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What You Can Do With Comfrey

From free moves this week up to the deep plays.

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Make comfrey liquid feed

  • Ecological
  • Self-sufficiency

Pack cut leaves into a bucket or barrel, weigh them down, and leave them. Over a week or two they break down into a dark, strong liquid feed. Dilute it well before watering it onto fruiting plants.

It smells foul. Make it well away from windows and seating, and keep a lid on it.

Use it as chop-and-drop mulch

  • Ecological
  • No-dig

Cut the leaves and lay them straight around hungry plants. They wilt, break down, and feed the soil as a mulch with no processing at all.

Cut before the plant flowers for the richest leaf, and wear gloves, as the hairs can itch.

Activate the compost heap

  • Ecological
  • Compost

Layer comfrey leaves into a slow compost heap. The nitrogen-rich leaves heat it up and speed the whole pile along.

Alternate green comfrey with dry brown material for the best balance.

Plant a Bocking 14 patch

  • Economic
  • Permaculture

Plant root crowns of the sterile Bocking 14 cultivar in a dedicated spot. It will not seed itself across the garden, and it gives several heavy cuts of feed leaf a year for decades.

Choose the site carefully. The taproot makes an established plant very hard to move later.

Make an external knitbone balm

  • Medicinal
  • External only

Infuse the leaves in oil and set it with beeswax into a balm for bruises and sprains on unbroken skin. Use it for short spells only.

Never on broken skin, never on children, and never taken by mouth. The liver risk is real.