Viewing entries tagged with 'comfrey'
COMFREY Symphytum officinale
Comfrey was first brought to my attention after the birth of my son more than thirty years ago. My domiciliary midwife, the wonderful Joan Donnelly was a staunch advocate of eating weeds and comfrey was one of her favourites. She was a picture of health and as well as her weed salads she used to knock back tablespoons of cayenne pepper to keep any bugs at bay. Undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with and she was a guiding light in the homebirth movement in this country. But I digress... comfrey also a force to be reckoned with, there's no getting rid of it once it establishes itself. Every little rootlet will grow a new plant. I used to curse it when my garden was tiny. Now I welcome the huge clumps it makes and I have created gardens around it. In early spring when I am planting seedlings or planning to make a comfrey tea for the garden I can never get enough of it! It has had some very bad press during the last few years for causing hepato-toxicity in laboratory experiments with rats, but there's no need to throw out the baby with the bath water. Problems can occur from ingesting the roots, in quantity. Topically it is one of our most marvelous healers for all manner of wounds and injuries from the skin through to the ligaments and the bone, nicely backed up by placebo double-blind trials I might add! For more details read the full post.
Make your own Calendula herbal tincture
Don't you sometimes wish you could just gather up some of your seasonal medicinal herbs and stick them in a bottle and keep them for later use. Well you can, and it is literally that easy. The main 
concern is that you select the correct plant! Make sure you know your stuff. All plants have properties or qualities that we can harness for our use. Humans, animals and even our gardens can benefit from these natural healers.
Making a potato patch
Living here in Tahekeroa, the western end of the Puhoi Valley, the soil is very uninspiring. It has a high clay content that allows no drainage in winter and then bakes and cracks very early on in Summer. The only way to have any success in the garden here is to mulch, mulch and mulch. Trying to weed or dig unless conditions are 
just right can be back breaking and disheartening. I decided to take the mulching thing seriously and bought a mountain of barley straw to do some consistent and serious mulching throughout the whole gardens. Mulching like this done over the years will eventually enrich the soil with organic matter and create a more friable soil. I have mostly made gardens the no-dig way or recently used the lasagne method.
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