Comfrey grown from seed, interesting comparison.

Living in zone 9 b comfrey is a challenging herb to grow, believe it or not. I've discovered common comfrey seems to tolerate the hot dry summer better then the Russian comfrey.  
I finally managed to keep a comfrey plant alive. I decided to try to grow some from seed.  I cold stratified them, and planted.  I got two to germinate, which at first I thought was terrible, because I was thinking I planted 12 seeds, but I checked, and it was 6 seeds. Not a great germination rate, but better than what I thought.
As always I planted to many seeds, and need space when it came time to re-pot the seedlings. I kept one of everything in the house, and put the rest in my little plastic greenhouse.  We got a late freeze (for us) and most everything in the greenhouse died.  The comfrey looked just as good after the freeze as before.  
The difference between the two comfrey is amazing.  The one in the greenhouse is still a pretty small compact plant. The one in the house is large and beautiful.  My first thought was I wish I had kept both inside.
Now the twist.  The day I took the picture was a warm sunny day. I decided to leave both plants outside for a while, to start hardening off.  A couple hours later the weather starts to turn, the wind kicked up making it cool. I went to put them back in there homes, and found all but one leaf on the big comfrey bent, and broken.  The small one had no damage at all. So maybe that little stocky plant is stronger.  I will cut the broken leaves off. I think, hope, it will bounce back.
I guess fast growing isn't always best.  Again the turtle wins the race.

Hi Jen,

Just out of curiosity, do you keep your comfrey in pots/planters or do you let them root into the ground?

My winters are cool but not cold but my summers are hot and can trend towards drought.

Eric

I have them in the ground.  
I was actually getting the Russian comfrey to grow last summer. In spite of the chickens eating it to ground level. What finally did it in was a gopher.   Which really bummed me out because it was doing so well (once I caged it to protect it from the chickens).  I don't know if it was just the luck of the draw that the gophers and chickens left the common one alone ?  The common comfrey died back with the last frost we had recently. It was growing back, but the chickens found it, and munched it to the ground.  I caged it, and see little leaves coming back.
The reason I say the Common comfrey does better is when they were both doing well. The common comfrey didn't wilt, and didn't require daily watering. The Russian comfrey wilted every hot afternoon, and would start to die back fast if I didn't water it every day.
I would like to grow enough comfrey to plant under every tree, on my hugel, and at least one spot I'm my garden, safe from gophers and chickens.
My new practice is to make chicken wire baskets for everything I plant in the ground.  I know it's going to rust out, but my hope is to give the plants space and time to become established, so they can handle a gopher attack, but not choke the roots.  It's a pain in the rear, and I don't know if it will help, but I don't know what else to do.  I thought comfrey grew a long tap root, and wouldn't do well in a pot. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
Sorry Eric, more info than you asked for. I guess I'm long winded today.

Jen Fulkerson wrote:I have them in the ground.  
I was actually getting the Russian comfrey to grow last summer. In spite of the chickens eating it to ground level. What finally did it in was a gopher.   Which really bummed me out because it was doing so well (once I caged it to protect it from the chickens).  I don't know if it was just the luck of the draw that the gophers and chickens left the common one alone ?  The common comfrey died back with the last frost we had recently. It was growing back, but the chickens found it, and munched it to the ground.  I caged it, and see little leaves coming back.
The reason I say the Common comfrey does better is when they were both doing well. The common comfrey didn't wilt, and didn't require daily watering. The Russian comfrey wilted every hot afternoon, and would start to die back fast if I didn't water it every day.
I would like to grow enough comfrey to plant under every tree, on my hugel, and at least one spot I'm my garden, safe from gophers and chickens.
My new practice is to make chicken wire baskets for everything I plant in the ground.  I know it's going to rust out, but my hope is to give the plants space and time to become established, so they can handle a gopher attack, but not choke the roots.  It's a pain in the rear, and I don't know if it will help, but I don't know what else to do.  I thought comfrey grew a long tap root, and wouldn't do well in a pot. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
Sorry Eric, more info than you asked for. I guess I'm long winded today.

Just curious what is your summer weather like?  I started  Bocking 4 shoots last summer and I never saw mine wilted.  Full sun nearly the whole day.  Now I will admit we had a slightly cooler than normal summer with one 117 degree day, about a weeks worth of 112 thru 114 degree days and most of the rest of the real summer heat down in the 105 to 108 range

Jen,

I don’t know if it helps you much, but I mulch my comfrey copiously.  I tend to give 2-4” of fresh wood chips each year in addition to a yearly dose of diluted vitamin P (I don’t know if you are up for that or not, but I usually go into a 2.5 gallon cat litter container for a day and then dilute the rest with water.  I pour that amount on 3-4 plants.)

