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I have just planted forty pieces of comfrey root. I put them in different places in my yard to find out where they will grow the best. I have never had any experience with this plant, and would like to know what to expect...pros, and cons. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

No personal experience with comfrey, but https://www.horizonherbs.com/ is an excellent site to read for background information on medicinal and culinary herbs. They also sell many hard-to-find seeds.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

pretty much where you planted it, it will always be from now on. its VERY hard to get rid of. it will grow bigger every year until its about 4ft diameter( but ive seen it get bigger) and will give you lots and lots of organic matter for composting.

Here is what I found about comfrey:

Comfrey grows well where day and night are of equal length, so in tropical countries it will crop continuously throughout the year. In colder climates it may die down over winter and re-sprout in spring. Comfrey will grow rapidly with dressings of fresh poultry manure and it becomes a good weed suppressor. It likes to grow in full sun in clean ground. After establishment (about a year) you can harvest the leaves daily. If the plant is not pruned regularly the stems grow too coarse and must be mulched. Comfrey can keep up good production for 12 years before dying off.

I hope this helps.

Lifestyle Lift Journey wrote:Here is what I found about comfrey:

Comfrey grows well where day and night are of equal length, so in tropical countries it will crop continuously throughout the year. In colder climates it may die down over winter and re-sprout in spring. Comfrey will grow rapidly with dressings of fresh poultry manure and it becomes a good weed suppressor. It likes to grow in full sun in clean ground. After establishment (about a year) you can harvest the leaves daily. If the plant is not pruned regularly the stems grow too coarse and must be mulched. Comfrey can keep up good production for 12 years before dying off.

I hope this helps.

Please give us the source of the information. An extended quote needs attribution.

Cynthia H.
Moderator

Oh, I forgot, thanks for letting me know Cynthia.

The tip was from a book I read:
BACKYARD POULTRY - NATURALLY by Alanna Moore

Thank you!

Cynthia

What soil said. 40 comfrey plants is a whole LOT of comfrey. Fortunately as well as being a good ingredient in herbal teas, it is very good for your compost pile.

Which one?

Good old Symphytum officianal can be a bit of a weed. Alright, a downright invasive. 40 plants might take over your yard. Purple or white flowers. I have this one.

The yellow flowered form (S. grandiflorum) is not so invasive, but smaller.

The Russian stuff (S. x uplandicum) is in between (bluer flower).

An outstanding plant for adding fertility to rocky soils or opening clay soils.

But watch it like a hawk; most are of the first variety...

HG

bocking 14 comfrey is the one to get, its seeds are sterile so it will only spread if you spread it.

I have grown comfrey (Symphytum Officinale) for about 30 years now. It has a beautiful pink purple flower and large dark green leaves. It can grow up to 1.5m tall and is rather a thug in the vegetable plot if you allow it to be. I have five 25ft rows of it.
My plants are not the sterile Bocking 14 and they produce seeds prolifically. They will spread. Their roots are very thick and robust and you can use them to propagate new plants. They are, indeed, very good ground cover plants because little will grow under them particularly if you grow them closely.
Whenever I feel in the mood I cut down the comfrey and put it into a butt (a water barrel) with a tap at the bottom. The comfrey rots down to a black liquid and that can be drained out of the barrel. Some people cover the comfrey in water but it is unnecessary. The liquid is relatively high in potash (Potassium) so it is good for fruit and flowers. Its percentage NPK is 0.74:0.24:1.19 for the Bocking 14 comfrey
(https://organicgarden.org.uk/gardening/comfrey)
which compares very favorably with commercial tomato liquid fertilizers.
What goes into the barrel stays in there. It will all rot down regardless of how tall the comfrey grows. It does get a courser as it gets bigger and takes a little bit longer to break down in the barrel but it still forms the black liquid.
I kept a large bottle of comfrey liquid for about 3 years and it still seemed to be alright. I keep my comfrey for about 6 months to a year in the butt but I keep topping it up as I crop the comfrey.
Nowadays I bury most of the allotment undiseased waste in the comfrey bed and let the comfrey recycle it for me. It gets a dose of manure or lawn mowings along the rows when I have nowhere else to store them but you don't really have to put fertilizer on them.
The stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) and Sweet Cicerly (Myrrhis odorata) also make valuable liquid fertilizers. Ref: “Ear to the Groundâ€

Nice post Tony!



HG

Tony,

Butt, is a measurement of 238.5 liters. 126 US gallons. That's a big butt! Sorry folks, I couldn't resist.

Are we talking about a large barrel? or does butt have more than one meaning?

Is the barrel up on a stand?

Does the barrel have a false bottom, so the drain doesn't plug?

Is the barrel in the shade or full sun?

