comfrey
Everyone should have a comfrey bed to supply very useful high potash liquid manure for tomatoes setting their first fruit and other potash hungry plants. This powerful, long lived perennial, which is also a good food a fodder crop and a valuable medicinal herb, needs a position in full sun away from trees or privet hedges, so its roots can go down deeply to gather minerals far out of reach of most garden plants. Comfrey rarely sets seed and is grown from onsets, which are short sections of root each with a growing point which should be just below the surface when they are planted 2 feet apart each way at any time of year except between November. The best source of quickly available potassium for organic gardeners is comfrey, and end of January, when the roots are entirely dormant and there may be losses in hard weather. Otherwise comfrey is fully hardy.
The essential first step to starting a comfrey bed is to search out all the roots of perennial weeds, for it is a permanent garden feature like an asparagus bed, but much more lasting. Dig in manure to give it a start, and after planting hoe between the rows to kill out annual weeds and especially grass. The best planting times are March, April and May, or in September, which gives them time to become well established before winter. Summer plantings do well if they are watered well after planting and during the week that follows. Spring planted comfrey should be cut with shears about 2 inches above the ground in July or August, to prevent it flowering the first season, and this provides enough foliage for a trial of its qualities as a liquid manure. Leave further growth to die down in the plant in October and build up strength for a full cutting programme the following year. This begins with a first cut in April and the last in late September or early October, roughly every six weeks, which means four or five cuts a year.
After a comfrey bed has been planted for two years, it can be increased very simply by driving a spade through these established plants about 3 inches below the surface in March when the growing points are just showing. Lift off the crowns of the plants and cut them up into sections of root, each with a growing point, to replant where required. Do the cutting up over a spread newspaper (for though comfrey rarely seeds, every fragment of root will grow) fold up the paper and dump it in the dustbin. A weed is a plant in the wrong place and carelessly scattered comfrey can be an awkward weed. If you are extending the comfrey bed, fill in the holes with soil, and wait for the decapitated plants to grow again. If, however, you planted them in what you now feel is the wrong place, spread about an ounce of ammonium sulphate (the safest known weed killer) on the cut surface of the roots left in the ground. This will destroy them completely, and in about four weeks the chemical becomes sulphate of ammonia, which is a common chemical fertilizer and washes harmlessly from the soil. It can be used to kill swarms of small comfrey plants where a rotavator has been used in an attempt to kill comfrey, or where it has been dug out, leaving the soil full of fragments. Stir 1 pound of the white crystals into a gallon of water and apply with a rosed can over a 10 foot square area. In eight weeks any crop can be sown or planted after it. This total weed killer can be used to destroy horseradish and other awkward weeds, but it is comparatively expensive, but no organic gardener likes using chemicals.
This substance is, roughly speaking, sulphate of ammonia made crooked, and the greedier a weed is for nitrogen the more it takes, which is why it should only be used when weeds are growing strongly, never in autumn or winter. It kills not by poison but by bad diet like killing rats by feeding them only white bread and white sugar. In eight weeks you can plant or sow any crop on the treated area. It is never poisonous to birds or pets, and it produces an increase in the worm population after use. When the plants die down completely, dig between the rows to take out any perennial weeds, and lime if necessary. Once a comfrey bed is established and growing well, there is little need to hoe because the foliage meets in a solid mass, suppressing annual weeds. Because it is producing more than a hundred weight of foliage a season, comfrey needs generous feeding. Always give it manure on the surface in spring, ideally deep litter poultry manure, with straw or peat litter spread as a 2 inch thick surface coat. Because it is not a legume (it belongs to the Boraginaceae the anchusa or forget me not family) and has no bacterial helpers fixing the nitrogen that gives it remarkably high protein, it needs plenty of manure, but can take it very crude. Fresh poultry manure or Household Liquid Activator which you cannot use direct on other crops will keep it growing to produce a very much better organic fertilizer than the manure you give it. The garden uses of comfrey It has a carbon nitrogen ratio of 9.8-1, so it is a kind of ‘instant compost’; when wilted overnight to concentrate it and spread along the bottom of main crop potato trenches at the rate of I ½ pounds a foot of row in place of lawn mowings it lowers the potato scab rate as well as producing excellent crops of first class flavour, because of its very high level of immediately available organic potash..
The problem of using comfrey in potato trenches is that in cold springs there may not be enough bulk grown in time for earlies. It is, however, better to leave potatoes chitting rather longer in a cold season so they wait for the comfrey, and to lay the long, sprouted seed tubers flat on the surface of the wilted comfrey which heats a little and warms them ahead.
Comfrey’s most popular use today is as liquid manure. This is made in two ways. The first is to put freshly cut comfrey in a fibreglass water butt (metal drums rust and add toxic quantities of iron oxide to the liquid manure), fill up with rain or tap water, replace the lid to exclude the light, and in about four weeks a clear liquid can be drawn from the tap at the bottom. A comparison between this and commercial liquid feeds made up according to the manufacturer’s directions given in a popular inorganic tomato feed, and an organic one based on seaweed.
The comfrey liquid has three times as much potassium, a third less phosphorus and rather more nitrogen than the other two, which is why it is ideal for tomatoes, onions, gooseberries, beans and all potash demanding crops.Because the liquid is clear it can also be used as a foliar feed, and will not block a watering can rose when it is applied generously as a tonic.The disadvantage of this system is that comfrey foliage is about 3.4 per cent protein, and when proteins break down they smell.The answer is to use a plastic cask or a metal drum, well coated with black bitumen paint inside and out, and bore a hole in the side just above the bottom, stand the container on bricks or stout wood so it is high enough off the ground to allow a dish to go under it. Fill the container with cut comfrey, packing it solid and putting something heavy like a lump of concrete on the surface. In about three weeks, a black liquid will drip from the hole into the dish to collect and dilute with 4 fluid ounces of the concentrate to a gallon of water the concentrate can be stored in a screw top bottle if you do not want to use it immediately. The analysis averages: Nitrogen (N) 0.11 per cent Phosphorus (P) 0.06 per cent Potassium (K) 0.55 per cent If this mixture is to be used as a foliar feed, it should be filtered through a pair of old tights, because it will contain fine particles that may block the syringe. The residue of comfrey left in the bottom of the container when the black liquid ceases to drip is good compost and can be tipped out and dug in before the container is refilled for another charge. The process can be hastened by pouring some urine in to give a high nitrogen start and some extra potassium.
Comfrey foliage holds far more carbohydrate and protein than fibre, which is why it is a good pig food but a poor compost material. It can be used to add more plant foods, and even as an activator, but it rots down to very little Compared with high fibre material such as sunflower stems. So use the surplus mixed in with other material. The liquid manure methods waste less of the nitrogen. It is of greater value as a surface coat, spread between tomato plants or under soft fruit, especially gooseberries. Here it can be covered with lawn mowing which should not be in contact with the stems of the mulched crop, which will speed its decay into a kind of surface made compost, from which plant foods will wash down into the soil below.
Making comfrey tea; the leaves can be used direct to make tea it is more convenient to dry them for use round the year. Pick the largest mature leaves you can find, and lay them on small mesh wire netting in the sun so they have free circulation of air below them as well as above. When they are floppy and drying at the edges, finish them off in an electric oven turned low and with the door open to let out the steam. Crush them when crisp and store in a screw top jar. Comfrey tea is usually mixed with equal parts of ordinary tea and about six cups a day has kept away the pain of arthritis for thousands of people who are convinced that it is the finest medicinal herb of all.
