How to Make Natural Liquid Fertilizer with Comfrey
Why Comfrey?
Comfrey is an amazing plant. Used medicinally by people for thousands of years, comfrey also offers a lot of benefits to its fellow plants. One of my favorite ways to use it is to make comfrey tea fertilizer. Learn how to make and use your own free and abundant natural fertilizer.
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. For more information on comfrey, check out our blogs What is Comfrey, How to Make Comfrey Salve, and Three Tips for Growing Comfrey in the South.
Why Liquid Fertilizer?
When I switched over to all-natural gardening practices years ago, I found out that I did not miss most of the common fertilizers and pesticides. The garden grew just as well and the pest problems were no worse. The one thing I missed was good ol’ Miracle-Gro © style liquid fertilizer. There are just times when there is no substitute for a liquid fertilizer. It is quickly absorbed by the plants, prevents nutrient depletion from overwatering during hot or dry spells, and can be used closer to harvest time than granular or manure-based fertilizers.
Liquid fertilizer is especially helpful for young plants. Sometimes a tray of seedling uses up the nutrition in its potting soil before the ground warms up enough to put them outdoors. Other times, a stressed or root-bound seedling needs some extra help to survive the transplanting shock. Then there are the delicate starts like lettuce that need some help getting their roots established ahead of a heat wave.
A good shot of Miracle-Gro © gives a short-term answer but adds dubious ingredients to the soil. I tried various organic liquid fertilizers and—while I am sure there are some out there that work well—I never found one that seemed to make noticeable difference. Any that I tried were too expensive anyway to be practical on a garden as large as ours.
But last year, I came across information on using comfrey to make liquid fertilizer. I was intrigued! Another use for comfrey’s abundant foliage! So late last summer I started a batch of comfrey fertilizer and tried it out. After an unusually successful fall garden, I can say that it was worth making. It helped my late summer transplants survive the heat and perked up the more mature plants. It is so difficult to keep young plants watered enough during late summer without flushing out the soil nutrients, but comfrey tea solved the problem. It was easy to make and gentle on the plants.
I feel a lot more confident going into the spring planting season this year knowing I have this natural and effective fertilizer already growing out in my garden!
Comfrey Tea vs. Manure Tea
If you have ever heard of making “manure tea” as a fertilizer, then you already know the principal of comfrey tea. Manure tea is made by placing raw animal manure in a bucket, filling the bucket with water, and “steeping” the bucket with a cover on it in the sun for several days. Then the manure is strained out and the liquid used to fertilize the plants. I have made manure tea for my garden, but always had concerns about the safety of using it on anything that was anywhere near harvest stage (for the same precautions about using raw manure). The odor, also, was a deterrent. This being said, comfrey tea does not smell beautifully after a few days of “steeping” either, especially in hot weather, and I would still be careful about letting it come in contact with any edible parts of the plant close to harvest time. However, overall I feel better about using a plant-based fertilizer rather than an animal-based in regards to the possibility of parasite or disease transmission. I also happen to prefer stuffing a bucket full of leaves right there in my garden than hauling it out to the cow pasture!
How to Make Comfrey Tea
Making comfrey tea fertilizer is easy!
Fill a bucket about 3/4 full with comfrey leaves, stalks, and flowers. There is no need to chop them, just stuff the bucket with the foliage to about half full.
Next, add water to the bucket until the leaves are well covered. Place a lid or covering over the bucket and let it sit in the sun for about a week (less in hot weather).
Strain out the leaves. The wilted leaves you removed can be laid on the soil around mature plants as a mulch and additional source of nutrients.
Dilute the liquid to half-strength and use as a liquid fertilizer. It can also be strained and used as a foliar (leaf) spray. You can bottle and refrigerate the liquid for use later. I prefer to store mine outdoors for up to another week in the bucket that I used to steep it, then start another batch.
Let me know your comfrey stories! If you do not have a comfrey patch started yet, 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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