How to Propagate, Grow and Use Comfrey

what do you know about comfrey it's a powerful plant that you should have in your own backyard hi I'm Kai lien and I'm the Provident prepper comfrey is one of my favorite plants on our little homestead it's easy to grow it makes everything around it grow better and it's a medicinal powerhouse in this video I'll teach you everything that you need to learn to grow comfrey in your own backyard and I'll show you some of the great ways that you can use comfrey to make your family more self-reliant stay with me country is a miracle plant that I think everyone should grow in their yard all of the photos in this video are from my yard and my comfrey plants because I like to plant it just about everywhere in my yard because it has so many benefits one of the reasons why I plant so much comfrey is because it is very beneficial in my garden comfrey flowers are pretty and they attract pollinators the flowers start to bloom in late spring and they bloom clear through the fall bees butterflies and ladybugs along with a host of other beneficial insects love comfrey plants comfrey mines minerals in the soil it has really deep roots that will go down eight to ten feet and it brings minerals and nutrients to the surface in the leaves country is a fantastic mulch maker I have planted comfrey in between each one of these Seabury bushes to nourish the soil and so that all I have to do is chop it and drop it in place and every year my soil gets richer and better and feeds those see berries and other plants that are around them chop and drop is a technique that you will hear me use a lot it means that you just cut off the plant and drop the leaves in place to build that soil in this photo you can see that Jonathan is demonstrating how to chop and drop normally I would another month for this country plant to get taller and more developed before I chopped it and drop you can chop and drop comfrey between two and five times every year country is rich in potassium nitrogen calcium magnesium iron and silicon when you chop that or when the plant dies back it leaves those nutrients on the surface of the soil where the trees can have access to it comfrey is a wonderful asset and helping to retain moisture it can create a living mulch even when it's not chopped and dropped and those dead leaves build the soil you can create country compost where you just add your comfrey leaves to your regular composting process and add those incredible nutrients and make a very rich compost another thing that I do every year is make a comfrey liquid fertilizer now I just place the chopped comfrey in a bucket and I cover it with hot water and then I let it set for a few days or weeks and it starts to really stink by about that time and then I spray it on the plants I've been taking a class from Tom Bartels and in the class he teaches us how to make liquid fertilizers using a better process than the one I normally use I believe a link to Tom bartels class and some of his information in the description of this video for you another thing that I use country for is erosion control I have an area we have a walkout basement and that there's a real steep slope that goes down comfrey does a great job of controlling that erosion because of its deep roots and it's just massive nature comfrey is also a high protein fodder now rabbits like comfrey sometimes because they're a little bit prickly they don't like it until it's wilted for a day but as you can see when our bunnies had no problem eating it even fresh but it's nice as a fodder it starts to produce early in the spring and it produced massive amounts and then it doesn't end until late fall so when some of your other natural fodders have already given up or haven't started producing yet comfrey can really bridge that gap now I wouldn't use it as the sole fodder but I definitely am comfortable supplementing our rabbits diet with that as far as the chickens go they adore comfrey I've tried to grow comfrey a couple times inside of our fenced-in chicken orchard that we have and that chickens just decimated they really like comfrey so I've resorted to just growing it outside the fence and then I chop it and drop it over the fence for them to feed them comfort is a medicinal powerhouse and every year I make a healing salve that we use regularly in our family and that salve the basis of it is comfrey because it really does a great job of accelerating healing the wonderful medicinal properties are not a subject of this video so you can do some different research on your own with that but just know that having comfrey with all of its healing properties is a really smart thing to have in your yard I will harvest comfrey and dry it in an herb dryer that Jonathan made for me I just lay out the leaves and leave them in there for a week or two until they're dry and crispy and I crumble them and I put them into a quart jar to save for later sometimes I will make a tincture with them and I'll pour vodka over the top and let that set for several months and then use the tincture off of it but when I make my salve I always use dried comfrey and so that enables me to make this AB during the wintertime when I'm not busy with the harvesting of everything