Comfrey Tea V The Rest. Liquid Fertiliser Trial Results.

 I've been doing a trial of liquid fertilisers, including comfrey tea, and these are the results I have found.

Rather surprising to me, how about you?

Comfrey. Is it really that good?

 What are the facts?

Sadly, I find, the facts harder to find than separating the wheat from the chaff but I'll have a bit of a go.

Comfrey has so much wonder and awe heaped on it I tend to become a little sceptical.

So, here are a few thoughts on the topic until I can come up with more facts.

Comfrey and it's uses.

Wow, just wow.

I received an email from the Mudbrick Cottage Herb Farm last night and it was all about Comfrey.

Covering topics of, Harvest, preserving and using your harvest, drying comfrey for storage, comfrey infused oil and comfrey ointment.

I found it an excellent and informative read so I'll leave a link here for you and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Mudbrick Cottage Herb Farm Comfrey article.

Water your Comfrey/Happy New Year.

New year, new me? Nah! Unlikely.

I do need to get some kind of automatic watering system sorted out for the veggie garden though. I seem to spend over half of my time watering rather then gardening. So, prioity #1 is irrigation.

Happy New Year to you all, anyways. I wish for you as good a year as you hope for and even more.
Bountiful harvests, rain when you need it and motivation when things are looking a bit too much!

Trying a few things myself

 I've had so many people give me so many suggestions on what to do and what not to do for growing a happy healthy, and bountiful potato crop without any what I'd call amazing success. That in order to get some  happy healthy, and bountifully good potatoes I've decided to try a few things for myself and see how they work out.

The first of these was the placing of the seed potatoes on a layer of comfrey in the bottom of my potato trenches (you can read all about it here).

The second step is to hill them up with a stable manure and soil mix. I'm really keen on stable manure and one day I summon up a post to show you why.

Then I tipped out a bag of fresh stable next to where I planted the spuds so it could age while the tatties were coming up and then when the tatties were high enough I spread the mix around the base of the tatties in order to hill them.

Since then they have received 48mls of rain in a storm and are positively jumping out of the ground.

Close up here on the left shows a healthy potato plant that has only received the comfrey treatment.

 After the hilling. A side benefit of having the stable manure, beside the potatoes, to age is that any nutrient that might have leached out into the soil will be available to next crop I decide to plant there.

Also with the comfrey under the potatoes and the horse manure and straw on top when it comes time to harvest the potatoes there is going to be some very rich organic soil there ready for planting.

So far I am happy with the choices I have made and their growth so far and now  the only thing left for my potatoes is to keep up the straw mulch and a fortnightly application of fish emulsion and wait to see what size crop I get from them.


Cheers for now

Stewart.

Experiment time. Brum brum.

Experiment time. Brum brum.

I've wanted to try this for some time now. A while ago I was told about putting a layer of comfrey in the bottom of your potato trenches due to the high amount of potassium, nitrogen  and other minerals available in the leaves. The thinking is that as the tatties grow the comfrey breakes down leaving the nutrients avaliable to the tatties, so, here goes.

First of all I decided harvest all the comfrey I have and then mow it all up making it easier to spread out in the trench and increase the speed at which it breaks down.

 Hummm, one big clump = about a third of a catcher on the mower. But wait, there's more :)

 Comfrey laid out in half the trench so it's back for more sultanas, um, comfrey

 Sprouted tatties from the Fruit and veg shop. And yes I know it's preferable to get certified seed tatties but when they sprout in your pantry it's hard not to stick them in the ground so I'll take my chances, fingers x'ed.

The tattie trench filled with comfrey and then covered with about an inch (25mm for you youngsters) or so of soil and the tatties placed on top and then the trench is filled.

And to top things off a nice biscuit or two of straw for mulch. Ta dah.

Now I'll just have to sit back and see what the results are.


What do you think?

Will it work?

Cheers and happy veggie growing to you,

Stewart

Progress Click here 

Final report Click here

Here's something you might want to try.

 The accumulator.
In the latest edition of 'Organic Gardener' (OG) there is an excellent article espousing the virtues of comfrey. One of those virtues is the high level of potash and good levels of nitrogen and phosphate contained within their leaves.


They, OG,  also suggested to use the leaves in layers about 5 cm thick as a mulch so that while the leaves are wilting and breaking down, which happens quickly, the nutrients are leached into the soil and become available to the plant you have mulched.

Here is my tomato with the comfrey stuffed around it. I'm using it on my tomato because it needs a good regular supply of potash for fruit setting and with all our rain lately they have become a bit etiolated.




I went one step further than OG suggested and covered my comfrey with compost and then mulched with some aging straw.


I also mulched and composted right up to the stem of my tomato. I did this because tomatoes don't get collar rot because they have a very active advantageous root system which allows them to produce new roots from their stems and thereby increasing their ability to access available nutrients from the soil

Cheers and happy tomato cropping

Stewart