Ethics Trading

No, not for you, or me, it’s for the garden. I grow my own comfrey and have 2 clumps now, accidentally as I meant to move it and obviously left a bit of root in the old spot. Ooops.

So, to make comfrey tea – there are two methods. One involves pressing and produces a thicker darker tea that needs to be diluted one part in 20 parts of water or it’s too strong and can harm your plants.

But the way I make it is much more hap-hazard!

I crop the comfrey after it’s flowered, this isn’t the best time but it’s a compromise for me as I like the flowers and so do the bees. So I crop after flowering and shred the leaves into a mini plastic dustbin with a tightish fitting lid – the shredded leaves take up maybe up to one fourth of the bin. I then add the days hen poop collected from the run – sadly that’ll be less for a while as we’re down to one hen for now but getting replacements soon.

Anyway, back to the comfrey, which the hens don’t seem to like….. Then I top up the bin with water, preferably from the water butt, until it’s about 4/5 full, give it a stir and pop the lid on. After that, apart from a brief stir about once a week, I leave it slowly doing its thing in a corner until it stinks. It literally makes your eyes water when you take the lid off. But at that point it’s ready!

To use I skim off a 1 litre reused squash bottle full (ish, sometimes it’s not full) and put that in my 8 litre watering can, top it up with water butt water and use that as a foliar feed on pretty much everything except carrots.

It’s fabulous for pumpkins, courgettes and tomatoes and the slimy detritus left in the bottom is fab in the compost when you reach the bottom!

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