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mulch

Use cut comfrey as green manure and mulch

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posted 11 years ago

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After my comfrey plants grow tall, flower and fall over I cut them down and pluck the leaves and lay them all around the garden. I drape the stalks at edges or cut them up and lay them at teh base of trees. If I do not cover comfrey with soil it quickly dries and begins to decompose.

Dan Tutor

Posts: 103

Location: Zone 5, Maine Coast

posted 11 years ago

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I tear leaves from my comfrey on a weekly basis to mulch around fruit trees, but lately my ducks have gotten there first and eaten most of it. I'm sure it will pop back up though when the ducks have forgotten about it, and the ducks do their fair share of fertilizing anyway.

The devil haunts a hungry man - Waylon Jennings

Elissa Teal

Posts: 128

Location: Detroit, Michigan

posted 11 years ago

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I don't have but a tiny comfrey plant so I use burdock leaves from my large burdock "patch".

New to Detroit. Looking to help out with current permaculture and urban farming projects. Here is my blog from when I was an urban homesteader in Ohio but I am continuing to post about our suburban adventures in Permaculture. http://crunchymamasurbanhomestead.wordpress.com/

John Polk

steward

Posts: 7926

Location: Currently in Lake Stevens, WA. Home in Spokane

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posted 11 years ago

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Elissa Teal wrote:I don't have but a tiny comfrey plant so I use burdock leaves from my large burdock "patch".

I love burdock for its mass of leaves. One of the neighbors has a good sized patch, which my cats have spread while on rodent patrol amongst other neighbors property. The neighbor directly north had a single burdock which was 7-8 feet tall, and just about as wide. When their landlord brought in the gardeners* to clean up the yard, they carefully cut around the burdock - they probably thought he had planted a tree since their last visit. LOL

* I use the term 'gardener' loosely now. Nowadays, most are actually what I call "Mow-blow-go". That's about all they do.

Matu Collins

Posts: 1947

Location: Southern New England, seaside, avg yearly rainfall 41.91 in, zone 6b

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posted 11 years ago

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I do this with comfrey and dock. I let them get nice and big and then chop and drop. I prefer that to mow and blow. Small slow solutions, right

quieter and less expensive.

“Enough is as good as a feast"
-Mary Poppins

Aaron Festa

Posts: 153

Location: Connecticut

posted 11 years ago

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Does chop and drop have diminishing returns? I planted some comfrey but once it pulls up nutrients from the area around where it is, does it still have value? Or am I thinking of chop and drop incorrectly and that it is more a nutrient recycle system? Where it brings back nutrients that could leach through the soil year after year.

R Scott

pollinator

Posts: 4142

Location: Kansas Zone 6a

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posted 11 years ago

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It pulls it up from the deep (beyond the reach of some crops), and makes some bio available that your other crops couldn't use before.

There may be a point it is pulling up a surplus and you could move it (by using the leaves as mulch or compost somewhere else), or maybe the nearby plants use it all. IT DEPENDS

"You must be the change you want to see in the world." "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." --Mahatma Gandhi
"Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words." --Francis of Assisi.
"Family farms work when the whole family works the farm." -- Adam Klaus

Sue Rine

pollinator

Posts: 344

Location: New Zealand

posted 11 years ago

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Here's how I use comfrey in our young but gradually developing food forest.

http://www.familyorganics.co.nz/sue-s-blog/lookmumnospray

Nicanor Garza

Posts: 145

Location: Yakima county, Washington state

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posted 11 years ago

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I am having great success with my comfrey here in the desert by growing them in a mulch basing full of carbon rich material such as chopped leaves. from what I have read, comfrey is one of the few plants that can take in a 1/1 ratio of water and human urine.

If you settle for what they are giving you, you deserve what you get. Fight for this tiny ad!

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