I suppose if you have livestock or prefer to use natural remedies that Comfrey can be a valuable plant. Anyone familiar with one of its common names, Boneset, will not be surprised that it has been used to speed healing of broken bones.
But my old half-shady garden, on what was left of a 1/8 acre city lot after what the house and paving covered, was too small to allow a bully plant like Comfrey to establish itself. I was lucky, as gardeners had been improving the soil continuously since 1920, and the dirt was gorgeous, black, friable and fertile.The only thing I ever added to the soil was the new humus from fall leaves allowed to rot in black plastic bags for a couple of years, and of leaves I had an inexhaustible supply. I suspect my predecessors did much the same thing.
I planted a tiny nursery pot of Comfrey in my small herb plot at the suggestion of one of my favorite cousins, and I soon felt like Jack after he planted the beanstalk. Oh, boy, did it ever GROW!! Comfrey may indeed be great as a fertilizer and to speed composting, but a lot of its value has to be due to the astonishing rate at which it sucks nitrogen out of the soil.
As the smaller, less competitive herbs around it gave up the the ghost, the Comfrey grew bigger and bigger. So I decided to take it out. Little did I know what a bad idea THAT was. Not being big and strong, I wasn't able to dig up the entire HUGE taproot in one try, and in the process I broke off many small pieces, which remained in the soil. Each of those pieces quickly became new plants, and my herb garden became a Comfrey patch. A BIG Comfrey patch. Eventually my friend and I dug up the entire bed and riddled the soil to find every bit of that beastly plant. For me, it was a disaster. My advice? If you really want it, choose its site with care, for you are likely to have it forever.
