Comfrey liquid plant food - eeww!

Hi Friends,
Well, pegs on noses, please, as this morning, I've strained my first batch of this year's comfrey liquid plant food. For anyone who has never indulged their curiosity/tightwad tendencies & actually made this, I can tell you that it is possibly the smelliest thing ever. It's difficult to describe, but I'm going to try. For catty friends, think of the worst, most nuclear litter tray EVER...yes, that's right, the one requiring the cordon sanitaire around half the house, the one where you simply cannot believe that something so evil can have come out of anything so small & fluffy.....Holding that thought? Good. Well, now add in a strong rotting vegetable overtone.....like the time when you were a student & discovered someone's ancient liquifying carrot in the bottom of the fridge. Getting the picture? Now all you need to do is add a subtle top-note of festival toilets (on the last day) & we have the full olefactory joys of home made comfrey liquid plant food!

There are various ways of making this. We saw an innovative method a while back at Garden Organic, Ryton http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/ryton which involved a long length of drainpipe attached vertically to a shed wall. The drain pipe had been fitted with a tap at the bottom. The comfrey was stuffed into the top of the pipe & poked down with a plunger (a recycled plastic bottle weighted down with water). Did we go away & adopt this clever bit of low-tech? Nope! For the lower than low-tech 'Hagstones' bucket method, see below!

Opened bucket & gingerly stirred the witch's brew within. (Unless you are a masochist, always use a lidded bucket....unless you have nasty neighbours, in which case use unlidded bucket & position up against fence near their BBQ area.......actually, have never done this, our neighbours are really nice). Next, I strained it into a bucket using my compost sieve. I always chuck the rotting comfrey onto the compost heap in the belief that something so stenchy can only be doing some kind of good. Then it was bottling time, & I just funnel it into recycled plastic bottles.

I cut the comfrey back yesterday when I was tidying up the herb garden, so I chopped it up a bit more, added a particularly malevolent nettle which had been threatening my ankles for a while & started off another batch. I wish I could tell you there's some mystery to it, but there really isn't. Just ram your bucket as full as you can, add water, apply lid & give it at least 2 weeks.

Something I've discovered through experience is to use comfrey plant liquid well diluted. On a warm day, a strong solution can scorch foliage, so I usually use a small recycled plastic pot, no bigger than a mug, to measure it out into the watering can, & I try to aim it around the roots, rather than the top-growth as much as possible. So that, my friends, was my very stinky morning. Did I water it onto my feet this time? No, amazingly not, but I have got it on my hands & despite using a scrubbing brush & washing them a subsequent 4 times, I can still smell it. Ooooh, the allure of me, tonight.....!!

I made a good start on cutting back a big flower border too, but the rest will have to wait. I'm going to brew a cafetiere, find my book & spend some quality down-time with Albert Whiskers, who has just bitten me because he wasn't allowed to sit on the laptop keyboard! 

Until next time,

C x