What is Comfrey? Three Benefits of One Great Plant!
What is Comfrey?
Comfrey is an amazing plant. Let’s meet one of the most versatile members of the Plant Family!
What is Comfrey?
Comfrey is an amazing plant. A member of the borage family, comfrey produces wonderful amounts of large vibrant leaves covered with fine stiff hairs. In the spring, tall stalks flower into strings of delicate, purple bells. Plants grow 2-3 feet tall, depending on the variety, and can spread rapidly. Comfrey is one of the oldest plants cultivated for medicinal purposes and has a long history of successful use.
Yet in modern gardens, comfrey is rare. Many gardeners are unaware of it, while others have tried to start a patch without success. There was even a movement decades ago to raise doubts about its safety, leading to a lot of conflicting information about comfrey. In this article you will be introduced to three amazing uses for comfrey!
1. Natural Health
Native to Europe and Asia, Comfrey was known in ancient times as the “knit-bone” herb. As early as 400 B.C., Greek historian Herodotus documented its healing qualities. Comfrey appears in the major pharmaceutical writings of the Greeks, Romans, and Medieval Europeans and continued to be recommended for use by leading physicians through the 1700 and 1800’s. Today we are rediscovering the value of this remarkably healing plant.
Comfrey is believed to double the rate of cell growth. In other words, it makes everything heal faster! Like its Latin name suggests, it has been used for thousands of years to help heal broken bones and fracture. Often used in natural health communities today, there are many stories of its amazing help for growing bones back together. Cell repair and growth is not just for bones, however. Wounds, ulcers, and burns have also been treated successfully with comfrey.
Check out our Homesteader’s Guide to Growing Comfrey for more information on comfrey uses and safety, How to Make Your Own Comfrey Salve, as well as ideas for practical use. I also highly recommend Rachel Weaver’s Be Your Own Doctor and Backyard Pharmacy, available from Share-a-Care publications.
2. Natural Gardening
Comfrey is a prolific and resilient plant, producing many pounds of foliage per year. For its ability to produce an abundance of foliage in a small space, comfrey is hard to outshine.
Comfrey can help renew depleted soil. Its deep roots can go down 6 feet or more in the ground searching for nutrients. Then it puts those nutrients to work making an abundance of large leaves. As these leaves die off, they release the nutrients into the top layers of the soil to feed plants with shallower root systems.
Another popular use for comfrey is for natural weed control. In some gardening zones, comfrey can be planted around the base of fruit trees to control weeds and enrich the soil. Alternatively, leaves are harvested in mass and laid thickly around other crops. As the leaves decay, they suppress the weeds and add nutrients back to the soil. suppress the weeds and add nutrients back to the soil.
3. Natural Livestock
Both because of its straight-up impressive amounts of foliage as well as the intense nutrition packed in those leaves, comfrey is also useful as livestock fodder.
Goats: Comfrey is probably most documented as a fodder for milk goats. Very helpful for pregnant and nursing does, it helps prevent and treat mastitis. It is an easy source of greenery for foraging goats.
Cows: Comfrey is also useful for cattle. I have fed it regularly to our Dexter milk cow for a couple of years and have not had a case of mastitis so far. She eats it with gusto early in the season when grass is scarcer. Later in the season she is not as enthusiastic and seems to prefer it wilted. This may have something to do with the more tender texture of the plant earlier in the season as well. She will eat it, however, and we have had good results with her health.
Chickens: Comfrey can be used as a supplemental chicken feed as well. They love its green leaves any time of the year and it is a rich source of nutrition for a laying flock.
Check out our Comfrey Roots for Planting, as well as our Homesteader’s Guide for Growing Comfrey for a lot more info on starting, propagating, and using comfrey!
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