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New Food-Growth Product a Bit Hairy
MeatBag PussRocket writes "An article from Marketplace.org reports, 'A Florida company has developed an all-natural product that it says could revolutionize how food is grown in the US. It's called Smart Grow, but it might be a tough sell. It's inexpensive. It eliminates the need for pesticides, so it's environmentally friendly, but it's human hair. Plant pathologists at the University of Florida have found the mats eliminate weeds better than leading herbicides and can also make plants grow up to 30 percent larger.'"
Of dangerous chemicals, animal manure, or human hair, people are squeamish about the human hair?
and can also make plants grow up to 30 percent larger.'"
Maybe someone needs to use this idea to make a super penis pill!
What about wool from sheep or other animals? That might be cheaper...
C - the footgun of programming languages
I sense a few more bald heads running around if this product starts to take off!
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
Another donor item.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Smart Grow is people!
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
I would expect that any hair works since Hair being made of protein is rich in nitrogen.
Soylent_Green
Somehow one has to engineer thresholds.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Now they really can do something about world hunger!
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
I would suspect that human hair would be cheaper as there isn't any other use for it.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
That's not so bad. My HS science teacher told me about an experiment where people off the street were given free chicken and asked how it tastes, etc. Later they were told that the chickens were fed plants grown exclusively from human waste. They didn't eat any more of the chicken after being told this.
But, there's absolutely nothing wrong with eating an animal which has been fed plants grown on manure, human or otherwise :P
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
This makes sense if it is applied as a mulch, allowing the desired plant to grow while preventing weeds and other invasive plants. There's plenty of other similar products on the marked made from a variety of materials from plastic to woven fiber to paper. However, I'm suspicious of the claim that the product works if you place it at the bottom of the pot. How is this going to prevent weeds?
Lots of things eliminate weeds better than herbicides. Any sufficiently impermeable material used as mulch eliminates weeds better than herbicides. Most gardeners are familiar with the concept of a weed barrier.
I used to use sheep manure over newspaper both as a source of nitrogen (and other minerals) and as a weed barrier. It was nearly 100% effective. Given the labor involved, however, I'm sure herbicide would have been more cost-effective at preventing weed growth.
The question is whether applying a barrier against weeds is more cost-effective than herbicides, and I don't know the answer to that, especially considering the environmental impact of herbicides. Just looking at effectiveness of the material doesn't tell us much.
One other note -- sure it's inexpensive now, since there is an incredible amount of wasted human hair. But if this were ever deployed widely, I think we'd see prices of shorn hair go up, and I question whether there'd be enough to meet demand until it cost the same as other methods.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Good to know. I could probably solve world hunger with the cat hair under my furniture.
Maybe I'll be able to get my head and crotch zoned as agricultural now. My efforts to get them zoned commercial were deemed illegal outside of Nevada.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
I would suspect that human hair would be cheaper as there isn't any other use for it.
It's used a lot in wigs.
But it's just not as craptastic as Milorganite...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It's human hair because, being at the top of the food chain, all those nasty chemicals like herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers collect in our bodies in the highest concentrations. Thus our hair is chock-full-o-chemicals. It's no wonder human hair mats have all these wondrous properties -- they are really just recycling all those chemicals we've been putting into the environment for the last 50 years.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
In-home gardening
Galactic hunger could be solved with Stallman's beard!
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Alternatively, what's the risk of the various pests that plague crops adapting to flourish in human hair?
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
So just where is all this hair coming from, exactly? Are there 3rd world hair factories where children will be surreptitiously filmed hanging from the ceiling with their hair attached to hooks to make it grow faster, videos of natives explaining just how many beads they get paid for a pound of hair which figures out to a monthly income equivalent of 63 cents, and the poor orphans trotting out missing chunks from their ear where the evil corporate barbers sheared just a bit too fast and cut them for squirming? Will we see Sally Struthers begging us for just $1 a day so the poor hairless masses CAN AFFORD WIGS?!?!
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
The idea of using mulch to control weeds is at least 4000 years old. Sure, it works really well. Why use hair? Buy bales of hay, and break off 20 cm thick flakes. Put them over the ground end-to-end, leaving spaces for the crop stems.
