Home made plant feed

Comfrey & Nettle plant feed

Comfrey has high levels of potash and makes an excellent fertiliser for tomato, pepper, cucumber and potato plants.

Nettles contain lots of Magnesium, Iron, Nitrogen and Sulphur and make a good all round feed. Try to use younger nettles if possible, but its not a big deal if you cant.

Take care is you have close neighbours as its smell is very strong!  Pick a couple of large handfuls  of both nettle and Comfrey leaves and  place them in a container with enough water to cover the leaves.

Cover and let this brew for three or four  weeks in cool weather or two  weeks in hot weather. (Give it a good stir from time to time and you may need to squish the leaves back under the water as well)

Then squeeze the leaves to extract as much juice as possible Strain and dilute 1 part Comfrey tea to 10 parts water.

Use as a foliar feed and soil drench around the plants.

Comfrey leaves can also be chopped up and simply used as a mulch around any plants that require a high potash fertiliser.

* I used to make a seperate nettle soup for other plants, but these days I just add a whole bunch of nettles to the Comfrey mix and seem to get a better general feed mix. Various books have different dilution rates for Comfrey and Nettles, some say 1/20, some say undiluted. It varies quite a lot depending on how long you leave it, potency of given plant, what your feeding etc etc ... I 've never had any plants die on me :)

** These days I usually chop up the leaves with shears, maybe this speeds up the process or allows more of the goodness to release into the soup?