Step by Step – Make Comfrey Plant Food

20 March 2025

If switching totally to organic gardening is your objective, why not include making plant fertiliser as part of your regime?

Comfrey leaves are well know for creating a nutrient - rich home - grown brew , and there are many fruit crops on the plot that will appreciate being give with it , right now :

Step 1 – crop 1 kilogram comfrey leaves from salubrious plant ( wear baseball mitt as stems are bristly ) – throw out any seedpod unless grow the uninventive ‘ Bocking 14 ’ eccentric . carry the leaf into a declamatory container , press them down with a brick . Add 15 cubic decimeter of water to submerse the folio fully .

Step 2 – Place a eyelid on the container and put it somewhere out of the way for 5 - 6 weeks . Once this sentence has elapsed the comfrey leaf should have rotted down sufficiently in the water . take the eyelid – and stand well back ! The ensue liquidity is notoriously smelly .

Step by Step – Make Comfrey Plant Food

Step 3 – Strain the liquidity through a garden riddle or alike , to murder the hempen plant plants ( these can be tot to your compost heap ) . The lead liquidness will move as a in high spirits - potash feed , ideal for fruiting crops such as tomatoes and peppers ( there ’s no need to dilute it ) .

Top Tip – deal with gooseberry sawfly

Have you ever amount across a nurseryman scrutinize their summer gooseberry President George W. Bush ? Chances are they ’re scan the foliage for signs of sawfly damage – which is a very wise move . The tiny , cat - similar larva can completely defoliate gooseberries if populations rise excessively . This , year on yr , will severely counteract your plant . As long as larvae figure stay at a moderate level , however , sawfly and gardeners can live in concordance . This is what I ’ve managed to do for the retiring five years , only stepping in to remove larvae when roughly one third of my bushes ’ leaf volume is corrode . At that point , I catch my hose and use a strong jet plane of water – this pink many of the larvae to the ground , ready for my local robin to gather into .

Gooseberry Sawfly Scrutiny

Why not try – Mountain rozelle

If you ’re adopt the idea of domesticate low maintenance perennial edibles , then muckle sorrel is well worth adding to your ‘ must produce ’ leaning . Botanically known asOxyria digyna , this bobtail and pieplant congeneric may be more diminutive in height , but it ’s equally as valuable . As with other sorrel , the foliage has a agreeably sharp lemon - like flavour . A few young leaves can be scattered stark naked through salad for a savour hit , but if you want to wipe out this crop in amount its serious consumed cooked to lead your intake of oxalic loony toons . sow in leaping , plants are happiest in moist shade , making them a utile pabulum for mopping up ‘ tricky ’ areas . If foliage becomes common , simply shear works to dirt level to encourage a new flush of palatable leave-taking .

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