And there's the reason people have moved to pesticides: it isn't labor-intensive. You don't win anything by having hand labor to install something that only increases your yield 30% unless you're a backyard gardener. You can spray pesticides over 50 acres in an afternoon.
I use hay to mulch in my garden. It works amazingly well. At the end of the year it's broken-down enough that the tomato roots have grown up into the lowest layer, right at the ground level, to use the proto-compost. The only drawback is seeds in the hay sprouting when it's rototilled in.
Likewise, ground cloth with holes cut out for the plants you want, works really well -- better than pesticides -- but then you have to deal with a bunch of somewhat broken-down ground cloth at the end of the year.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I am soooo cashing in on this! I have hair down to my ass, so lets just say my shower gets clogged frequently. How much do you think they buy it for? I've never died/permed/etc...
:D
This is just like Christmas, only better
i r in ur
Hay waiter, there's a hair in my beans, and I haven't even picked them yet.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Plastic weed barriers are sold on rolls in your friendly local hardware store. A layer of black plastic plus a layer of bark on top is very effective and used by gardeners everywhere.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
samzenpus's campaign to gradually introduce awful articles that should have been in idle onto the main site continues. The plan seems to be to post one or two of these every day until we no longer think of them as odd. Then they can increase the rate a bit, eventually merge idle entirely into the main site, and voila! Slashdot can be as hip and successful of a site as digg is!
History up to this point:
April 28 - Tokyo Scientists Create Mobile Slime
April 27 - Air Force One Flyby Causes Brief Panic In NYC
April 27 - How To Have an Online Social Life When You're Dead
April 23 - Race Car Made With Veggies And Powered By Chocolate
April 22 - Robotic Penguins
April 22 - Yamaha Unveils Golf Cart Powered By Cow Dung
April 21 - Biotech Company to Patent Pigs
April 21 - The Taste of Space
April 17 - Philosophies and Programming Languages
Do we really want the guy behind the worst articles I've ever seen on slashdot shaping the direction of this site?
Sturgeon was an optimist.
Shaving your nether regions and using it as a fake beard....
Looks like the tometo.
ing to .... Harry Potter...
Hell, even Clarence Thomas might want to LOUDLY proclaim about his pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can comment: "See, I'm VINdickATED"...
Now, things will suck if cashews come with hair... It would also suck if my comments are based on a lame submission summary...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I, for one, welcome our new hair-eating plant overlords.
I just mulched my flowerbeds with pine needle mulch. Cleared my street front at the same time.
Good quality mulch, and will renew itself most likely in time for next year.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
When I was in High School, some of the girls there sold their hair once a year to one of the hair product companies, I believe Clairol, but I could be wrong. Pretty sure it was used for testing hair products.
They actually got quite a bit for it, depending on the length, color and how much they treated it. I remember going to a keg party that was financed by such a girl cashing in on her hair.
I also remember that one of those same girls always had these crazy long fingernails, as she sold those as well.
Only the really nice, large pieces.
This stuff probably is okay with short little trimmings, all the inches and two inches that most people just leave on the floor of the barbershop.
I am sad to say I have not contributed to this any in the past three years though.
I've heard about people using cumcumbers and other vegetables for sex, but making your plants 30% larger for sex is a bit "over the top" ....
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
This is like some bizarro world variation of a Chia-head, but I'm not sure how.
..........FULL STOP.
I can see it now - there will be some weed that will adapt to grow on this stuff - something will make the jump. Then we will start to see people who "catch" an infection of dandelions on their head.
New! - Head & Shoulders with Ortho 5 weed killer!!
..........FULL STOP.
Get "The Carpet Makers" (german Original: "Die Haarteppuchknüpfer") bei Andreas Eschbach.
Who knew the stuff was good for flora, too?
Thre is no chin behind Stallman's beard; there is only another beard.
...but I wonder how this would work as a hydroponics medium in place of rockwool and hydroton. I'd also wonder about potential hydrogen neutrality of human hair.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"could revolutionize how food is grown in the US"
Is US soil very different from what we have elsewhere, or does this company just have low ambitions?
would that mean I finally don't have to pay $15 for a haircut?
Couple this with stem cell harvested human hair, we really could be yelling: "Soylent Green is PEOPLE, MY GOD, ITS PEOPLE"...
