Unstuffed: Blessed Comfrey

Monday, June 6, 2011

Blessed Comfrey

Once upon a time a gardener planted comfrey at the allotment gardens, and now there are big patches of it growing near my plots. Comfrey spreads readily from the tiniest piece of root left in the ground. Experienced gardeners will tell you, once you plant comfrey, don't ever dig it up, or else you will have it everywhere. Someone must have ignored this advice, or perhaps a new renter had a plot tilled with comfrey growing in it. Whatever the history, we are blessed to have access to such a wonderful plant growing in abundance.

I say 'blessed' because comfrey is rich in nutrients and minerals and makes a wonderful mulch for garden beds. You can add it to your compost pile to heat things up, or add it to buckets of water and let it steep into a funky smelling compost tea. Free, organic fertiliser! Not to mention that the plant also has wonderful medicinal qualities as well.

On Friday evening I took my wheelbarrow to the comfrey patch to gather some plants for mulch.

Sadly, not everyone sees this plant the same way I do. A lot of people, who do not know about the many benefits of comfrey, think of it as a nuisance weed that spreads and takes over their garden. They curse it and the person who brought it into the allotments. Even worse, they treat the comfrey patch as a trash heap, throwing garbage and other garden refuse into the plants (and I'm not talking about the biodegradable kind). Among others things, I uncovered this tangled mess of plastic trellising.

I pulled it out and carried it to the dumpster, feeling sad and a bit angry. Why would my fellow gardeners, who understand what it means to grow something in the earth and then eat it, do this? I wondered what it would take for people to stop using this space as a dump.

There is a large bulletin board in the centre of the allotments. If I posted some information there about comfrey and all its benefits, I wonder if that would make a difference? If people saw the comfrey as a valuable, free resource that could help make their gardens lush, their soil rich and their vegetables happy, instead of seeing it as a cursed weed, would they be more respectful of the space where it grows? I don't think a lot of people read what is on the board and for many people at the garden, English is not their first language. I think I'll try it anyway and see what happens.

Actually, I find that my visible actions tend to create opportunities for discussion. People see me harvesting nettle and other weeds and ask me about them. Now, I see some ladies picking nettle.

Maybe if they see me with my wheelbarrow full of comfrey, they'll stop and ask me about that too, and I can tell them how awesome it is!

1 comment:

Rob - @formerfatguy said...: And how horrible that you've not had a comment on this post for 2 years

I too am so very respectful and grateful for comfrey. I've looked and asked about it for 2 years but nobody has it, knows about it or grows it

A few days ago I mentioned it in passing while visiting a friend. She was in a meeting a few years back and someone old her of Its value in he garden and while she knew nothing of it, she took notes AND A PHONE NUMBER! The lady had lots in her yard and was willing to share

I called, left a MSG, she called back. I ran over and cut 3 very mature comfrey out of the flower bed of her neighbor who had no use for

I planted 22 around my yards food forest

2 for each of my fruit trees, a few for my shrubs in a patch, a couple in my raspberry patch and a few where I plan to put trees this year or next

I understand what I've planted will be permanent but I've had 2 years to think about where I'd put them when I found them

Now I've got a good portion for myself. Next plan is to plant a few in friends yards as well, in support of their fruit trees and gardens

I was googling pictures of comfrey when I found your site

I'm in Canada. Alberta to be exact; May 30, 2013 at 1:19 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali