Feedback on Comfrey???

Commanding_Heights · Heavy Crude Joined: Nov 09, 2006 Posts: 125

I know several here have planted it to use in the compost bin. I've also seen the figures that approx 80 tons per acre can be harvested a year with 4 cuttings. I'm just wondering if anyone here has harvested any? If so could you please tell how much space you have planted and give an estimation of the volume you've harvested?

I just ordered 16 roots.

Fishman · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:34 pm Post subject: Re: Feedback on Comfrey???

CH
I have 24 plants at present, spaced about 3 feet apart so I can push the mower though the grid. Production is extremely variable with rainfall being my biggest factor. Each year I've splint the plant replanting a piece of the root. Do NOT plant where you may consider another garden. They wilt with a drought but are hard to actually kill. Apparently one of the best source of potash available

satjeet · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 123

I came to comfrey from a different route. In the early seventies I used to buy it from a farmer at the Reading Terminal in Philly - as food. I used to eat enormous quanities of it. (Add a tomato to take away the mucous aspect of it and a little garlic and pepper.) Then the word came down from on high that it was not fit for human consumption! Hmmmm. Anyhow, I now have several clumps growing in my half-acre farm and haven't quite learned to just cut it back and haul it into the compost. I'm still eating a bit of it so I don't mind it coming up in a garden area - I just wait till it's yummy looking and pull it up and add it to my greens.

alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 701

It is sain that comfrey can damage the liver or cause cancer or something terrible like that. As there are enough safe edible plants I don't eat it, as well as the smell is offmputting. BUt is is really the best plant if you cut yourself. I have some in the garden and use it for stink brew but I did not found that it is sufficient to hoe around and heaps of new comfrey plants appear. You can grow them from seed as well. And it is said that they are very healthy for chickens, which we call chooks here, but ours don't even look at comfrey leaves.