Comfrey in Permaculture
Most farmers --- and I'm no exception --- get
tunnel vision about producing the crops they're interested in.
But permaculture admonishes us to put in some species which have other
uses beyond going in our bellies. I don't spend too much time
worrying about planting nectaries since the majority of our property is
one huge nectary and our "lawn" is primarily flowering weeds. On
the other hand, I'm now starting to think seriously about dynamic
accumulators.
Dynamic accumulators are plants which are good at mining nutrients out
of the soil, often because they have taproots which
reach deeper than normal roots can go or because the plants team up
with bacteria to fix nitrogen out of the air. Permaculturalists
harvest the leaves of dynamic accumulators and use them as mulch or to
make compost to feed their gardens --- yes, I know that fertilizing is
all I ever seem to talk about.
Of all the dynamic accumulators out there, comfrey is king. A
single comfrey plant (like the big one at the top of this entry) can
produce four to five pounds of leaves multiple times a year. The
leaves are extremely high in potassium and also have a low carbon to
nitrogen ratio, making them a great mulch.
The plant is also extremely
easy to propagate. I have a big clump which I cut into bits a
couple of weeks ago --- I whacked at it with a shovel, not worrying
about how much root each plant got. In fact, none of my new
plants had any small roots at all since I was only able to cut off the
top six inches of the massive taproot.
I planted the comfrey starts in my new forest garden and then proceeded
to completely ignore them, giving them no water during a hot, droughty
period. The big leaves withered...and then new little leaves
popped up. Before long, I expect each comfrey section to turn
into a massive plant ready to feed my garden and bees. (Do be
aware that comfrey is nearly impossible to eradocate once you plant it
somewhere --- put it in a place you don't mind it staying forever!)
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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