Eric

DoubleDogFarm
If you take a look at:

[img]https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_T92eTEcwVH0/TSNwtj9BF5I/AAAAAAAAAD4/Srmk67nuJBs/s1600/CIMG7015.JPG[/img]

Indeed they are up on a plinth of bricks. You can get commercial plinths but I like to garden with the smallest financial input as possible. This green bin does not have a false bottom to prevent tap (faucet or spigot? )blockage but my worm bin does. I have never had a blockage in any of my taps and up to now. The comfrey butts are on the south facing side of my storage shed so they are indeed in full sun. However, what constitutes full sun in the UK may not quite correspond to the full sun in your neck of the woods.
I am making inoculated charcoal in the small black dustbins (trash bins). There are several of us in the UK attempting to make Terra preta using lump charcoal and comfrey teas (together with other ingredients). I seem to be having a little success with it as well.
The word butt seems to have many meanings. To hit or push, to stick out, a type of hinge, a mound behind a rifle range, the part of a rifle held against the shoulder, a smoked cigarette end, and of course the American meaning…
By Jove, two countries separated by a common language!

dancing star wrote:I have just planted forty pieces of comfrey root. I put them in different places in my yard to find out where they will grow the best. I have never had any experience with this plant, and would like to know what to expect...pros, and cons. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Where did you get your comfrey? I live in Southern Indiana as well

decided today to do some modified sheet-mulching with comfrey as a middle green layer (essentially hay then chopped fresh green comfrey, then leafmold on top) for some of my bigger plantings (I.e. coarser stuff that won't get swamped by too many big mulch chunks). hoping the lack of lots of layers will keep it from heating up too much for the plants it's supposed to be helping, but that the interaction of greens&browns will still do better things than a standard (one material, mostly browns) mulching would.

been cutting a lot of comfrey for the compost pile, and thinking about comfrey's green-mulching potential suggested going one step further.

My single clump is flowering right now -- such dainty bluebell like flowers except in lavender purple of course.

...should I be cutting them off?

my impression is that the compost or mulching capacities aren't greatly effected by flowering. cut the whole thing down if you can use it now (it will come back, no worries), but I wouldn't worry about removing flowers...

no worries, cut it back every few weeks a few inches above the soil. just leave a month or so of growth in the fall so it can recoop some energy for the winter and youll be good to go year after year.

Thanks! One less thing to worry about

just reporting in...the layered leafmold/comfrey mulching is awesome...I think I'm about to do more of it for my various pole beans in the next few days.

Just incase to the exceptional gardener Common comfrey (Symphytum officinalis) isn’t enough for your needs I would recommend that you try and grow Russian Comfrey (Symphytum x uplandicum). And to anyone who is looking into growing Russian Comfrey I would suggest that you find and read a copy of Russian comfrey - A hundred tons an acre of stock feed or compost for farms by Lawrence Hills (1949 edition). I downloaded my PDF copy off the internet.

Comfrey came back up on my radar. I have a couple of plants in a too ignored part of the flower beds. To be truthful that whole 25' has been ignored, not just the back 8'! I just thought they were neat, and worked in with my 18th c interests etc. All this time I have been just tossing those icky under leaves aside. For shame!
Now I am thinking to start more and maybe even sell a few starts come spring. Our 1st frost is end of October, and I figure to start seed and get plants into those greenhouse gallon containers by October, where they can winter just fine. My existing plants haven't spread much as they are ignored, so can't do much by root cutting.
I did the usual net surf and came up with Horizon out of Oregon, mentioned above. They do think highly of themselves at seed packet for $3.95, 10 seeds! Then again, not much competition!
It is somewhat recommended to chill seeds 1st. As I am in a very warm zone now, perhaps good advise.

I guess question is, have any of you started comfrey from seed, and any tips?

I was going to start my own post, but this one was resurrected so here we go.
My little comfrey experiment.

Step 1: Gifted, A garbage can full of comfrey roots.
( Russian type believed to be sterile)
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/Comfrey001.jpg[/img]

Step 2: Rototill orchard berm.
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/Comfrey003.jpg[/img]

Step 3: Spread comfrey root and rototill berm again, chopping and mixing the roots into the berm.
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/Comfrey004.jpg[/img]

Step 4: Rototill swales and shovel more soil onto berms covering any surface roots.
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/Comfrey006.jpg[/img]

Step 5: Pump algae water out of duck pond and water berms and flood the swales.
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/Aroniaberry-Duckpondedge007.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/DSC02889.jpg[/img]

Eric

you roto tilled the comfrey into the berm? holy junk, that patch will have comfrey longer than your kids will live lol.

you roto tilled the comfrey into the berm? holy junk, that patch will have comfrey longer than your kids will live lol.

Well duck junk anyway. I will be cleaning out the duck house soon and will spread a little over the berms.

Only four legged hairy children.

Eric

the amount of biomass coming out of that plot is going to be huge in a year. lots and lots of perfect potato mulch

Step 6: I will be installing a temporary low fence to keep the ducks off these two berms. I've tried growing comfery in the pass , but the ducks don't give it a chance.

Soil,
Potato mulch you say, do you have any experience?


Eric

potatoes and comfrey leaves are best friends. I always toss some crushed dried comfrey leaf in the same hole I put the seed potato.

I have read that comfrey is 26% protien, should help with egg production. What does it offer the seed potatoes?


Eric

I find the animals like comfrey more when its dried and ground to a meal. we add it to wet leftovers and such. or when we sprout some grains for them we mix it on that too.

for potatoes its a EXCELLENT cell proliferate, meaning it makes cells divide like mad. along with that its rich in potash which becomes potassium that the potatoes will use to grow big tubers.

great mulch for pretty much anything, and you can make a comfrey tea too if you google that.

from Wiki re comfrey:

Comfrey is a particularly valuable source of fertility to the organic gardener. It is very deep rooted and acts as a dynamic accumulator, mining a host of nutrients from the soil. These are then made available through its fast growing leaves (up to 4-5 pounds per plant per cut) which, lacking fibre, quickly break down to a thick black liquid. There is also no risk of nitrogen robbery when comfrey is dug into the soil as the C:N ratio of the leaves is lower than that of well-rotted compost. Comfrey is an excellent source of potassium, an essential plant nutrient needed for flower, seed and fruit production. Its leaves contain 2-3 times more potassium than farmyard manure, mined from deep in the subsoil, tapping into reserves that would not normally be available to plants.

It also has a lot of medicinal uses:

This herb is a favorite first aid remedy. It contains a compound called allantoin, which when applied to the skin accelerates the healing of tissue and the closing of wounds.

When fresh leaves or roots are applied to a wound it causes it to contract and close quicker and inhibits the opportunity for infection while minimizing scarring. It is used topically for eczema, dermatitis, viral skin infections and ulcers of the lower leg and to help heal bruises and contusions. https://www.herbalremediesinfo.com/COMFREY.html

In the past comfrey teas were used for coughs and congestions. This is not much done these days because of some concerns re liver toxicity, but the toxicity has only been demonstrated at very high dosages.

[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/ComfreyAug212011004.jpg[/img]
I didn't follow through on the spreading of duck house bedding, but I still might.

August 21 2011 update:

Just a few pictures of the comfrey beds. Not a huge flush of sprouts, they are starting to show.
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/ComfreyAug212011003.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/ComfreyAug212011001.jpg[/img]

I suspect they are from some of the larger intact root crowns.

Eric

Wow DoubleDogFarm those pics of your new comfrey plants are grate there the ones that you planted on the 6 of august right I ordered my root segments from Rick in America 4 weeks ago and they were cut and posted 3.5 weeks ago I rely hope they haven't died in the mail because I want to propagate from them as soon as they are big and old enough and then propagate from those propagations and propagate from those propagations and keep on propagating all my future comfrey plants until I get somewhere around 4665 Russian comfrey plants on my 30 acer property.

nickolas wrote:Wow DoubleDogFarm those pics of your new comfrey plants are great. they are the ones that you planted on the 6 of august right. I ordered my root segments from Rick in America 4 weeks ago and they were cut and posted 3.5 weeks ago. I really hope they haven't died in the mail. I want to propagate them as soon as they are big and old enough. then propagate from those propagations and propagate from those propagations and keep on propagating all my future comfrey plants until I get somewhere around 4665 Russian comfrey plants on my 30 acer property.

4665? Is this a magic number?

Eric

DoubleDogFarm wrote:

nickolas wrote:Wow DoubleDogFarm those pics of your new comfrey plants are great. they are the ones that you planted on the 6 of august right. I ordered my root segments from Rick in America 4 weeks ago and they were cut and posted 3.5 weeks ago. I really hope they haven't died in the mail. I want to propagate them as soon as they are big and old enough. then propagate from those propagations and propagate from those propagations and keep on propagating all my future comfrey plants until I get somewhere around 4665 Russian comfrey plants on my 30 acer property.

4665? Is this a magic number?
Gene ID 4665
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/4665
Eric

I have ordered and paid for 40 Russian comfrey root segments from the USA 2 weeks ago and when they get here I am doing to plant them in to a razed bed until the swale on the downhill side of my veggie patch is ready and by the time the swale is ready I will hopefully have grown and propagated enough Russian comfrey from the ones I have ordered by post to fill the swale with Russian comfrey. And according to a 1949 book called Russian comfrey - A hundred tons an acer of stock feed or compost for farms by Lawrence Hills 4665 Russian comfrey plants is the equivalent of one acer of Russian comfrey so I hope that if I propagate by root segments every year from my comfrey plants and I and plant them on every swale as well as many other places on my 30 acer property that I will hopefully in many years to come eventually get an acer worth of Russian comfrey.

Just a quick update on the comfrey planting.
One berm is growing, filling in a little better then the other.

Sept. 7th 2011
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/ComfreySept7th2011002.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/eric_wa/Double%20Dog%20Farm%20Fuit%20and%20Nut%20Orchard/ComfreySept7th2011003.jpg[/img]

Eric

the big roots will take hold first. smaller roots emerge later. even if it doesnt completely fill out you can plant some other dynamic accumulators like nettle.

Remember, it only spreads by root, so don't dig near it if you don't want it to spread. Mix it into your compost generously - it will help 'activate' it. Also,it is used as a poultice for bumps and bruises.

it will spread if its official comfrey, by seed. the bocking cultivars are sterile and can only be spread by digging as you mentioned.