Symphytum x uplandicum - Russian comfrey

Russian comfrey is a sterile hybrid with vigorous growth and sterile seeds. It is a great choice for areas that will not ever be tilled, as once you till comfrey every piece of root will make a new plant and you will have a comfrey nightmare. (This technique could be used to establish a large scale comfrey understory if needed). As this form is a sterile hybrid it will not spread by seed.

Russian comfrey is highly productive and makes a great mulch, compost, or fodder plant. The foliage can be cut 3-5 times a year for these purposes.

It concentrates numerous nutrients from the subsoil and makes them available to neighboring plants and to areas it is used for mulch. Russian comfrey could be a major species for any forest garden. It can be ordered from www.richters.com. Read lots more in Lawrence Hill's Comfrey: Fodder, Food and Remedy.

We feed a lot of this to our chickens it is a fantastic high-protien, high-nutrient feed. Grest biomass plant for on-site compost material production.

Foliage of Russian comfrey in spring before first cutting. Best to cut at this stage before flower talks as they decompose more slowly for mulch or compost, and are less digestable as fodder.

Here is the variety Bocking # 14. Said to be best home and garden scale variety.

Here is the variety Bocking # 4. Said to best highest protien content and best farm and fodder variety.