Topic: Hair

[telboy]

Hi All,
I have wondered in the past about a useful use of hair clippings from male/female/unisex salons.
I have asked many times and the usual reply is 'out with the rubbish'.
Now I know that you know different!!
Can the product be composted? Someone said yes.
I'm all ears.

[Kerry]

i have read in guides to composting that hair can be composted, along with things i had not thought of, like the contents of the hoover.
i've not done this, i'd be interested to know if anyone has, and how the hair is actually 'rotted'!

[gavin]

Hi telboy - I've not tried it.  It's supposed to be a good thing to add - but any website with more than a cursory look at composting seems to recommend using it in small quantities, and well-mixed through?

Try it and let us all know?

All best - Gavin

[Doris_Pinks]

My friend in the States collects it from hairdressers to use as a deer repellant!! (they nibble her roses!)
Funny thing for me is I could use the family's hair, but the thought of using someone I don't knows hair....ugh! Bit like cleaning out the plughole in a hotel! :o

[john_miller]

Hair has a lot of nitrogen compounds in it (like nails). This would make it quite beneficial on a compost heap.
I hope your friend had more success with human hair than I did DP. It didn't dissuade the deer from continuing to munch on my lettuce or melons when I tried it- luckily the State of Vermont compensates growers for deer damage!

[busy_lizzie]

Yuck! I am not particularly squeamish, but I'm with you DorisP something about using someones else's hair is a bit stomach heaving.  (this is from the person who shifted a half a ton of cow dung in August, without batting a "hair")  ;D busy_lizzie   

[Glyn]

I have a few customer's who use hair-clippings from my barber shop, mixed in around their tomato plants. I have tried one or two...nice.

Over here (Canada)  they also use hair for keeping deer, groundhogs, etc..at bay.
Some swear urine does the trick also?

[Debs]

On a programme called 'Kitchen Gardener' , shown in the North east, the presenter stated that cat hair was a good repellant to deter mice from nibbling at crops.

Anything is worth a try...

Debs ;)

[Plottie]

I'm with the squeamish ones here...........first reaction was YUCK!!!
Think I'll stick to the more traditional compostables!!!
Plottie  :)

[Mrs Ava]

I cut Ava and number one sons hair and it all goes on the heap.  How can you be squeamish, you bung all your rotten veg in the heap, some people pee on them, bug and possibly rodents live in your heaps, and you happily wade through mountains of grass and hay that has come out of the smelly end of cows and horses...and in some cases pigs and hephalumps!

A little piece written by the lovely Christopher Lloyd, 'The Well-Tempered Garden'

'We are probably all a little cranky in our ideas on manuring.  The young man who used to collect the contents from his friends ashtrays for later application to his roses is a case in point.  Tea leaves get saved exclusively as a mulch for camellias, simply because the tea plant is a camellia species.  For my part, I cast all my nail parings out of the bathroom window so as to feed the ceanothus below with hoof and horn.  Since, at 30 years, this is the oldest ceanothus in my garden, and it is still flourishing, I naturally congratulate myself on a sagacious policy.'

[telboy]

Hi Again,

Thanks for the contributions.

E.J., it seems as if it does compost.

However, as I was contemplating a Village compost scheme and shipping in bagloads of the stuff, maybe a prob.?

[ACE]

If anybody is shaving their cat, put me down for a bit of fluff.

[tim]

Of COURSE it's good. Just as are the sweepings from your floors, all fluffy & nice. Like wool shoddy?

Animal hair goes down quicker than human. But keep it thin & chopped. Deer - yes - all over Dartmoor they do it around their roses. Nets of it!!  = Tim

[diver]

I have been putting hair from brushing my cat and my from my neighbours dogs on my compost and it seems to rot down well

[john_miller]

But does it work Tim?
As to Glyn's question about urine my experience is negative there too. I took over the care of a (beautiful) 'full' male Borzoi (I thought the extra hormones may be a deterrent). For the first two years I had him I used to camp out in my fields during  summer nights to keep him in the area and to increase the amount of liquid that would be distributed around my crops. By the end of the second season damage started to increase indicating to me that the deer were getting used to even that. I had hoped that such strong scent from a predator would dissuade them but, presumably when food or population pressure increases, it's effect diminishes (one night when I walked into my lettuce field I counted 17 sets of eyes reflecting my torch light!).
Eventually I used mothballs around the melons to great effect. Lettuce is just impracticable to protect unfortunately (about a hectare annually, with multiple plantings)- and was easier to prove deer damage to the state game warden (who were responsible for assessing the damage and submitting their findings to the state for compensation purposes)!

[salad muncher]

Sorry but I know hair and contents of hoover bag can be used but I cant even so much as touch even my mothers hair so to go putting it with my lovely horse manure would keep me away from my roses and allotment !

I thought hair did not de-compose so does it just add texture to soil, or thinking about it does it get burnt in manure pile?

[john_miller]

Like any organic material hair decomposes- indeed some people are unlucky enough to be infected with breakdown fungi while it is still attached to their scalp. With all the tens of thousands of years that Homo erectus and Homo sapiens have been around if it didn't we would be knee deep in the stuff by now! There is no unique burning process involved.

[salad muncher]

Like any organic material hair decomposes- indeed some people are unlucky enough to be infected with breakdown fungi while it is still attached to their scalp. With all the tens of thousands of years that Homo erectus and Homo sapiens have been around if it didn't we would be knee deep in the stuff by now! There is no unique burning process involved.

As that all make sense John then what is the reason for a corpse found thousands of years old that would still have its hair, bone does not decompose but giving it the right fungi/acid or flame then it can be eaten away hence the same for hair does not decompose but give an acid or fungi or flame we have broken it down to it's chemical elements. Maybe the word "decompose" was the wrong word to use? should have said "hair is a tough little bleeder" ;)

[aquilegia]

I put my own hair (from the bath plughole and my brush) on the compost heap, but also am squeamish about other people's. I'd also worry about all the chemicals that might be on salon hair.

[john_miller]

The rate of decomposition of any organic material depends upon the local environment in which it is taking place. In certain situations ancient corpses have been discovered in an almost perfect state of preservation. The recent discovery of the body of an archer released by a retreating glacier in the Alps or the man's corpse found in a Danish bog in the 1970's were so perfectly preserved that anthropologists were even able to discern the last meals of the deceased even though they were millenia old would be illustrations of this phenomenon. In many situations hair is more resilient than other tissues. In no situation is it eternal. It's longevity depends upon the correct decomposition agents and conditions being present.
At the other extreme I heard an interview with a diver who was involved in discovering the wreck of the Titanic mention that he and his comrades were most surprised finding many pairs of shoes randomly spread about the ship. These indicated where the bodies of the victims had settled. If the bodies had been attacked by predacious marine animals the shoes would have been scattered but their close proxomity indicated that the bodies had dissolved into the water- bones, hair, everything. This took place in, at most, 80 years, and probably a lot less. 

Maybe the word "decompose" was the wrong word to use? should have said "hair is a tough little bleeder" ;)

From MSN Encarta:
decompose:

transitive and intransitive verb 
 
1. biology: rot, to break down organic matter from a complex to a simpler form, mainly through the action of fungi and bacteria, or undergo this process

 
2. break down into pieces: to break something down, or be broken down, into smaller or simpler parts

 
3. chemistry: break down into constituent parts: to separate or cause something to separate into constituent parts

With any of the definitions decompose is the word I would use- yours is more prosaic though!