Comfrey

When I lived in Idaho, I had a lot of comfrey, and every spring I would divide it and start more comfrey plants. Each year, I had more.
Comfrey grows like a weed, and is usually just as hard to kill. If you chop it up with a rototiller, then you have just started a whole patch of comfrey, because every single bit of chopped root will grow.
However, comfrey has a lot of medicinal uses, from both the roots and the leaves, so it is an excellent plant to be growing.
Plus, it is also a great green tea to feed your plants , made from the comfrey leaves. Mainly, I have used it as a cooked green, or made into a tea, or in a green smoothie.
It makes a good substitute for spinach when cooked; but not so good raw because the leaves are fuzzy underneath (which goes away when cooked). People have eaten comfrey and used it as a medicine for centuries, however, some company did a research test and decided that lab rats that were fed comfrey extract were more likely to get cancer than rats that were not, and they said it was bad for the liver.
So (just like sassafrass tea) we are told that it is not safe to consume.
People DO still eat it anyway, and I have used it for many years, with no harmful results.

Anyway....back to my story.... somehow, the comfrey that I transported here from Idaho and have grown for several years , died last summer, and did not come back up this spring. So, I ordered more from e-bay, and just finished planting 15 nice comfrey roots out alongside of the house.
Hopefully, these will all come up and start growing. It will take a good year for the root system to get developed; but I will still have a few leaves to use this summer, hopefully.

 

Today I put the soaker hose along the edge of the front fence where I planted the comfrey last spring. I have been raking the pine needles out from the area, and watering it, because the pine trees sscarf up every single drop of water , and also keep rain from falling on the ground under the trees.
Anyway, today, I noticed a few tiny sprout of comfrey coming up. I planted about 15 plants last year, and most of them came up and grew last summer. This year, I amy be able to divide up some of the roots and propagate a few more plants.
Comfrey puts roots down as far as 10 feet into the ground, so it can reach deeply buried nutrients that many other plants never get to, and the leaves are great as a compost or for making a green manure tea to water other garden veggies like the tomatoes.
I also use the leaves like spinach, and chop some up if I am making a scrambled egg. They are kind of fuzzy on the underside, which makes them not very good to jusst use raw on salads or sandwiches. I have done both of those things, and they don't taste bad; but the fuzzy leave are just weird in your mouth; so now I either put them in green smoothies, or cook them before eating the leaves.

Comfrey is a perennial plant, so it is like dandelions, and once you have some, you have it forever, as opposed to greens that you have to replant each spring.

 

(Chuckling quietly to myself after reading this)
Well, @Mari North , you are close to being right ! The comfrey coming up might not be quite so uch a holiday; but it IS a day of celebration........ At least for me.
I love comfrey ! My mom used to grow it, and I have grown it (and packed roots along when we moved) for many years now.
Because of its amazing healing propertiess and nutrition, people have used comfrey as both a food and a medicine for hundreds (if not thousands) of years now.
Like some other maligned plants, they did those experiments where they literally stuffed it down lab mice from the time they were born until they died, and even though they lived to be very old mice, some of them had liver damage.
Was it from the comfrey ? Who knows. In any case, you would have to eat TONS of the stuff to come even close to the amounts forced into those poor mice, and the dangers were certainly far less than most of those patented medications we see advertised all of the time on television.
I have used comfrey for many years now, and with no ill effects, as have many other people; and it is a no-effort nutritious food and medicine, once you have it started. Plus, it makes a pretty border along the fence and in front of the house.

 

The place where I planted the comfrey was in too much shade, maybe, and gradually, fewer and fewer came up each year, and they didn’t grow well when they did come up.
This spring, I had one lone comfrey plant, so I dug it up and moved it out in the sunshine in one of the tire planters.
So far, it seems to like it there and is growing, so by this fall or next spring, I should be able to separate out some roots and start a few more comfrey plants again.

 

I've yet to study medicinal herbs & medicines (and more in-depth botany) as I've often wanted to do.

Years ago I read an article in the paper discussing the continued use of Queen Anne's Lace as birth control among Appalachian women. Goodness knows how they discover that particular use, but it does work when a tea is brewed from it.

Doesn't comfrey prefer things to be on the cool side? And I wonder if you got too much clay where you are now.

 

There is definitely a LOT of clay in this ground. Where I lived in north Idaho, we had wonderful sandy soil, which I enhanced with fresh llama droppings and rototilled them in. Everything grew really well in that mix of sandy soil and fertilizer. I had comfrey and oregano growing all along my back yard fence line, and enough oregano to dry it and give some away to friends and family each year. It came back every year and kept spreading, just like the comfrey and the chives.

Here, we have a combination of the hard clay, which is either mud or cement most of the time, and huge trees all around the property, so we do not get that much sun. However, it is also a hot climate, so even plants that are in shady areas get too hot, while not getting enough sunshine.
I planted Jerusalem artichoke in the same area as the comfrey, and I think that it shaded out the comfrey. The one that I have left seems to be doing fine now that it is out in the sunshine and in good soil, not just the clay.
It is still little and scruffy, but making new leaves, so I have hopes for it.

 

This spring, I trimmed back the comfrey plant, dug it up, and divided it into little sections and put them all into a container to root and grow. When I had several nice ones, I planted those in the front of the area which is going to be my herb garden. They seem to be really happy there and are growing fast. I have more coming up in the planter that will be ready to set out somewhere else by next week.

Here is how the comfrey plants in the herb garden are looking.
The little plants in the long container are my mullein starts. It is a plant with fuzzy leaves that can get 5-6 feet tall in its second year when it goes to seed.
The leaves are used medicinally, especially for lung issues.
Mullein grows wild out in north Idaho, and we just mowed it down when it spread into the yard out there.
I started these from seeds, and so far, they seem to be growing and doing okay.

 

Since I decided to start dehydrating more greens, and my comfrey is growing prolifically, I decided to cut some comfrey leaves and dehydrate them. I know that the literature now says not to eat comfrey, but it has been consumed as a food for literally thousands of years, and my mom grew comfrey back when I was a kid, so I have used it for years with no bad effects.
I was reading that people in Ireland ate comfrey to live on during the potato famine, so they would have been eating it in large quantities if that was what they lived on, along with whatever else they could grow or forage.

Anyway, I have some that I washed and shredded into smaller chunks and it is in the dehydrator.

 

The leaves are sort of fuzzy, so it is not great to eat raw in salads or sandwiches, although I have done both. Once you cook it, you can eat it like cooked spinach or any other greens, and it cooks fast like spinach.

 

I transplanted my baby mullein out to the front yard and planted then in the ground with some of the garden/potting soil over top of the clay. So far, they seem to be doing okay and are growing.
Mullein does not do much in the first year, so all they should do is make a few more leaves; then next year, they will grow the tall stalks and the flowers.