I get a lot of questions here at Learn How To Garden from subscribers and viewers. I had an interesting one recently from David that”s very timely .

Here’s David’s question:

Hi Mark,
I think your tips&clips and newsletter are top value. I really get a lot of useful, interesting info from them.
In your clips on planting beans you recommend putting wool down as a base layer & that you use Angora wool from your goats. I have 9 Leonberger dogs which, when groomed, produce a lot of wool-like coat. Could I use this coat as base layer? (Btw, if you want to see what our Leonbergers look like go to:
http//:leonberger.pl)
Thanks in advance,
David

The simple answer is yes you can

The main reason I use wool fleece is because I have it readily available from my aging Angora goats but any wool will have the same properties in that it holds water and supplies N (nitrogen) as it decomposes.

Interestingly wool, hair and fur are all made up of same chemicals just with a greater density on the skin human hair is about 200-300 per square inch were as a sea otter with the densest  fur known is about 1,000,000 per square inch

People used to collect the hair clippings from barbers to incorporate into there plots

Human hair the percentages are:

Carbon  51%

Hydrogen 21%

Nitrogen 17%

Oxygen 6%

Sulphur 5%

As you can see that’s a useful amount of nitrogen for our plants and in fact the University of Mississippi has been conducting experiments on the use of hair as a organic  fertiliser replacement and concluded

“Hair can provide sufficient nutrients to provide similar yields to those obtained with commonly used fertilizers”

In there experiments lettuce grew equally as well with just the addition of hair using 50% of the available  Nitrogen

The one thing i would stress is that hair decomposes slowly in the soil and can take 5 to 6 years but the positive is it is supplying Nitrogen all this time

The percentage in dog hair will vary between 10-15%

As an aside the horse hoof clippings from a farrier/blacksmith are also made up of Keratin like hair and nails and were also used.   When ground down it is called ‘Hoof and Horn’ fertiliser which is  available to buy

So to conclude yes you can use dog hair, in fact you can use any hair or fleece!  I would add it into my bean trenches or if I was digging in the Autumn with the manure or as a layer into a No Dig bed