Add hair to a compost pile
 

Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?
Does anyone have cites about it?

Thanks,

Dick
--
Richard D. Adams
Ellicott City, MD

Add hair to a compost pile
 

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:47:44 +0000 (UTC), (Dick
Adams) wrote:

Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?
Does anyone have cites about it?

Thanks,

Dick
You can add hair to compost heaps but I stuff pet hair into an old
peanut feeder and birds take it for nesting material.

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling happily from the dryer end of Swansea Bay where
the four seasons are salt,pepper,mustard and vinegar.

Add hair to a compost pile
 

In article , says...

Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?

Yes, I always put pet hair in the bin I used to collect sacks of human
whenever I went to the hairdresser (I've given that up now that the
chemical and dye content is so high).
I still do collect sacks of sheep wool waste from the shearing shed
floor, makes great compost.

Composting wool was an old North-country gardeners practice when
gardeners used to collect shoddy from the woollen mills.

Janet

Add hair to a compost pile
 

On 31/01/2012 10:54, Martin wrote:
On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:44:44 +0000, wrote:

On 2012-01-31 08:12:11 +0000, Chris said:

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:47:44 +0000 (UTC), (Dick
Adams) wrote:

Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?
Does anyone have cites about it?

My wife cuts my and her own hair. The cuttings go on the compost heap,
as do the contents of the vacuum cleaner which contain cat hair and
fluff from woollen carpets. They all rot down and provide nitrogen,
although fluff from synthetic (nylon?) carpets is persistent.

Ours goes out the window to drift where it will and be used for nesting birds.

and toupees :-)

Presumably for the bald-headed eagles?

--
David in Normandy.
To e-mail you must include the password FROG on the
subject line, or it will be automatically deleted
by a filter and not reach my inbox.

Add hair to a compost pile
 

Janet wrote in
:

In article , says...

Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?

Yes, I always put pet hair in the bin I used to collect sacks of
human
whenever I went to the hairdresser (I've given that up now that the
chemical and dye content is so high).
I still do collect sacks of sheep wool waste from the shearing shed
floor, makes great compost.

Composting wool was an old North-country gardeners practice when
gardeners used to collect shoddy from the woollen mills.

Janet



Janet,
As far as I know shoddy is recycled wool.
How can that be because in the mills it was freshly woven so not recycled.
Can you help me with this strange request?

Baz

Add hair to a compost pile
 

Chris Hogg wrote in
:

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:40:31 GMT, Baz wrote:


My wife has in the past done her own spinning and knitting. She would
buy a whole unwashed fleece from a local shall-holder with a few
rare-breed sheep when they are shorn. A certain proportion of the
fleece is unuseable, as being too matted or filthy, particularly the
bits around the sheep's rear end, and has to be discarded. I imagine
the same sort of thing happens with woollen mills. She knows it as
breech wool, but shoddy is inferior wool and the term would probably
be equally applicable.


Understood, Sort of.
Thanks Chris.

Baz

Add hair to a compost pile
 

In article ,
says...

Janet wrote in
:

In article , says...

Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?

Yes, I always put pet hair in the bin I used to collect sacks of
human
whenever I went to the hairdresser (I've given that up now that the
chemical and dye content is so high).
I still do collect sacks of sheep wool waste from the shearing shed
floor, makes great compost.

Composting wool was an old North-country gardeners practice when
gardeners used to collect shoddy from the woollen mills.

Janet



Janet,
As far as I know shoddy is recycled wool.
How can that be because in the mills it was freshly woven so not recycled.
Can you help me with this strange request?

Not all the mills were weaving; some were spinning, and not all the
spinning mills used new wool. They also recycled old wool garments and
spun the fibre into shoddy, a cheaper yarn. Which is why the word shoddy
now means lower quality.

IIRC the Yorshire rhubarb industry used lots of shoddy.

