Where to get Comfrey?

[daddymatty]

hi

hey thankz for comments what am i going to be looking for on ebay as i cant find nothing atm i mite just be doing summut wrong

[zazen999]

It's a little early for comfrey on ebay as Two_Sheds said.

What you want is cuttings of Bocking 14.

Google 'comfrey' and 'bocking 14' and you can read up all you want on it whilst you want for spring to come.

[Paulottie]

Otherwise try pretty much any hedgerow in the country

I'm unsure that bocking 14 is imperative anyway...I don't find it difficult to control but once a clump is established; then it is hard to shift.

[Two_Sheds]

hey thankz for comments what am i going to be looking for on ebay as i cant find nothing atm i mite just be doing summut wrong

I just typed "comfrey" into eBay and got about 15 hits. You must be doing summut wrong.

COMFREY-BOCKING 14--six root segments on eBay, also Herbs, Plants Seeds Bulbs, Garden Plants, Home Garden (end time 15-Feb-09 17:47:01 GMT)

[Snadger]

I just typed "comfrey" into eBay and got about 15 hits. You must be doing summut wrong.

COMFREY-BOCKING 14--six root segments on eBay, also Herbs, Plants Seeds Bulbs, Garden Plants, Home Garden (end time 15-Feb-09 17:47:01 GMT)

And NO............that's not me flogging Comfrey, before you ask!

[gojiberry]

Have tried for the last two years to grow comfrey from seed and just can't get it to germinate. Am having another go this year. As an alternative I have been using nettle leaves for a fertilizer, don't know if they are any good with the snails. The hedges around the allotment are always full of nettles.

Ian

[malison]

comfrey

I bought some comfrey seeds yesterday at wyvale garden centre. They are thompson & Morgan though should be available online easily enough.

[denniscuddles]

Comfrey confusion

Buy Comfrey seeds and you're likely to be buying trouble. The varieties that set seed, such as the common Comfrey, Symphytum Officinale, will spread all over the place and when their leaves die off they will smother and kill any plants growing near them. There are some manageable dwarf and ornamental varieties that look very attractive in the garden but they won't produce the amount of leaf material needed to make compost.

For composting purposes you need the large, hairy-leaved Russian Comfrey (Symphytum x uplandicum). Some varieties can be grown from seed eg: Russian Comfrey Seed (Symphytum x uplandicum) but for a manageable source of compost it's best to go for the sterile variety Bocking 14. This will never set seed so will stay where you put it but will give you 3 or 4 leaf harvests a year and is easily propagated by taking 2" root cuttings. For more about Bocking 14 take a look here: http://www.allotment.org.uk/vegetabl...ey/comfrey.PDF

Don't think anyone's mentioned Comfrey's other amazing property - it has a remarkable ability to heal wounds, hence its old name of "Knit bone". Wouldn't recommend it for fractures nowadays - let A and E do the job - but it does an excellent job healing cuts and other small wounds. Leaves can be applied directly to the wound but you can also use it to make a healing cream.

[snohare]

Yes, horse trainers would never be without comfrey in their yard as it was so unparalleled in it's ability to speed up healing of bruises and cuts. Even deep wounds to the bone that would not heal, could eventually be fixed by comfrey poultices.
But....(there's always a but) modern science now knows that the magic ingredient which worked these wonders, in too large quantities in the liver leads to an extremely fatal form of cancer. Due to the problem of quality control and dosages, even simple supplements containing comfrey are now much rarer than they used to be. This sort of case is one of the reasons that there is pressure to put supplements through the same hoops as pharmaceutical drugs. (Which purely incidentally would put all the small supplement companies out of business, leaving big business alone in the market.)
The recommendation now is don't use it on any open wound.
Just goes to show, natural ain't always safe...Mother Nature considers us all to be disposable protein.

[epsilon_naught]

I'm wondering whether the comfrey can grow in tropical climate?

I did try look for it in a few allotments, but they said dont know what is it, some even say comfrey can't grow in hot climate. The temperature here is 28 to 32 Celsius, whole year.

If the climate is not a problem, how long can it survive in the ebay packaging before reaching Malaysia?

I hope to have it in my yard, anybody can advice?

[snohare]

Epsilon, it is just an unresearched opinion, but I fear that Comfrey will not survive in tropical climes.
The reason I think this is that most plants have proteins that work only within a certain range of temperatures; comfrey being a plant that originates from colder areas such as Siberia, I would be willing to bet (if I was a betting man) that it's proteins are skewed to work better at lower temperatures. The large size of the leaf also is likely to make survival difficult for it in hotter, drier weather; the larger the leaf, the more stomata there are to lose moisture through, and more importantly, there is more area susceptible to infection by all the moulds that tend to be plants main enemies in tropical areas.
28 - 32 degrees is not terribly far outside a normal central European summer though - quite the opposite; if you are in a not-so-humid area you might be lucky. My advice would be to contact a botanical garden (maybe Kew ?) and ask the staff there if they have any relevant knowledge. If there are closely related plants in your climatic zone, or they know of varieties that are particularly well adapted to conditions that are found in your locale, (you can sometimes get varieties of plants that have fewer pores in the leaves, which can be an advantage in hot weather) - well, you might be lucky.
I don't know what sort of packaging you might have using eBay. I would suggest the faster the root cuttings get to you, the better it is for their chances. Again, something to discuss with professional growers. You will probably find there are regulations concerning what vegetable materiel may be imported into your country, in order to prevent the spread of disease and invasive species.
Good thinking though, to try something that isn't native but might work in a different place ! I think we need to do more of this experimentation in the UK.

[Dynamo]

I'd like to have a go at growing this stuff, but the plants aren't cheap. Does anyone know a low cost place that sells either the plants (preferable) or the seeds?

[Two_Sheds]

I got mine off ebay!

Hi Matt, welcome.
Have a read through the posts above. I got mine on eBay, but it's a little early yet

I'd like to have a go at growing this stuff, but the plants aren't cheap. Does anyone know a low cost place that sells either the plants (preferable) or the seeds?

Dynamo, if you want Bocking 14 you won't get seeds: it's sterile. That is the point of B14, so that it won't spread itself around your plot like wild comfrey does.
The plant are dormant now, so you won't get root cuttings until spring, when it starts to re-shoot.

[StephenH]

I'd like to have a go at growing this stuff, but the plants aren't cheap. Does anyone know a low cost place that sells either the plants (preferable) or the seeds?

In my neck of the woods, it's a fairly common wild plant. You could always find some and take rooted cuttings. However, that'd set seed, whereas Bocking 14 doesn't, which is its great advantage: it won't spread by seeding. However, if you're continually cutting it for compost etc., it won't get a chance to flower anyway.

[Angelflower]

I also got some from e-bay 3 cuttings for 99p including p+p