Growing and Foraging for Comfrey

If you ’ve done any reading on the open ofpermaculture , then you have for certain hear of comfrey . This plant life has become the permaculturists darling for good intellect , as it has a multitude of benefits including , but not throttle to , lifelike fertilizer , dynamic collector , experience mulch , comrade plant , compost activator , and numerous medicinal uses . Unfortunately it has also been traduce in late long time , namely by the FDA , and wrongfully so in my opinion .

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Wildcrafting Weeds

If you need to get word more about the edible and medicative weeds that environ us and how to use them , control out my eBook : Wildcrafting Weeds : 20 Easy to Forage Edible and Medicinal Plants ( that might be growing in your backyard ) !

Foraging for Comfrey

Joel and I “ forage ” for comfrey and its roots when we were at theUC Santa Cruz Alan Chadwick Garden . We asked one of the employees in the garden if we could take some and she told us to take it all ! Of of course we did n’t take all of it , but the reason she pronounce that is because it tends to spread out very quickly and well . It is not aboriginal to the United States and thus is not really a traditional plant for foragers here , but because it spreads so rapidly after it ’s planted , chances are you may likely find it out in the wild somewhere .

Uses of Comfrey

Here it is get around fruit trees . It is often used as a component of a social club , which is a mathematical group of plants arranged to mutually benefit each other . Comfrey has a inscrutable taproot and is a dynamic accumulator , which think that it bring in up authoritative nutrient from the soil that other plants benefit from , thus making it a gravid fellow plant .

Here is that same patch of comfrey , one year later on . seem at how much it has spread !

Comfrey is also great for mulching , especially in the chop and bead form , and for compost . It is especially good when grown with fava beans or other masking craw N fixers . Once these plants get to a certain size they can be chopped and left in post as mulch and compost . you may also make a wonderfulcompost teaout of comfrey get out to use on your garden plants .

A close-up view of a comfrey plant, and freshly transplanted comfrey in a pot.

Comfrey has a niceflower that pull bees and other beneficial insects . The flowers are generally blank , pink , or purpleness , and they hang down from a central stem .

How to Grow Comfrey

Joel dig up up a bunch of comfrey roots for generation as they grow very well from beginning cuttings . He cut off all of the green leafy topic and plant the bleak roots in pots . We are not 100 % certain of the salmagundi as there are two type that are normally grown , Russian or Common . The Russian variety , however , is uninventive and can not reseed itself , so can only be pass around by root sectionalization or clipping . Our guess is that this is Common Comfrey ( Symphytum officinale ) .

It did n’t take more than a duet of weeks to get some squeamish leafy growth .

Then they started growing so fast it seemed like we could actually watch them get big !

Several comfrey plants growing in the forest.

Comfrey also has a multitude of medicinal benefits . This is where the FDA claims have been a little routine overblown . It has been used for geezerhood as a wonderful medicine and Common Comfrey ( Symphytum officinale ) is quite harmless . It is a powerful wound therapist and is often used in a basicComfrey Salveor otherherbal salvesand ointment alongside other herbs such asplantain , milfoil , calendula , and St. John ’s Wort . It is also well known to help heal broken bones , hence the nickname “ knitbone ” that it has acquired . As with any herbs , use with caution especially when taken internally , but as long as you ’re just using it for short periods of fourth dimension you really should be just fine .

If you do n’t have any comfrey around , but still would like to use it , buycomfrey rootorcomfrey leaffrom Mountain Rose Herbs ( my favorite reservoir of high tone , organic dry herbs ) .