Thursday, May 15, 2008

Comfortable with the comfrey

Our comfrey plants were sourced from eBay and arrived as five rather uninspiring small black coloured pieces of the sellers plant division. After a few weeks they have generated five young plants which give us hope for the future of our composting process which is in need of leafy nitrogenous material. The first year we will concentrate on building the plants up both in scale and in number.  In subsequent years comfrey will play an important role in the garden as we do battle with our poor aluvian soil. 



The snails and slugs seem to have nibbled at this specimen though not too much damage is visible in the photograph, considering the thousands of snails resident on our plot. The little though frequent rain we have had in recent weeks means that the birds are rather enjoying the spring with ample food supplies. Thrushes have helped out with the snail control as is evident by the empty shells we are finding. As far as is possible we like to rely on natural solutions it is just a case of finding the right balance.

1 comment:

  1. Very pleased to see you've managed to get comfrey. A friend brought some out from UK for me and I keep it in a tub and water it lavishly.

    I used to see it at a friend's garden bordering the River Avon at Bradford on Avon and was told it likes to be near water. She used to slap two leaves together, dip them in batter and fry. It had the texture and taste of fish, really delicious with a nice salsa. Also she tore the leaves up into a salad.

    I've read that it's likely to be carcinogenic. Who knows, considering it's been used for hundreds of years.

    What I notice here is that Gonzalo grows rows of artichokes and uses their leaves for enriching the soil . He offers us the fruits but we find them more trouble than they're worth.

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