comfrey tea?

Yes, we organic dudes and dudettes love taking advantage of free bio accumulators such as comfrey. Most either top dress with comfrey or feed it to their worms. I have heard of a tea being made but IMHO I would top dress or mulch with it.

 

I'm not sure it matters how you use it as long as you do use it.

Once mixed with water is when comfrey turns into a festering cesspool of aromas similar to an open septic tank on a hot summer day.

Look into making comfrey concentrates without water added. Take two buckets - slide the top one into the bottom one. The top bucket will have a few holes in the bottom. Fill the top bucket with as much comfrey as you can cram and set a brick on top of it. If you have one throw a lid on the top bucket to avoid evaporation. Set the whole deal in the shade somewhere.

As the comfrey breaks down it will drop into the bottom bucket as a powerful concentrate. You can store it in a glass jar in your cellar for a long time and quite importantly is it doesn't smell. It's the water added that makes comfrey smell bad.

Just add enough of this comfrey concentrate to stain the water like an iced tea. A little goes a long way.

J

 

Well, I garden in homegrown potting soil that contains lots and lots of my comfrey - but I've never tried using it as a stand alone fertilizer.

If you're going to do an amended ProMix soil, do yourself a favor and mix a mess of compost in as well.

When making the comfrey concentrate with two pails it probably takes 4-5 weeks for it to break down in the summertime. You ought to give it a try if you've got a mess of comfrey going.

J

 

This is your own wine cap beds? Like, you know the make-up of the substrate and more importantly what chemicals (fungicides, etc), that have or have not been used? Not the bagged stuff at HD or Lowes.

Second question is, got worms?

I have 13 comfrey plants and easily over 90% is just used to feed my worm bins. That and coffee grounds. There are occasional top dressings of kelp meal, neem cake, laying mash and ground up oatmeal. There are 5 bins total right now.

This supercharged VC gets used everywhere. Some in mixes, kept to under 15% of total mix (It's really dense), but mostly top dressed around everything that moves slower than I do.

Would probably need to add some aeration, but spent mushroom compost as bedding and comfrey as primary food source with worms working it all, would give you something amazing. I know mine is and I just use a basic peat based bedding.

Zero smell from the worm bins to boot. Something to seriously consider.

BTW, most only make comfrey tea once. Jerry's septic tank description is pretty mild. You'll smell for yourself.

Wet

 

My bins are a blend of Euros, RW and 'rescue' worms from outside. I made a frame to fit over the large motar mixing tub from HD and covered that with 1/4" hardware cloth. For sorting the worms, I've gotten real lazy due to RA in both shoulders and one that's been broken, twice. I also almost never harvest more than 2x/year, so the bins are solid with worms.

What I do now is lure the worms with melon rinds (whatever's in season), cut into hand sized chunks and frozen. Take about an inch or so of the top of the ag and put it in a 5gal bucket or similar to inoculate the new bin/bedding. Add some fresh bedding if needed for the worms to hang out for a bit till the new bin is ready. Put the frozen rinds on the surface of the bin to be harvested. The worms will ignore it for 2 or 3 days and then form a mass under them. Just scoop them up and toss in the bucket. Repeat till they mostly stop showing up.

Then, the VC gets run through the screen. I'll pick out obvious worms and toss in the bucket, but don't spend a lot of time looking, since I get 3-5lbs of worms just from the melon rinds. Have 5 totes ATM, 3 - 18gal and 2 - 10gal. The VC is still pretty full of worms and cocoons and whatever gets top dressed gets a decent infusion.

Yeah, 30% perlite at least. My mix runs 40% perlite or more. The worm bedding has close to 30% added perlite and is still dense as hell as the VC becomes mostly castings with long stretches between harvests. You'll see how yours is with your particular style/set-up.

BTW, I also freeze the comfrey leaves before feeding to the worms. They are totally gone in 4 days. I do remove the stems and stalks when harvesting and leave them around the comfrey crown like a top dress. They just left too much fiber in the bins. Around the comfrey plant, it didn't matter how long they took to break down.

HTH

 

If ya got pumpkin, it works even better than melons. My favorite in the fall.
os

 

Just how much is your perlite? I get mine from the local feed store for $16/4cf bag.

Ask around. I was paying $23 + a 40 mile RT drive and asked the local GOB about the big bags of vermiculite he always had and mentioned I much prefered perlite. Told me he didn't know what the vermiculite was used for, but it sold regulary (thought it was used as bedding), then knocked me over saying if I could wait a few days he could get some on his weekly truck from the distributor. Said it was a slow seller and he lacked the room to keep it in stock. When he told me $16 OTD I jumped on it. The next Wed it was waiting for me. Halfway through that bag I ordered another one. Couldn't make it in for a week, but let him know. LOL, when I got there the bag had a big SOLD sign on it (for me), and he told me at least 3 customers had tried to buy it.

Anyway, the next time I called to order was told it was in stock. He had 9 4cf bags stacked up. Apparently other 'mix makers' noticed the bag waiting for me and hit him with requests of their own for perlite.

So, it never hurts to ask.

 

years ago I started with comfrey tea

various methods abound, but in truth the stink got me out of it

and into why shit smells so bad (the main branch of organics 'the bacterium')

now about 2-3 times per year I'd cut a trash bag size out

hang it up to dry ..about a week

then run it over in my lawnmower and feed it to my compost.soil storage bin 45usgal/200liters?

lately I've been freak'in that I have too much comfrey

I'm aiming to a max of 30% comfrey to 66% soils

which I think right now is 50/50 ...Ohhh!

see I want to include dried nettles in the mix for some (N)

but I'm thinking it ain't needed just now

besides I can foilar with fresh tea say mid veg anyways

results are easy up 25% over not using this comfrey, whatever way its applied

good luck

 

Agree. Basically anything mushy and sweet will be devoured instantly by the worms. I usually and switching between Cantalope and Watermelon. I used a lot of pumpkin from last years pumpkin carving. Long story short is I now have several pumpkins growing straight out from my compost pile. Not mad about it at all.

 

OP
I've got a batch going right now using the 2 bucket method @jerry111165 described, but I'm using a 3rd bucket filled with water as the weight. It's a couple weeks in and it's got some smell to it. Mainly smells like rotting green stuff. Not too bad, but not too great either.

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