This is my sig.
In the first year, it blocks growth where you don't put it. You punch a big hole, and put in a seed, I suppose, or better, yuo gorw a seedling, then thread the seedling through, crushing the rest.
But what do you do in the second year? Is it mush by then? Will it affect the growth of that original seedling? Do you till it in before starting? Do you scrape it up and put it on a compost heap? Does it just sit there and work for 2+ years?
Can you lay down a long a mat of these with big holes, and let that work for years, only placing a fresh small circle over the hole?
In Korea, I know the usual method is to use garbage bag material for the same function, which seems like an ecodisaster. The hair seems like a much better system, but it might wind up more labor, depending on how long the garbage bag stuff lasts.
Most of those problems can be solved with alcohol or heavy anti-depressants!
If those don't work one can always smoke and asphyxiate more ...
Oh, nevermind, this isn't a multiple choice exam...
Almost died of a heartstroke; a forgotten one in your list!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
look em up and you see why
Now I can just run an extension cord out back with me, pack some clippers, and while I'm peeing on all my plants give them some good weed protection too!
But, there's absolutely nothing wrong with eating an animal which has been fed plants grown on manure, human or otherwise :P
Oh, I don't know, how about Hookworm?
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
Q: Why do Italian men wear heavy gold chains?
A: So they know where to stop shaving.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
It doesn't look like it comes from your head.
Thre is no chin behind Stallman's beard; there is only another beard.
And behind that one? Stallman has a recursive beard!
So my "brunet to go" joke finally has meaning?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
And thus, the gnu-neckbeard creates another cottage industry.
We've found that anything that smells like humans (hair, pee, etc) keeps the deer away from our plants. Peeing around the flowers is one thing, but we're not so keen on that around the veggies. So this could help there.
Just so they scrub it for head lice!
It would seem to me that non-human animal hair should work as well, and cheaper. In days past, carpet padding was made from animal-hair felt, which I suspect is not all that different except that it was manufactured to be thicker and more dense than these mats.
If it works as advertised, I think it's a great idea.
So I get b!%ched out at a restaurant for doing a quick untangling of my son's hair at the table from a couple mummies sitting next to us (don't you dare give me flak, it was about a second and a half in our own booth, far from theirs), but we're gonna chow down on a salad made from scraps swept up from Cost Cutters?
I actually think this is a good idea; I just felt like venting.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
.. now we finally know how men can be worth more than women. The growth of our hair is at least twice as good as yours, bitches!
If there is something I've learned from TV/movies is that Kazakhstan is the third largest exporter of Human "Pubiss". Step aside Wall Street, I know where my money will be invested next. Very Nice.
an experiment where people off the street were given free chicken and asked how it tastes, etc. Later they were told that the chickens were fed plants grown exclusively from human waste. They didn't eat any more of the chicken after being told this.
People lose their appetite when talked to about poo: Film at 11.
Next up, talking about maggots and then offering rice to people.
You can't take the sky from me...
Thought one: Human hair -- why would that be a problem for anyone?
Thought two: Now, if they could do it with dog hair, they'd really have something!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Now they can have another reason to keep their dreads, they can grow their weed in there.
I'm certainly less hungry now after just thinking about it.
...if this stuff caught fire! Barf.
"My hair is in the pie, Brian, and now it's inside of you. Part of me is inside of you, Brian. Do you feel me, Brian? Do you feel me inside of you?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lich59xsjik&fmt=18
Wool and other animal fiber is expensive, and there is a huge market for it. My wife is happy when a skein of wool yarn costs less than $10, and it's not unusual to see her drop $25 just to knit a pair of socks. Oher animal fibers cost even more -- I think the most expensive one I've seen is Musk Ox, which runs about $150/skein (but sooooo soft). There's some markup involved, plus labor for dying etc, but still -- animal fiber is expensive.
Human hair on the other hand we have no use for -- barbers sweep it into the trash.
This is good news for the Scheinhardt Wig Company.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!
Hair Cut Corporations! It will be the new corn farm for ethanol craze! Worlds biggest supplier of food growth fertilizer is DairyLand farms but Chatters salon!
Whoever sells more haircuts will have more supply to sell to the farmers. This will lead to swift corporate takeovers and mergers. Watch out!
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.