Comfrey Reactor

I have a property that has some lead on it.
I deal with this by growing greens and roots in raised beds made with imported organic materials.
Fruiting plants I grow in the ground.
I have some comfrey growing in the ground there that I use for shop and drop.
I was considering a dedicated comfrey raised bed, but I figured the roots would grow deep into the soil beneath.

I already grow a lot of plants in sub-irrigated  barrels and buckets, so I was thinking I could grow comfrey in  a converted refrigerator.
I am not sure what growing medium I would use or how I would  I would "feed " it, I was thinking potting mix and urine.

While I'm asking about comfrey, I've read different things about planting it next to the bases of fruiting trees and shrubs.
Right now I'm using slabs of rock and tile right next to the bases of the blackberries and pear trees, but would comfrey be better?

I planted Blocking 14 comfrey too close to my fruit trees and the trees are having to compete for nitrogen.  I am using ground cover pieces (3ft x 3ft) around the base of my trees to control grass and hoping that the comfrey moves farther away.

That is the kind of thing I was worried about.
I have one place that has an excess of nitrogen and that's the chickens rasied bed composting yard.
If I plant it right along the block wall, it could quick cycle the nutrients.

Maybe it could do the same around the raised lasagna beds, over at the yarden.
A fruiting plant might be better.

Look at getting a hicks mulberry.  One will feed a whole flock for many months of the year.

Hey William,

I have 6 comfrey plants that I keep mulched with wood chips and fertilized with urine.  Each spring at the beginning of growing season I take a 2.5 gallon cat litter container (a normal, plastic container) and urinate into it for 1 day.  After that day I fill the rest with water and add evenly to all 6 plants.  That bit of fertility keeps my comfrey growing like gangbusters.  Since you will be growing in containers, a bit of chicken manure might help out a bit.  Comfrey does not need much help so I am sure you can get plenty going.

Eric

I needed the milkcrates that they were in, so I harvested two comfrey plants from the "tractors" they were in and started a couple of small  "reactors"
The comfrey tractors didn't work anyway, which is just as well, since they were right under a pear tree.
The reactors are old sub irrigated planters that I had sitting around.
I fed the leaves to the chooks and planted out the root fragments.
I will give them each some diluted urine, once I they form some leaves.

Eric, what do you use your comfrey for?

I use my comfrey for chop n drop fertilizer.

Eric Hanson wrote:I use my comfrey for chop n drop fertilizer.

Interesting.
You use urine on plants, but clearly you find there is something(or things) to be gained by feeding the comfrey and using it to feed other plants in turn.
I avoid using urine close to most growing plants, adding it to compost or the mulch of unused beds instead.
I am hoping comfrey and duckweed will "clean" up the recovered nutrients quickly, allowing me to feed the  plants during the growing season.

Both Bocking 4 and 14 put roots many feet deep.  Bocking 4 is said to grow roots as deep as 10 feet and 3 feet outwards.  I generally plant a ring all the way around any fruit trees 5 or 6 feet from the trunk, with a thick row of daffodils between the tree trunk and the comfrey.  I haven't observed any ill-effects from that spacing.  Just the opposite really.  Worm love to burrow in, and I assume, eat, comfrey roots.  Any time I dig roots, I find dozens of worms.  They seem to thrive together, and worms seem to make everything grow better.  They have improved my heavy clay soil immensely.

Comfrey is the only plant I know that can take straight manure dumped on it without burning.  I don't have access to enough manure to use it for that, so I use urine, as Eric said.  I don't dilute it, I just pee on my plants often.  I use the plants for chop and drop as well.  The "something to be gained" you mentioned, in my mind, is the minerals the comfrey dredges up from much deeper in the earth than other plants can.  The comfrey leaves contain the nitrogen I added, as well as the minerals and other nutrients the plant itself scavenged.  I also use comfrey as a border plant to keep quack and other weeds from moving back in to an area I cleared for planting.  A double row of comfrey stops quack infiltration better than anything else I know.

Your good results at that spacing is great information.
Unfortunately, one of the minerals that comfrey might draw up from my land is lead.
Fortunately, I can isolate it from that and feed it clean compost.
I do want to improve the land, so I might plant comfrey in the ground, but remove the leaves from the property.
Adding biomass to tainted land is also one of the things that is supposed to help with remediation, but I'm not clear as to how.
Dilution maybe.
Honestly, this plot may not be anymore contaminated than the one my house sits on or any farmers field, but I know about the hazards here, and thus am compelled to mitigate them.

On another note, why do you use all those daffodils?

William Bronson wrote:Your good results at that spacing is great information.
Unfortunately, one of the minerals that comfrey might draw up from my land is lead.
Fortunately, I can isolate it from that and feed it clean compost.
I do want to improve the land, so I might plant comfrey in the ground, but remove the leaves from the property.
Adding biomass to tainted land is also one of the things that is supposed to help with remediation, but I'm not clear as to how.
Dilution maybe.
Honestly, this plot may not be anymore contaminated than the one my house sits on or any farmers field, but I know about the hazards here, and thus am compelled to mitigate them.

On another note, why do you use all those daffodils?

The theory is that the bulbs are toxic, so burrowing rodents won't go through them to eat at your trees. I don't know if it's true, but it may be a and I think they are a beautiful flower,so even if it doesn't work, I keep planting them. They are one of the first plants to come up here in the spring, so I appreciate that too.

I should add, I plant various other things between the daffodils and the Comfrey. I plant mint, chives, walking onions, lots of different herbs. I like plants that bring lots of pollinators in, so most things around my fruit trees are with that in mind.

Makes perfect sense planting Comfrey in containers if you have lead contamination.

I took a couple pictures this morning just to show the way I have done some of this.  It's just starting spring here, so the daffodils have been up for a little while, walking onions a while longer, comfrey is just starting.  The apple tree in the middle of this little guild was badly browsed by deer this winter, but it will survive.  Inside the ring of daffodils you can see some chives and if you look closely enough, mint plants coming in.

William,

Given our different circumstances we may be using comfrey for different purposes.  I add urine to my comfrey so as to give it a boost both in making foliage but also in dredging up minerals from deep in the ground.

Given the lead in your ground and your need for using containers I am not exactly certain what you can mine from your soil that you couldn’t just add directly to your crops.

Regarding using urine in the garden itself, I am willing to use it on non-root crops that are nitrogen hungry like tomatoes.  It does wonders.  I am tinkering with making comfrey smoothies but thus far I have not really needed them and it sounds like it might be more trouble than it’s worth considering how simple chop&drop is.

One last point:  comfrey seems to encourage lots of decomposition among its fallen leaves and thus promotes lots of biota.  This may be its  greatest contribution to the garden.

Best of luck,

Eric