Comfrey Leaf Experiment

I use comfrey tea a lot for my fruiting and flowering vegetables, giving them a weekly hit of nitrogen (to promote leaf growth) and potassium to aid flowering and fruiting. See this post about making comfrey tea. 

This year I am going to experiment with simply dumping some chopped up comfrey leaves in the bottom of some of the planting holes instead of using a liquid fed during the summer. I am interested to see if the slower but continuous release of nutrients from the rotting leaves is more efficient than the once a week hit from the feed. The decaying plant material may also keep the soil in those areas more moist and water retentive.

I grow six plants each of Roma, San Marzano (both for bottling) and Prince Borghese (for sun-drying) in three rows, so it will be easy enough to treat half one way and half the other. The soil and growing conditions will be largely the same - depending on where the mole decides to tunnel - so if the results are markedly different it should be clear. And if the leaf-in-the-hole plants are starting to lag behind, they can just be inculded in the round of weekly feeds.

Tomato planting will probably begin in the next ten days or so, although some of the plants are still a bit small, and I'll post the results at the end of the summer. And if I find that decaying comfrey leaves are a vole repellent I will be on to a winner!

Happy gardening!