Grow your own tomato feed
 (Read 500+ times)
By Emma Cooper
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For organic gardeners, there can be no more useful plant to have in our garden than comfrey. It has long roots that bring up minerals from the subsoil, which are then stored in the leaves – making comfrey a ‘dynamic accumulator’ plant. Those stored minerals can be harvested and used to feed other plants in the garden.
Comfrey is a vigorous plant and can be cut several times through the season. The leaves can be used a mulch to feed hungry plants, added to the compost heap as a compost activator, or turned into a liquid feed that is high in potash and particularly valuable for feeding fruiting plants like tomatoes and peppers.
There are two ways of making a liquid feed from comfrey. The more usual method is to ‘drown’ the leaves in a bucket of water for several weeks until they rot down. The resulting liquid can be diluted and used a liquid feed, but you’re not going to love the smell! And your neighbors are going to think you’ve started a sewage farm at the bottom of your garden. If you think I’m exaggerating, then by all means try it for yourself!
The second way to make comfrey liquid feed is much more socially acceptable. Because of the special composition of comfrey leaves, they rot down quickly even without water. Fill a bucket (if it has a tap then that’s a bonus) to the top with comfrey leaves, weigh them down with a brick and then put a lid on the bucket. Wait for a few weeks and what you’ll end up with is a thick brown comfrey liquor – which hardly smells at all. This can be diluted with water and used as a liquid feed, and not only will your tomatoes be happy, but your neighbors will be too.
When you’ve drained off the liquid, the remains of the leaves can be added to the compost heap. By the time the liquor is ready, your vigorous comfrey plants will be ready for another cut – so just clean up the bucket and start all over again.
Although this method works perfectly with comfrey leaves, it won’t work with other plants - so if you want to make your own nettle or seaweed liquid feeds then you’re going to have to do it the stinky way.
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Author Bio Box: Emma Cooper
Emma Cooper is the author of Growing Vegetables is Fun. She also has a weekly gardening podcast, The Alternative Kitchen Garden, all about growing your own food in an environmentally friendly way. Check out her website for her gardening blog and more articles.
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