Potentially a fertiliser factory!
Last week we trumpeted the highlights of bagging, stacking and using leaves in the garden.
This you could argue is common sense to most gardeners.
But for many novice and new gardeners sometimes this invaluable resource can be overlooked, and indeed for many us experienced gardeners we can forget to gather the leaves when they’re easily gathered….we leave them until they go all mushy, making it twice the effort!
This week our topic is a more hair-raising idea, perhaps and easy to ridicule, but hair makes for a valuable resource to gardeners.
Yes hair, plan old hairdresser floor hair. You see human hair (or any hair for that matter) is a valuable source of Nitrogen and is another useful form of organic matter for the soil.
Dog hair adds fertility to your soil
When we say that hair is a useful form of Nitrogen it could have 25X more manure than Horse manure, so its potent stuff, and best of all the Nitrogen isn’t released quickly, it takes a number of years before the hair is broken down, so it gives the plants a slowly released source of fertiliser.
In addition to this wonderful source of free fertiliser that hair offers us, there is also some pesticide properties, the use of Human Hair around vegetable gardens are useful in deterring Rabbits, Cats & Foxes due to their scent, and the course nature of the material works as a slug deterrent too.
A question I get is “What about the hair colorant and chemicals?”
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Well there is little scientific evidence that this does any harm or damage to the soil, the crop or indeed could do any damage to us in turn. I’ll compare the risks from hair chemical residue to the chemicals secreted by pressure treated timber.
Currently I’m based in the Donegal ETB centre in Ballyraine, where I have a new Horticultural program running, so I benefit from getting all the hair from the Hairdresser Training section, which we are currently stockpiling to use in new raised beds we are building with Horticulture trainees.
You could easily have access to many handfuls of free fertiliser, think about what you do with the hair when the dogs moulting…..is there a dog groomer in the area you could get the hair from, what about your hairdresser??
The benefits of adding organic matter to soil are huge, from making the soil more nutrient retentive to making it easier to cultivate the list is extensive, however sometimes we get too focused on manures, seaweeds are other products which we in turn have to drive to collect whereas if we expand our thoughts we may have sources of great free fertility for our garden much closer to home.
Gareth Austin
Gareth Austin is resident Horticulturist with BBC Radio Foyle, a member of the Chartered Institute of Horticulturists and Horticultural Lecturer with the National Learning Network. For more see www.garethaustin.com or join Gareth on Twitter @GardenerGareth .
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