Kitchen Garden Forum

Sorry if this has come up before, but I can't find it! I have a lovely big comfrey plant and I know it can be used to make fertiliser but don't know how to do it - can someone advise please? Also, what and when do I put it on after I have made it?
Thanks
Polly.

Pol, lots of ways to use it, immerse it in a water but to make a comfrey tea to use directly on plant, or as we do make a comfrey press, a large plastic tub wirh a lid, drill a hole in the bottom, build it up on bricks so a collecting vessel can be placed under the hole, then fill the plastic container with com frey leaves abd stalks, not the flowers or seed heads, put a sheet of wood on top of this and the some bricks to weigh it down & put the top on, after a few weeks the bucket underneath will start filling with a quite thick brown, awful smelling liquid, decanth this off into a 2 litre bottle, it makes great tomato feed when mixed 1 to 10 in water, also we use the leaves as a mulch round our pumpkins etc.

Hi,
As far as I can remember I was advised to avoid getting comfrey tea on your skin. True of any concentrate I suppose.
Bye for now
Hilary

I've made the tea as described above which is good but takes a while to do,for something ready sooner you could try tying some leaves in a bit of old cloth and suspending it by a bit of string in your waterbut so that each time you water everything gets a very dilute feed.I did this a couple of years ago and the plants seemed to grow well from it,I changed the bag after a couple of months and most of the leaves had rotted away.

Thanks all
I will try the comfrey tea. The water butt idea sounds good too, but does it make the water bad after a while?
Thanks Hilary, I will be careful!

we have several water tanks, and add chopped comfrey plants to one of these and leave to stew. it don't 'alf pong! this pooey comfrey water is used, diluted to feed toms, peppers, courgettes etc etc. at the end of the season, the gunk is cleared from the bottom of the tank and added to the compost heap. I recommend a clothes peg!

pants

I planted 10 plants in a bed early last year and they are now nice large plants. The question is do cut down the whole plant or just take of the older leaves?

Thanks

Hi Beeman,
Take the whole plant off about four inches from the ground and it will regenerate fairly rapidly and you should be able to do this up to four times as season but I never take more than three. This leaves a good sturdy plant to die down for the winter.
Retropants,
Making comfrey liquid feed the method you are using there is no real need to dilute just keep topping up the water that you have taken out. The concentrate that Frantony refers must be diluted at TEN parts water to ONE Comfrey concentrate.

thanks johnboy! that'll save a lot of messing about!

If the comfrey leaves are placed around the tomato plants wouldn't the potassium in the leaves eventually get into the soil and be absorbed by the tomato plant?
This way you do not have to put up with the stench which emanates when making a liquid feed from the comfrey leaves.
Your thoughts on this will be highly appreciated
BAL

I bury a few leaves underneath my tomato plants.

Hi Bal,
You are perfectly correct in your assumption.
Lawrence Hills of HDRA fame used Comfrey in that and many other ways but certainly he had wonderful sweet Tomatoes with beautifully thin skins of superb taste.

John,Chantal&Rosie
Thanks.
I have been fertilising my tomato plants in this way for the last two years and had good results.
I am glad you were able to confirm that I was not wasting my comfrey.
Bal

Hi Hilary,
There are several interpretations on the words "Comfrey Tea". Some refer to the brew you make (a la Retropants) but others actually make an infusion and drink a "Tea" made from the leaves.
Others make a healing ointment from it which leads me to enquire where you obtained your information for your warning.

Yuk,Johnboy. If the brew smells as bad as people say surely it would taste horrible too?
Polly.