comfrey comparing with nettle

Have just read that comfrey can be added to home composting heaps, and now wonder if nettle can serve the same purpose.

 

Nettles can as well,best when they are young, but not the roots and seeds

 

have read somewhere that nettles placed in a hessian sack or similar and immersed in a rain water butt is really good feed for plants.

 

Nettles yield a lot of nitrogen, which is good for foliage growth, but its very shallow rooted so it only picks up nutrients that are already present in the top couple of inches of soil.

Comfrey on the other hand is very, very deep rooted. It sends a tap root right down well into the subsoil, and extracts nutrients not normally accessible to plants, because they are too far down.

 

Comfrey is a better tea, then? Or better in composting as well?

 

Comfrey makes a potash-rich "Tea" - ideal for fruiting crops, e.g. Tomatoes.

Nettles make a Nitrogen-rich "tea" - ideal for leafy crops like Brassicas

Nettles will act as an accelerator for compost heaps (acceleration the rate at which they heat up) because of the Nitrogen they release.

Comfrey can be put on the compost heap, and will yield its nutrients into the compost for the following crops, but personally I think it is better to put it "straight" onto the crops - e.g. via a Comfrey "tea" as some is bound to be washed/leached out of the compost heap before it can be used.

 

Comfrey may well grow in this area, but I haven't identified any nearby. Nettles, OTOH, are more than plentiful.

Way too much moisture in our black dalek compost, including slugs. Must I chuck the lot?

 

Local allotment holders will almost certainly be growing areas of the Bocking-14 variety of Comfrey (Sterile, so it won't seed all over your garden ) so if you have a spare couple of square metres worth asking them for a root or two, any piece of root will usually grow

I'd tip it out and leave it in a pile to do its own thing, or mix it back in, bit by bit, with the new material going into the (now empty) Dalek.

 

Thanks K, appreciate your help.