else I can just take the dried comfrey and my other dried herbs that I use in it and make this out during the slow time in the winter now when it comes to harvesting comfrey it's a bit prickly and so I recommend that you wear gloves you want to harvest it when it is 2 feet tall the roots the flowers and the leaves are all medicinal most of the time I don't harvest the roots I like to divide those and make new plants because it's just so easy to dry the leaves the medicinal properties are concentrated in the roots now comfrey will grow almost anywhere you will have no winter kill up to negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit and it will thrive even at a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit so it's Hardy in zones three through nine comfrey is not picky when it comes to soil and water requirements it'll be happy just about anywhere it is very drought tolerant because those roots go so deeply and it will adapt to most environments it likes full Sun and it will grow biggest and best in full Sun but I do plant it underneath my fruit trees and it doesn't seem to have a problem there but if you do plant it in full Sun it will grow larger than it does when it has partial shade a little tip about comfrey most of the country that you will be able to purchase is called blocking 14 Russian comfrey it is possible to purchase other varieties but that one is sterile comfrey is a plant that is fabulous once you plant it Yuriy it's really hard to move and it's hard to get rid of so you want to take care to decide where you want to plant it make sure that's where you want to keep it some country will spread by seed and if you have come free seeds blowing everywhere that could be a nightmare so just check and make sure that you have a sterile variety of comfrey unless you do just want comfrey to take over as far as spacing comfrey if you are actually growing in andros you want to space it at least 3 feet apart as you can see comfrey gets very large I like to plant comfrey around my fruit trees somewhere in the dripline and it's great to plant them around berry bushes - comfrey is incredibly simple to propagate you just dig up part of the root and then you split it as you can see it's early spring now you can propagate comfrey just about any time I tend to do it more in the spring but I have done it in a spring the summer and the fall and had no problems with it establishing I've even mailed it across the country to a friend and the comfrey start did just fine so in order to create this country starts I just dig up those roots and then I chop off the leaves on the top and I divide the roots because we don't you don't need a large root to start a plant the larger the root that you have the quicker that plant will take off so there's something to be said about that but I chopped off the leaves so that the plant just has a better chance of really taking off not the country needs a chance on anything and then I plant the comfrey root like this just horizontally in the ground down four to six inches you want to make sure that there are about three to four feet apart because they do get large comfrey is such a helpful homestead crop I wish I was a better photographer and you could see this better but if you look at that comfrey blossom there is a giant bumblebee so happy on the end of it getting its pollen one of my favorite pastimes is to go out and watch these beautiful bumblebees that her comfrey plants attract it really helps with pollination throughout the entire homestead comfrey makes my soil rich and full of life and like I said it's a medicinal powerhouse if you have a small yard if you can just find one small place where you can plant a comfrey plant it's actually very pretty you could even plant it in your front yard as part of your landscape but I would not want to be without a country plant if you'd like to know more details visit the post that I wrote that this video is based off of go to the Provident prepper how to propagate grow and use comfrey one of the videos that you might be interested in is Victory Garden secrets in this video we share some important considerations when you're trying to grow a garden to be able to feed your family another video that you might be interested in is survival food forest we created this wonderful environment where we put those chickens to work and they are very valuable on our homestead check it out you can pick up a comfrey plant at a local nursery or ask a friend for a start from their country all you need is a little tiny piece of the root and you are set to go and now for the questions of the day do you grow comfrey in your yard one of my favorite ways to grow comfrey is to use it in a healing salve what are some of the uses that you found for comfrey comment below and thanks for being part of the solution [Music]

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 699,857

Keywords: The Provident Prepper, TEOTWAWKI, SHTF, Herbal Remedies, Comfrey, Prepper Homestead, Healing Salve, Compost Tea, Comfrey Compost, Propagate Comfrey, Grow Comfrey, Chop and Drop, Prepper, Self-Reliance, End of Times, Emergency Preparedness, Homestead

Id: 6_XMkNWET3I

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020