Help I am being invaded

[jocelyn plummer]

'The more I digs it the more it grows'----honestly what am I to do, Comfrey is everywhere! Lovely when in flower for about 4 weeks and the bees love it, then it collapses and rots everything underneath it. I cut back when flowering has finished and try to dig out the roots where it has invaded. They are really tough and like the dandelion you must get it all out. But this year comfrey has appeared in the gravel paths, embedded itself in the lavender and Box hedges and really made a nuisance of itself. Any ideas?

 

[vicky whitworth]

Comfrey makes the very best liquid manure. Keep pulling it up and composting the leaves. Find a recipe on the old interweb. View the task not as a chore and a bore but a joy and a manufacture. Be thankful to have just a terrible task to do :x
Alternatively there is a place for very selective weedkilling

 

[tobydog]

Joce - we too have an abundance of comfrey in one particular border (the white flower variety). It grows anywhere once established so I actually moved some of it to fill and develop dead zones in the garden. I keep it primarily for the bees and I've found that if you cut it down quickly in summer, just before the last few flowers start to fade and it collapses, it can regrow and provide a second bloom for the bees in the in late summer / early autumn. This way it remains tidy even if it's in paths. I spray lawn weeds but I avoid using sprays on the borders, particularly with the likes of comfrey which is quite a big and leafy plant where spraying could become indiscriminate. A good square and deep chop around each plant with a border spade should get the tap root out. I don't worry too much about chopping through some of the roots of surrounding plants because they're designed to put up with that.

One of our box garden squares is packed solid with the blue and red variety and it sounds like a bee hive in early summer. It doesn't stray too badly but what you could try doing here is cutting the leaves down to the crown and then slicing the crown with a knife. This can then be carefully sprayed / soaked with the likes of Roundup at very close quarters. This is a similar technique they use to get rid of Japanese Knot Weed and I used it to get rid of a rampant bamboo. You cut the stalks close to the ground and then drips a strong herbicide into the open stems everyday.

I've learned to live with it because bees are the priority in our garden.

 

[angrybird]

http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/projects/basics/how-to-make-a-comfrey-feed/200.html

I make one with seaweed, beware....it pongs a bit :shock:

 

[tobydog]

I saw the recent programme where Monty Don made it from comfry. He said it smells like the worst dog breath you've ever smelt, at which point the camera panned to Nigel his retriever. Poor things!

 

[Moo]

I think it must have been comfrey that nearly succeeded in taking over our garden this year.

Note the use of the past tense*.




*good old Roundup!

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Thank you Tobydog, your garden sounds very similar to mine--yes I try to live with it because of the bees, and yes the compost bin is stuffed with the leaves. I shall try a mixture of slicing through the roots and Moo's clever postscript. It is the white one--I wish that I had the blue one which is my favourite!