestructible hair, Geoff Lawton on the other hand used to say that a well made hot compost pile takes care of everything. In fact, he recommended putting some kind of a dead animal (roadkill, a rat you caught, butchering waste...) right in the center of your compost pile in order to jump start the composting process. He said that you will find no sign of it at all (no hair, no bones, no nothing) once the composting is finished. And that there's nothing better to accelerate the composting process.

In the absence of a carcass, I suppose you could use a pile of comfrey leaves or some other notorious composting accelerator there in the middle of the pile.

Anyway, if you want the hair visibly gone but want to use its minerals as garden input, maybe it's worth a try to put it there in the middle of a hot compost pile on top of an animal carcass and see what happens. I haven't had occasion to try this yet, "your mileage may differ."

Funny aside, Bill Mollison famously asked to be composted when he died (semi-jokingly). I don't know how serious he was or whether that's what actually happened, but it was a humorous and interesting suggestion at least... RIP Bill.

I feel that hair does not add any nutrients that are needed by a garden.

I feel the compost pile is a perfect place to get rid of any hair.

Permaculture offers many solutions to many problems.

If only people didn't use so many iffy products on their hair, I would 💯 look for used of it.
Same goes for pet hair, and even sheep's wool if it has been treated for parasites

As Dr. Redhawk described above, hair is largely a complex of interwoven proteins. It is obviously hard to break down, but proteins are nitrogen based, and so I count it as slow release N/green matter for composting. I would use it sparingly and not expect hair or fur to contribute to the initial heat that will be necessary to break the hair down. It will likely help feed the pile long term as it finishes though once the hot period has consumed other N sources and broken it down a bit.

I have also tried mulching with old dog fur, and while his is a brilliant beautiful white, it stands out as unnatural looking and after it got dirty on the ground, it was aesthetically ugly. I was happy that birds came and collected most of it for their nests, in return leaving their droppings upon each take off.

In my experience even long and coarse hair will disappear as long as it is in good contact with the soil and not too matted - it needs to be spread out a bit, but not buried. By disappear I mean from sight, and in about a year - whether it actually breaks down or is drawn into the soil by worms and similar I don't know. The amounts I have experience with are not huge, but a bit too large for me to believe birds have taken it all for nests, and I don't recall seeing any in fallen bird nests or when I clean out bird boxes.

I have tried a little wool mulch (it is supposed to deter roe deer, which are a problem where I live); it forms mats which definitely take longer to disappear than scattered human hair, likely because I apply it thicker and more consciously as a top layer - the hair gets scattered and tends to mix in with other mulch (and vegetation).

In waterlogged conditions wool and hair can literally last hundreds (possibly thousands) of years, by the way. This implies that it otherwise is broken down mainly by biological activity.

Something I heard elsewhere recently made me think. I normally compost hair but I wonder if it would be good to make into garden twine or twine for other tying uses, if it is resistant to decomposition like that?

The clothes moth evolved from nests, where they were feeding on feathers. The larvae host bacteria capable of digesting hair, but both moth and bacteria need more than pure wool or feathers: they need dirt (as in filth, not soil) containing other nutrients. So the means of degradation are out there.

Sheep shearers I have known use bad wool to keep weeds down. So, I do too. Hair, too, though I don’t have enough of that to matter much. However, from time to time I do process raw sheep/alpaca/goat fleeces for hand spinning, so periodically I have waste from that.

I put it in the bottom of containers. It holds water, and varmints seem not to like chewing through it.
I also put it around plants. It does discourage weeds. But it needs to be held down with something - else when it dries it will blow around.  I use a couple of stones.  A couple of river-type rocks seem to show up every time I dig a hole. Of course if it gets loose, eventually birds will clean that up.

Helloooo,
A couple of days ago, lots of rain, then, is it snowing? No. It was a major hail storm. A white out around the house.
Why talk weather when hair is the subject?
Well, therr has been no winter to speak of for several years. My Japanese mustard plants are  a treat for December, January and now February slugs.
In another post we shared our solutions for gastropod attack. Some say that they only eat damaged and weak plants, haha.
A possible means of protection is hair, not fleece, tried it.
Longer hair can be wound around stems to deter slugs and co. Hair smell could also discourage rabbits.
There’s fleece around fruit trees, as mulch, maybe keeps deer at bay, I see less damage on the trunks.it disappears with the passage of time, not my concern. I expect someone finds it useful.
I have wound hair on fruit trees, a labour of love and a game with the wind to see how q uickly the hair is sent on its way.
Have a good Sunday, I’m still coppicing with hedge laying to follow after a good strong coffee the sun is shining and blessings to us all
M-H

I kinda like that old threads like these get revived from time to time.  Unfortunately, I started this thread with good intentions and just a bit of knowledge—hair is composed partly from protein and protein contains nitrogen.  Further, I know fully well that hair does not break down quickly so I hypothesized that hair could possibly provide nitrogen slowly as it broke down over a very long time.

