Gardening: Comfrey As Fertilizer?

[Jacob Petersheim]

Has anyone ever heard of this? It sounds like an amazing addition to compost heaps.

It seems to have disappeared because it was found to be toxic as a food. But as fertilizer that doesn't apply.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Comfrey is one of those foods that have been eaten by humans and animals for centuries. Then, the government did one of those tests where they fed rats more every day than a human would eat in 50 years, and said it caused liver damage, or something like that.
My mom raised comfrey, and I have grown it for years, and use it like spinach. Most of the thing they say is damaging is in the roots, not the leaves.

People feed comfrey to chickens, rabbits, pigs, horses, goats, etc. But, yes, it is also great as fertilizer. You just pull off the leaves and drop them around plants to add them as a nutrient.
The kind i have is called Bocking 14, or something like that. It flowers but does not go to seed. The way to spread it is to cut the roots and plant root cuttings, and they will sprout and grow new plants.

I grow it near my other plants so that I can just pull off leaves and add them under the roses or raspberries, but you can also take a large tub of rainwater and add the leaves to that and let them turn into what they call comfrey tea.

 

[Don Alaska]

We use it often to mulch our fruit trees. We occasionally eat it, and we did sometimes feed it to our goats when we had them. As @Yvonne Smith said, it is the roots that seem to be the most toxic. Lots of stuff we eat is toxic or carcinogenic. Everything in the Nightshade family--tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and especially potatoes are all slightly toxic, and sunflower seeds have been found to be carcinogenic.