How to Make Comfrey Manure Tea

This post talks about How to Make Comfrey Manure Tea as well as how to apply it.  Comfrey manure tea, also known as comfrey tea, provides many nutrients to plants that it is applied to.  It is very high in nitrogen and potash.

About Comfrey

First, a little information about comfrey. Comfrey, Symphytum, is a perennial herb that grows leaves two to three feet tall and has bell shaped flowers. It is originally from Europe and now grows in temperate climates around the world.  It is a member of the borage family and has a tap root that is ten feet long or longer.

Dynamic Accumulator

Comfrey is a dynamic accumulator meaning that it mines and collects a number of nutrients that other plants can’t get to.  Comfrey does this with a very long tap root by mining nutrients from very deep down that are out of reach for other plants.  The nutrients are then brought up to the top and stored in the leaves.  The leaves are used as fertilizer for other plants and is a high source of nitrogen and potassium.  The potassium is beneficial to any flowering and fruit bearing tree.

Making Tea

I take a 5-gallon bucket and cut comfrey leaves and put the cut leaves in the bucket. Fill the bucket about three quarters of the way up with the comfrey leaves.  Include stems, leaves, and flowers.  It will all break down and help make our comfrey tea.  I then fill the bucket up with water.  As you add water the leaves will want to float.  To help hold them down it is good to weight them down with a large rock or something like that to hold the leaves under the water.

Cover the Tea

The tea will stink to high heaven while it is brewing.  For this reason, I will cover the mixture to keep the smell down and to keep bugs out.  I do not want flies or mosquitos in my tea. If you have a lid for you bucket, use that.  I do not, so I simply use a clear plastic trash bag to drape over the 5-gallon bucket.  Then I hold the bag on with a bungie cord.  The bag can be re-used after the tea is done brewing, so this is not wasteful.

Make sure you label you tea.  It will need to sit for a number of weeks to brew and you don’t want to forget what it is or have someone else think it is waste and discard it on you.

Let it Bake

Let the mixture set for three to six weeks.  The longer you let it set the stronger it will get.  But don’t let it sit for too long.  In researching this, the sweet spot time wise seems to be the three to six-week mark.

Water it Down

You do not want to add un-diluted comfrey tea mixture to the plants.  It needs to be watered down by at least 50%.  The way I do mine is to grab a second 5-gallon bucket, fill it between one fifth and one half with comfrey tea and then fill it up the rest of the way with water.

Where to Put Your Tea

Put your tea mixture around any flowering plant or any fruiting tree.  Do this while the plants are producing flowers and fruit.  The nutrients will really give them an organic kick.

You can put this around any item that you have growing.  It is just that with the potash it provides an added kick for flowering and fruiting plants.  Put the tea around the roots and not on fruit that you will be eating.

The Original Plant

What about the original comfrey plant?  Did we kill it?  No!  Actually, it is bigger after one month than when we originally cut it.  If you check out the video below we show how it has rebounded right back and even grown larger.

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The Video

Check out the Making Comfrey Manure Tea video below.

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