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HABSTINE
Omfrey is one
of permacul-
ture’s most
famous function-
stacking plants.
It’s so easy to raise,
propagate and share
that there’s no rea-
son to omit it from
your garden, where
you’ll never run out
of uses for it. Fall is a
good time to plant it
for spring use.
Unless you want your plots ‘
to become a comfrey farm,
make sure you’re growing
a sterile cultivar. Running
comfreys produce viable seeds
and quickly overtake avail-
able land. A plant breeder
in the United Kingdom de-
veloped a seed-sterile strain
from which he could clone.
(Like grocery bananas, these
comfreys are genetic copies.)
Booking 4 and Bocking 14,
named after the region in Es-
sex, sprout readily from root
pieces.
A story makes clear just
how vigorously they sprout
from root bits. A local farm
planted comfrey for compost
enrichment, and uprooted
some plants to chop into the
pileéz'i’hat compost never heat-
ed up to the 140 degrees that
would sterilize weed seeds
and comfrey root pieces. The
compost was finished, cured,
By ALEX s
FETHIERE
The comforts ofcomfrey
, and spread through-
out the beds — and
only then did the
pieces activate, each
producing a new
comfrey plant wher-
ever it landed.
By the time the
farmer noticed, the
new plants had root-
ed. Excavating them
. invariably left‘intact
' root fragments,
which sprouted further. Bock-
ing 14 and 4 cannot be evicted
once established. Much of the
farm’s land was smothered
by comfrey, and it was from
this Booking 14 plantation
that I brought several plants
to Harstine'Island to use and
share with due care.
A further note to that end:
though comfrey has been
used as a vegetable, tea and
medicine for two millennia,
the FDA banned oral prepara—
tions containing comfrey after
studies emerged showing that
it causes liver toxicity. As
such, we should confine Our
explorations to external and
garden uses. '
A Harstine farmer I told
about my comfrey shared
that comfrey helped him at
an unlikely time. In Febru-
ary there is no aerial growth,
only a dormant root. So when
he burned himself with a dol-
lop. of molten plastic, be dug
up a piece of root and inade a
plaster with it. He explained
that allantoin, which stimu-
lates cell growth and heals
wounds and broken bones,
concentrates in the roots over
winter. The quarter-sized
burn healed quickly without.
scarring.
One Harstine homesteader
‘ reports that comfrey has been
effective for heating up his
compost, hosting bees, spiders
and ladybugs, and feeding his
chickens. Other animals that
enjoy it as fodder include pigs
and cattle. Parasitoid wasps
also associate with comfrey
and hunt garden pests like
cabbageworm and aphids.
I use it to make liquid ma:
nure, for which it can be out
three to four times a year.
This tea is rich in phosphorus
and potassium, particularly
beneficial to fruiting plants
like tomatoes, cucumbers
and peppers. Even naysayers
admit that comfrey contains
significant calcium, which our
bioregion’s soils always need.
For this stinky tea, 2 1/2
pounds of comfrey should
be steeped in 1/2 gallons of
water for 10 days. Per Eric
Fisher’s “Compost Teas for
the Organic Grower,” this
should be diluted 7:1 for foliar
application, or used neat‘as
a root feed via a sunken con-
tainer. I give liberal lashings
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NOW
of it to everything in my gar-
dens and orchards throughout
V the season.
Comfrey makes a fantastic
fertilizer mulch. The Univer-
sity of Minnesota calculated
its total NPK (immediate
and delayed availability) at
3.7-1.21-8.4. It also contains
necessary trace minerals such
as boron, calcium and copper.
Permaculturists often deploy
it via the “chop and drop”
method, which works exactly
how it sounds.
The leaves provide an
abundant source of biomass.
Bulgaria’s Balkan Ecology
i is pictured
49" growing in
companion-
ship with
a pattypan
squash. Of
20 squash
plants,
this one
yielded the
best and
grew most
expansively.
Journal
photo by
Alex Fe’thiére
Project states that they’ve
harvested up to 6 pounds
per plant, per cutting (at two
to six times per year). This
organic matter helps enrich
our thinning tOpsoils. Not bad
for a plant that I misplaced a
piece of on a path, which then
appeared a year later.
I Alex Féthiere has lived on
Harstine Island long enough
to forget New York City, where
he built community gardens
and double-dug his suburban
sod into a victory garden. He
can be reached at onlandist@
gmail.c0m.
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