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  • From: Harvey Ussery <huboxwood@earthlink.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] More on comfrey
  • Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2007 13:40:49 -0400

Comfrey is often recommended for the reasons you mention. However, I've been
wondering whether it will perform as desired on my 6" of clay over 500' of
limestone. Will Comfrey roots find the cracks in the rock like natives do? I
don't know where you go to learn this kind of stuff.

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore

Paul gave the best answer to this one: If weeds will grow there, so will comfrey. Comfrey is an incredibly capable plant--whatever barriers your limestone underpinnings present, it will go as deep as it possibly can, and suck minerals from there.

One of my herb books (Bremness) said, "For a higher nutritional yield, give each plant a bucketful of crude manure in spring and late summer." I had some horse manure handy (not fresh, but not yet composted), so I added a bucketful earlier this year, and the flowering stalks seem double their normal size. Or it could be that the root systems have grown a lot more since last year. (Yarrow)

Comfrey will take all the fertility you can throw at it, even raw poultry manure. Yarrow is right--the more you feed it, the more productive.

They'll attract bees as well.
paul

Yes, great bee plant, for both the larger bumble-bee size bees and for honeybees. (Interesting to note, however, that despite the presence of abundant flowers, comfrey--at least with proper strain selection--does not set viable seed. A good thing, too!--given what a tough plant it is, you sure don't want it "on the loose." It's as if the plant has become content with its alliance with Homo sapiens for vegetative reproduction, and given up dependence on seed-making.)

BTW, an interesting experiment I just kicked off: Paul Stamets in his most recent book MYCELIUM RUNNING talks about using Hypsizygus ulmarius mushroom as a garden companion--it acts as a decomposer of mulches and other organic debris, boosting soil fertility for the plants. I'm giving the idea a try with my comfrey patch: Inoculated a big swath of the bed down the middle with H.u. spawn into straw from old, exposed bales. The comfrey will supply the shade and enhanced humidity the H.u. needs, and it will "eat" the straw and give a boost to fertility, producing crops of what Stamets says is an excellent edible mushroom in the process. If this works out in the comfrey bed, I'll be expanding the H.u. patch into mulched areas of the garden.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

"Earth's plant communities have been doing their job for at least 500 million years; only extreme hubris would lead us to believe we could do a better job through an agricultural science not even one hundred years old." ~Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants



  • [Livingontheland] More on comfrey, Harvey Ussery, 06/01/2007

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