Human Hair as Fertilizer...say what..does this have to do with KY?

[Guest guest]

Yogi Bhajan shared with us the teachings of Kundalini Yoga...and he also shared

bit and pieces of " facts " that appear just

out of the main stream and not yet " proven " by " science " .

 

As you all know he was big on keeping hair long and covered...and has given us

many reasons why...in one of his lectures

(years and years ago) he mentioned how alive hair is and that it can make plants

grow...this " fun fact from YB " stuck with

me and I have been waiting to see how it would blend with our " science " system.

Check out the article below.

 

Sat Ganesha

" participate, share and contribute "

 

 

Human Hair Makes Good Fertilizer

Buzz UpSendSharePrint

Andrea Thompson

Senior Writer

LiveScience.com – Mon Jan 5, 9:11 am ET

 

All those snipped locks that are swept up after your haircut could be turned

into crop fertilizer, researchers now say.

In addition to water and sunlight, plants need certain nutrients to grow,

particularly nitrogen. While nitrogen is abundant in

the Earth's atmosphere (composing about 78 percent of it), it is in the form of

molecular nitrogen (two nitrogen atoms

bonded together), which is unusable to plants.

 

For plants to take up nitrogen, it must be " fixed " into compounds such as

nitrate (one nitrogen and three oxygen atoms),

which plant roots can absorb from the soil. While some plants, such as legumes,

get their nitrogen through symbiotic

relationships with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, others rely on fertilizers, whether

organic (composted plant waste or animal

manure) or inorganic (the man-made stuff you buy at the gardening center).

 

Previous studies had also shown that human hair discarded from barbershops and

hair salons can also be a nutrient source

for plants when combined with other compost materials. But it had not yet been

proven that hair could act alone as an

effective fertilizer. To test this, Vlatcho Zheljazkov and his colleagues at

Mississippi State University pitted waste hair

against commercial fertilizers. They compared the productivity of four plants,

lettuce, wormwood, yellow poppy and

feverfew, under four different treatments: non-composted hair cubes, a

controlled-release fertilizer, a water-soluble

fertilizer, and no treatment.

 

Plant yields increased for the hair-fertilized plants compared to the untreated

controls overall, but were still lower than for

the commercial, inorganic fertilizers in lettuce and wormwood, which are

fast-growing plants. Yellow poppy, however, saw

higher yields for the hair treatment. (The results didn't differ between

fertilizers for the feverfew.)

 

The researchers suspect that some of the difference between hair and the

inorganic fertilizers is due to the time it takes for

hair to degrade and release its nutrients. So hair shouldn't be used as a sole

fertilizer, at least for fast-growing plants, they

concluded.

 

Further research is still needed to see if human hair waste is a viable option

for fertilizing edible crops though because of

possible health concerns. The results of the study were detailed in a recent

issue of the journal HortTechnology.