Aside from that irrigation and fertilization my comfrey gets nothing else from me.  I think the wood chips help keep moisture in the ground.

One other thing.  I inoculated my wood chips with Wine Caps long ago to speed up decomposition.  This is probably overkill and I know plenty of people grow abundant comfrey without this step.  Basically I just try to encourage some organic breakdown on the top layer of my soil.

Maybe this would help, maybe not.  Just my 2 cents.

Eric

Thanks you everyone.  
Last Summer was a beast, a lot of temp like you get. Normal is more high 90s low 100's.  Very dry, almost never get rain in the summer. I assumed it was the heat, but maybe it was a combination of not being established planted in early summer. And the poor thing was eaten to the roots by my chickens twice, so it had a rough start.  
I'm glad you posted because I really like the Russian comfrey better than the common. Maybe I will give it another try.

Jen,

I don’t know what type of soil you have but mine is very dense clay.  This is hard stuff to grow in when dried out but if it gets wet it really holds on to the moisture.  

Since the tap root reaches deep, deep into the ground mine always have access to water.  The mulch also helps keep moisture near the top as well.

My summers get very hot and humid.  Mid 90’s are very common and we can go weeks without rain, but the humidity never ever lets up ( the summer lows don’t really cool off that much making summer a brutal time of the year).

You probably get slightly more heat and less humidity but I don’t know about your soil.  I don’t suppose you could describe it could you?

Eric

Eric, I usually sprinkle bio-live, an organic fertilizer for transplants.  I will definitely look into vitamin P, that's new to me.
I planted both comfrey crowns in my want to be food forest. It's heavily mulched. 8" to 12" of wood chips.  When I planted I pushed the wood chips making a cone shape so the bottom is soil level, fill the hole with organic compost and plant in that.  Then I use old fire wood, pretty rotted. I place 3 piece in a triangle shape around where I plant.  I have had great success with this.  I don't forget where I have things planted, no one walks on my plants, if weeds get out of control, no one runs over the plants with the lawnmower, or weed Wacker.  (This only happens when it's time, or past time like now that I need more wood chips).
I think the Russian comfrey would have made it if not for the gopher. Who knows.
I appreciate your and everyone's help and advice. Thanks

There is a lot of clay, so if it gets dried out it's like trying to dig threw concrete.  No rocks to speak of.  That being said, I think we can grow just about anything.  Lots of orchards, I think we grow most of the rice in the US.  The area I have the comfrey has had wood chips on it, 2, maybe 3 years (I can't remember). The soil under is dark beautiful soil, that holds moisture so much better than the native soil.

Jen, your soil reminds me of what my soil was like when I moved into our house.  We had built our house and the ground was freshly and heavily disturbed during the construction process.  I can remember how incredibly brick-hard it could get.  Making matters worse, the first summer after moving in was a drought so that soil was harder still.

All that said, and as I am sure you are clearly aware, getting a decaying mulch on top of and roots inside the soil has really made a difference.  And to be honest, I too, was disappointed  with my comfrey at first.  I planted little root chunks (Bocking 14) and they died at first.  In my case I got something like 12” of rain in 3 days and that brick-clay turned to non-draining clay soup.  

On top of that, everything I read, till I found Permies—that was literally how I discovered Permies), said that comfrey just loves nitrogen and that it is impossible to give too much.  My solution was to dig fertile holes and fill them with a mixture of bagged manure and bat guano!  The little plants started, the rains came and the comfrey drowned and rotted right in their little fertile holes.  

Turns out the nitrogen really was meant for older, more mature plants and the rain just would not drain.

But back to your comfrey, sounds like flooding is unlikely and the soil beneath is changing.  Sounds like a win to me!  Now to deal with that pesky gopher.  I would think about deterrents.  There are various commercial deterrents (I have used mole-go). But hot peppers can accomplish much the same.

I bet that if you try again that you will finally get that comfrey plant to not only grow but thrive.

