Comfrey at Garden Organic and plastic pollution
This week I focus on one of my favourite garden plants, comfrey and look at the growing problem of microplastic contamination of soils.
I keep on seeing photos of edible bouquets on Instagram, so to kick of this week’s newsletter, here is my effort - its mostly chard, with some sea beet, Caucasian spinach, flower sprouts and leaves from various brassicas, parsley, together with walking onion and garlic chives - it was plenty for supper last night.
What are you harvesting at the moment?
Garden Organic
Last week, I was invited to speak at Garden Organic’s staff day. As well as giving a talk on how climate change is affecting our gardens, I had a chance to wander around the garden.
It’s been more than 20 years since I last visited GO HQ in Ryton, just south of Coventry, and its changed a lot. GO sold a large chunk of its original garden to Coventry University to raise vital funds and secure its future. The new garden is one acre in extent and there was plenty to see, including the ornamental garden, vegetable beds, composting area, wildlife pond and the comfrey collection. Not surprisingly, I went straight the comfrey and compost bins area (!) and had a lovely chat with head gardener, Emma O’Neill.
Garden Organic is now home to the National Collection of Comfrey (Symphytum). The collection holds 11 species and 18 cultivars. Its a really tricky genus of plants, so identifying them has been difficult, but it was looking great. One of the comfrey species on show was Iberian comfrey. Its a useful option for the garden, being a low growing plant, and it’s nowhere near as thuggish as Russian comfrey. Mine is covered with flowers at this time of year and it really attracts the insects.
Garden Organic has a long association with comfrey through its founder Lawrence Hills. During the 1950s, Hills experimented with various comfrey species, including Russian comfrey (Symphytum x uplandicum), creating 20 different cultivars, each with slightly different characteristics. He called them Bocking cultivars after the village in Essex where the trial grounds were located. Today, just two cultivars remain, 4 and 14, so sadly, the idea of having a comfrey collection that includes all of Hills cultivars is no longer possible, but maintaining the current collection of species and cultivars will be tricky enough as they do love to cross pollinate!
You can visit the garden on open days which are held regularly during the year. Dates for the next few months are 16 May, 1 and 27 June, 6 July (in support of NGS), 18 July, 1, 14 and 22 August. www.gardenorganic.org.uk
Making your own liquid fertiliser
Bocking 14 was Hills’ preferred cultivar as it had one of the highest yields and also the highest potash content. It’s a fast growing plant that likes deep soil as it has a long tap root, reaching deep in the ground and mining nutrients. This comfrey is sterile, so it doesn’t set seed and has to be propagated by division, which is really easy. I simply tug out a shoot with a bit of root attached and pop it in a pot. It soon roots.
I use my comfrey to create a liquid fertiliser. The easiest way is to set up a system with drain pipes as demonstrated at Garden Organic (see gallery above). You stuff newly harvested, chopped leaves into the drain pipe and push it down with a heavy weighted object and place a container at the bottom. As the leaves rot down, a black liquid dips out of the drainpipe into the container. Its rich in nutrients so needs to be diluted. If the liquid is thick and black, dilute it 1:20, if it’s a bit thinner, dilute 1:10. Being high in potash, it’s a great tomato feed.
An even easier method is to simply fill a bucket with chopped comfrey leaves and add enough water to cover and leave for month while the leaves rot. The resulting liquid is a great fertiliser – but beware – it stinks so don’t get any on your clothing. I usually use the liquid as it is, but if it is quite dark and thick you can dilute. The dregs at the bottom of the bucket go on the compost heap.
Alternatively, you can use comfrey leaves as a mulch. I harvest the leaves, chop them up and mulch around veg on the veg beds, on the greenhouse beds and even around potted plants.
You cant have enough comfrey!
Microplastics in the garden
While at Garden Organic, I listen to a talk about microplastic pollution in the garden. These tiny, barely visible pieces of plastic are everywhere, including our garden soils. The worry is that they break down into smaller and smaller fragments called nanoplastics. We don’t know how these fragments affect soil life, but we do know they have been found in the guts of earthworms and in our own guts too. There are also hidden plastics – used as stabilisers, fillers, plasticisers, pigments – which can easily enter the body.
When I look around my garden I see a lot of plastic: fleece and nets, water butts, drainpipes, pots, containers, trays, heavy plastic sheeting, buckets, plastic handles on garden tools and wheelbarrows, plant labels, supports, and much more. I have owned some of the ‘quality’ plastic items for decades, including some pots and trays that I used for my university research, so they are decades old and no signs of damage. But modern pots don’t last anywhere near so long and quickly split, and like many organic gardeners, I use plastic sheeting, mypex and carpet to cover the soil and kill weeds. Mypex is horrible as it sheds long thin fibres all the time and it’s impossible to collect them all.
I don’t think I am unusual in using these materials in the garden – in fact it was pointed out that gardeners like to reuse and repurpose stuff, so we end up with quite a lot of plastic. So, I am trying to avoid buying new plastic. While at the Garden Press Event, I talked to the guys from Andermatt Home and Garden and they were showcasing a plastic free garden fleece, Biofleece, so I am hoping to trial that new year.
I like to make labels from old plastic milk bottles rather than buy new plastic ones, but that’s still using plastic, so I guess I’ll have to eat more ice cream to get a supply of wooden sticks. But if you push them into the compost, they get wet and are soon covered in fungi and you can’t read the label, so I am trying this idea that I saw at the Pig at Coombe last year. An ingenious use of disposable forks!
Garden Organic has teamed up with researchers at Coventry University’s Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) for a citizen science project to learn more about plastic contamination of garden soils. It’s called Co-creating Citizen Science for Reducing Plastic Contamination of Soil in Community Food Growing Spaces (REPAS).
You can read more about the project here https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/news/plastic-pollution-nerc
That’s all for this week. I’m just back from a visit to the Pig in the Forest near Brockenhurst where I joined a tour of the greenhouse and kitchen garden so there will be lots of ideas and photos in next week’s newsletter!
Happy gardening
Sally
Talks and Workshops
Talk 9 May Talk by Sally at Weston Garden Club in Bath
Talk 11 May Sally is speaking at the FarmED Literary Festival in the Cotswolds- the venue is brilliant and the speakers awesome
Talk 30 May & 1 June Sally is giving a talk at the Bath and West Show, Shepton Mallet - times to be confirmed
Talk 15th June Kim is speaking at BBC Gardeners World Live Show at the NEC, Birmingham
Talk 4 July Sally is speaking at the RHS Hampton Court Festival, 4om on the ‘How To stage’
Talk 13 September Talk by Sally at Yeo Valley Gardens ,Organic September Celebrations, nr Bristol
Great place to visit - plus there are tours of the Heritage seed library. Another place localish to you, I think, Chipping Norton is FarmED - I am speaking there on 11 May at the Food and Farming Literature Festival - some great authors lined up
You’ve reminded me I really must go and see Garden Organic!