Unfortunately, RedHawk set the record straight—while hair can’t possibly be permanent, its rate of decomposition is so very slow that it is meaningless on a human timescale.

So the short version is that hair will not be a useful source of nitrogen.

Maybe—MAAAAAAYBE. Chopped up hair mixed throughout soil might help condition soil—make it loose and again, maybe cling to water and hold on to it during times of drought.

But all of this is purely hypothetical.  I know that I find my own hair somewhat difficult to dry as it seems to hold on to moisture (this was in the past.  My hair now never exceeds 1/4 inch long and when it gets that long it feels shaggy and I can’t stand it.  But it does dry very quickly!).

So I guess the theme of this post is that hair will not work as I originally hypothesized.  As a sort of conditioner, maybe, but again, this is speculation.


Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:

Unfortunately, RedHawk set the record straight—while hair can’t possibly be permanent, its rate of decomposition is so very slow that it is meaningless on a human timescale.

So the short version is that hair will not be a useful source of nitrogen.

Eric

Presumably variations in soil chemistry and soil life, climate, and maybe hair type all play roles, but surely "meaningless on a human timescale" is an exaggeration in all but a few special cases? Hair does break down, and feathers, in compost or in the ground, and from my observations it seems to take only a couple of seasons. I am not 100% sure, of course, and I will definitely pay attention when working in the garden this spring. I do know where I put quite a lot of hair in the spring of 2023 under some other mulch , and I know it was still visibly there later that year- it cannot all have been removed by birds.

On the other hand I do realize both that this is all anecdotal, and that I have no idea what the actual fertilizing effect is. Hair (and wool, and fur, and feathers) has a lot of volume per weight, and maybe the amounts needed to actually add significant nitrogen really would take an unreasonably long time to break down. If I had a bit more time, space and energy, I would love to try some sort of semi-scientific experiment - three identical beds, one with no fertilizer, one with hair, one with some other fertilizer - somehow covered to ensure the hair stayed there. Would likely need to run a few seasons, though, and then the question arises whether to keep adding hair and fertilizer to their respective beds. Might also be interesting just to bury some hair, and check on it every year to see what happens to it.

Also, there are plenty of bugs that eat hair and live off of it (those bloody clothes moths for instance!) so if any keratin-digesting bugs are present, I suppose hair would decompose way faster than otherwise.

Regardless, I see no harm in putting it outside rather than in a landfill or ocean or an incinerator.  Even if it did break down more quickly, the average person likely doesn’t have enough spare hair to generate much fertilizer anyway.
But it’s been a fun discussion and I’ve enjoyed it. And, anytime I can put something outside, whether in the compost, to the worm bin, or as mulch, I’m happy to keep it out of the garbage. Every little bit helps.

L Anderson wrote:Regardless, I see no harm in putting it outside rather than in a landfill or ocean or an incinerator.  Even if it did break down more quickly, the average person likely doesn’t have enough spare hair to generate much fertilizer anyway.
But it’s been a fun discussion and I’ve enjoyed it. And, anytime I can put something outside, whether in the compost, to the worm bin, or as mulch, I’m happy to keep it out of the garbage. Every little bit helps.

Longer hair, as well as strands of wool can be placed outside for birds to use in nest building. Large amounts of feathers, cut in tiny pieces or pulverized offer this composition Feather Meal (13-0-0) - 50 lb Bag but that is Hydrolyzed feathers. Note also that:
However, raw, unprocessed feathers will not be readily available to the plant and may even hinder growth if added directly to the soil.
http://www.7springsfarm.com/products/feather-meal-13-0-0-50-lb-bag?srsltid=AfmBOopgiJvIW-HVoEF-QPBJN1silr_s4-NpzppvyPe6uZio8aeyJwaZ
The slowness in breaking down hydrolyzed feathers can yield another advantage: It will not burn plants.
Eternally curious, I asked How do you hydrolyze feathers? the answer:
To hydrolyze feathers, a common method is to first treat them with a strong alkaline solution (like sodium hydroxide) at high temperatures to partially break down the keratin structure, then follow up with a second stage using a proteolytic enzyme to further break down the protein into smaller peptides and amino acids, often under milder conditions and adjusted pH levels; this process is typically done in a controlled environment with precise temperature and pressure parameters depending on the desired outcome.
So I guess that's beyond my wallet's ability to do. Bummer!

For what it's worth: I mentioned above that I spread some hair in the garden in the spring of 2023, and covered it with some other mulch (just a few centimeters of grass and weeds) - when I had a look last week I only found a few fragments. As in, more than 90 % of the hair was gone. The bits that I did find were partly broken down, sort of friable. Also, I paid extra attention when cleaning out two birdboxes just next to the vegetable garden earlier this spring, and found no hair.
So, at least in some conditions, hair will break down in a couple of years. How much nitrogen (or anything else) it contributes I have no idea, but I'll assume it is more than nothing! Also, it is another small thing which I can keep out of the garbage. It bothers me to send anything that could turn into soil away to be incinerated.