Estimates of nitrogen (N) losses from living plants (phyllo- and rhizodeposition) are needed to improve the sustainability of the present agricultural cropping systems. These estimates are hard to achieve under field conditions among others due to a lack of suitable methods to study these N flows. A novel vertical split-root with ¹⁵N placement in deeper soils layers is suggested here as a means to improve the present tracer based methods for phyllo- and rhizodeposition estimation. We found enrichment of soil above the point of tracer injection (at 290 cm) with rhizosphere having higher enrichment than bulk soil underlining that ¹⁵N was derived from roots. The relative net N rhizodeposition was highest for lucerne and decreased with depth for all three plant species investigated (lucerne, kernza®, rosinweed). The quantity of N lost via rhizodeposition amounted to 10–13 kg N ha⁻¹ in the topsoil, but the majority of the N rhizodeposition was found below (25–250 cm) showing the importance of including deeper soil layers in such studies.