Janet.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossar..._manufacturing

Shoddy
Recycled or remanufactured wool. Historically generated from loosely
woven materials. Benjamin Law invented shoddy and mungo, as such, in
England in 1813. He was the first to organise, on a larger scale, the
activity of taking old clothes and grinding them down into a fibrous state
that could be re-spun into yarn. The shoddy industry was centred on the
towns of Batley, Morley, Dewsbury and Ossett in West Yorkshire, and
concentrated on the recovery of wool from rags. The importance of the
industry can be gauged by the fact that even in 1860 the town of Batley
was producing over 7000 tonnes of shoddy. At the time there were 80 firms
employing a total of 550 people sorting the rags. These were then sold to
shoddy manufacturers of which there were about 130 in the West Riding.

Add hair to a compost pile
 

On 31/01/2012 04:47, Dick Adams wrote:
Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?
Does anyone have cites about it?

Thanks,

Dick
--
Richard D. Adams
Ellicott City, MD



We put hair out in chicken wire bags, hung from trees. Birds take it
for nesting. Personally, I wouldn't want to put hair in the compost
bin. I doubt it would do any harm, but it doesn't break down well.

--
Spider
from high ground in SE London
gardening on clay

Add hair to a compost pile
 

In article , says...

We put hair out in chicken wire bags, hung from trees. Birds take it
for nesting. Personally, I wouldn't want to put hair in the compost
bin. I doubt it would do any harm, but it doesn't break down well.

I've not found that.

Janet

What is it that's worrying you about putting it on the compost heap?

Add hair to a compost pile
 

On 2012-01-31, Dick Adams wrote:

Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?
Does anyone have cites about it?

I can't imagine why not. If I had my hair cut at home, I'd certainly
throw it in: organic material, without much moisture.

Add hair to a compost pile
 

"Dick Adams" wrote in message
...
Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?

Yes, it's ok to do it, but as others have said, during the spring I put pet
combings into a mesh birdfeeder and it is eagerly taken by blue tits etc to
line their nests.
When I clear out the nestboxes in my garden during the winter, it's so nice
to see an empty nest lined with the hair I provided.

Add hair to a compost pile
 

On 31/01/2012 19:21, Janet wrote:
In , says...

We put hair out in chicken wire bags, hung from trees. Birds take it
for nesting. Personally, I wouldn't want to put hair in the compost
bin. I doubt it would do any harm, but it doesn't break down well.

I've not found that.

Janet


No doubt it depends on the hair type, but some hair and especially human
hair persists long after death. I've certainly found hair, both human
and animal, lingering in my garden long after its cute and fluffy by
date :~/

--
Spider
from high ground in SE London
gardening on clay

Add hair to a compost pile
 

On 2012-01-31, Martin wrote:

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:24:24 +0000, Spider wrote:

No doubt it depends on the hair type, but some hair and especially human
hair persists long after death. I've certainly found hair, both human
and animal, lingering in my garden long after its cute and fluffy by
date :~/

In The Yorkshire Museum in York, there is the hair of a Roman woman
found when a Roman cemetery was excavated where the station is now.


The preservation of ancient organic matter depends very much on
the conditions it's stuck in. ISTR that anaerobic, waterlogged
conditions make it last longer (sacrifices found in bogs, for
example).

Add hair to a compost pile
 

On 01/02/2012 09:39, Sacha wrote:
On 2012-02-01 07:44:31 +0000, Chris Hogg said:

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:55:13 +0100, David in Normandy
wrote:

On 31/01/2012 10:54, Martin wrote:
On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:44:44 +0000, wrote:

On 2012-01-31 08:12:11 +0000, Chris said:

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:47:44 +0000 (UTC), (Dick
Adams) wrote:

Question: Is it ok to add hair to a compost pile?

I'm talking about dog hair, cat hair, and human hair.
Has anyone done it?
Does anyone have cites about it?

My wife cuts my and her own hair. The cuttings go on the compost
heap,
as do the contents of the vacuum cleaner which contain cat hair and
fluff from woollen carpets. They all rot down and provide nitrogen,
although fluff from synthetic (nylon?) carpets is persistent.

Ours goes out the window to drift where it will and be used for
nesting birds.

and toupees :-)

Presumably for the bald-headed eagles?


Specifically for Merkins?

RUDE!!


I had to ask RG what that meant!! Sweet innocent thing that I am, I
thought it was a rare type of bird until you sent 'rude'. (Blush).

--
Spider
from high ground in SE London