Eric

Jen, I'm also in 9b and this is the first time I've had any luck with comfrey (I wonder what kind of luck you have with lovage, which is my other impossible plant....). I always wondered at people talking about comfrey being invasive, because I could never even keep it alive.
I tried at least a dozen times before (planting starts) and they never made it til the last round... Last year I put them in and the weather was very cooperative (good soaking rains at least twice a week for quite a while now, and record-breaking heat). They are finally putting up flowers.
Edited to add-- they grew REALLY slowly. Someone here talked about harvesting them for comfrey tea when they reached 2 feet tall. LOLOL!!! It took them almost a YEAR to reach that height. I live in tropical bananaland, where most things grow like crazy, this comfrey took its sweet time. Also, I planted 3 at the same time, and all 3 took forever. I really can't think of any rational explanation.

(I don't know what kind I have, they are sold simply as comfrey, no additional info. Flowers are pink and white, both.)
(I'm also on clay, FWIW, but all of my beds have been hugeled at one point or another and i've got good amounts of organic matter)

Tereza, Jen, everyone,

I planted from little sections of 6” roots, but even with that head start my comfrey took probably 2 years before I dared harvest any during the growing season.  I call that period my establishment phase.

Now I can cut completely to the ground at least twice per season and probably more.  So far I have simply used chop & drop but I would like to make a liquid spray but am put off by the smell it is supposed to make.

Hopefully if you can get things growing this year (year two right?) then next year you should have an abundance for all sorts of uses.

Incidentally, I planted 2 plants by the edge of each of my garden beds.  I had plans to add as much as 8 more plants in the place between the two beds (about 10 feet long by 8 feet wide$.  It turns out that the extra comfrey would be ridiculous overkill!  My 6 plants give me all the comfrey I need.  It is amazing how much bulk mass just a couple comfrey plants will grow.

Eric

Eric, thanks for the reassurance that it takes a while!!! Maybe I'm out of the woods then?

Eric Hanson wrote:I would like to make a liquid spray but am put off by the smell it is supposed to make.

So I have two plants in areas where I need to pull the leaves every so often and I'm making tea (the other one is under a mulberry tree and I let it run wild). I've been pulling the old leaves and flower spikes to make tea.

I make a lot of "weird" teas for fertilizer and bug control- fermented coffee and fermented boiled onion skins are the worst, they stink.
Bokashi leachate- stinks. Bone meal- stinks. Anaerobic bokashi ferment at the bottom of the bucket- really stinks. Fish leachate I only tried once, it was The King of All Stinks. (and yes, the stink is often applied after my neighbors party around the clock all weekend. Payback... :-D But even all-night-country-music-blasting-the-night-before-college-exams doesn't deserve fish fertilizer.)

Comfrey tea is.... different. I was expecting the nasty stench of swamp water, which I get briefly when I strain it. The actual tea smells almost plasticky to me, without the usual stink of rot/ferment/manure/butt. And the smell passes WAY faster than the other things do. Note I'm dumping it on the bases of plants without watering it down (5 gal bucket with a good amount of leaves). You might find it's not as bad as you thought!

Ok Tereza, you officially have me intrigued.  Ideally I would like to have the comfrey tea early in the season, but that is when I have the least comfrey.  Further, I have heard that it takes weeks to make meaning that by the time I have it, the prime time has passed.

Any tricks to get this in days instead of weeks?

And just to reiterate, when I first got into growing comfrey, literally every source I read stated something to the effect of plant it and get out of the way or get impaled.  This made me think that I would just stick it in the ground and get heaps of foliage the first season.

The one exception to this lofty prediction was Permies which told me that it can take some time to get established, does not grow like mad in the first year, or even two, but is great over the long term where it is unbeatable as a green manure crop.

Don’t give up on comfrey and I won’t give up on comfrey tea (but I do need help).

Eric

keep in mind I'm in high summer right now- but I get a load of leaves, rip them into pieces, and throw them in a 5-gallon (? ish) bucket about 3/4 or 1/2 filled with water, and seal tight. It's ready in no more than 10 days or two weeks (I usually fertilize every two weeks, it might even be ready earlier).
I want to say I read somewhere that you could blend it up and it would be done even earlier. Here https://gardenerspath.com/how-to/organic/comfrey-tea-fertilizer/#:~:text=You%20can%20also%20try%20a,for%20up%20to%2024%20hours.
I read "You can also try a quick-steep method, which is similar to how you might make tea for drinking. Just pour boiling water over comfrey leaves and let the concoction sit for up to 24 hours. "
Worth a shot?

Still growing. I need to weed around it, it's doing well.  The little guy I started by seed isn't very big, but looks healthy.  Time will tell.  My plan is to try to start a bunch of seeds in late summer so I can put them outside in early fall. Give them cooler weather to get established.  Maybe someday every fruit tree will have a comfrey friend.