Why use hair in your plants or compost?
- Boost growth overall, and new leaves
- Replaces the need for fertilising, as hair does this for you
- Retains moisture, which means watering less
- Repels pests, and can deter slugs when used at the base of outdoors plants
- It can also deter deer, kangaroos and any other larger animals who might destroy your plants!
How can you use hair in your garden or houseplants:
- Put hair at the bottom of your pot before planting, and at the top once planted for the best effects. If you don't want hairy pots, then just put the hair at the bottom!
- Use it outdoors, around the base of plants, to deter slugs and pests
- Chop it up and mix it in with your compost heap, to slowly release nitrogen and attract micro-organisms
- Add lots of hair to create a mat onto areas which struggle to grow plants, or need an extra bit of TLC, as the hair breaks down, lots of nitrogen will be released, improving the soil health
Our Top Tips:
- The best plants to use for this experiment are ones that are Nitrogen loving, as this is what the hair is giving back to the soil. Plus, it’s easy to see when plants are deficient in Nitrogen, as they lose the deep green colour in their leaves.
- If possible, try to avoid feeding the plants as this negates the need for hair. It could change the results of the study, and if you’re using hair as a boost then you can save your plant food!
- If your plants become infested by bugs, don’t panic! We recommend treating them ASAP to avoid longer term leaf-damage or losing your plant. In our experiment, the hair-less plants succumbed to the bugs first, and lost the most leaves during the infestation.
- We don’t recommend using dyed hair for houseplants, or any gardening that grows edible food due to the chemicals potentially being released over time.