Comfrey from aquaponics.

[halemart]

Hi,

 

I have been testing growing comfrey in aquaponics, and it does great.    Now the next question in my mind is how does one use this in the typical chop and drop operation or making a compost?

 

How much of the plant can you trim back in the typical chop / drop?

 

How do earthworms like comfrey or BSF?

 

Has anyone made compost tea with it?

 

I have 3 excellent plants and I am ready to harvest it, but not sure how to.    I don't want to kill the plant but find the best method.

 

Thanks!

[TCLynx]

That is primarily what I would use the H202 for is cleaning equipment like pruning equipment and seed starting areas, you wouldn't want to use it in any sort of compost tea, or worm tea or green manure tea (which is what I would call comfrey or alfalfa tea)  Then again, I'm normally too lazy to spray so there isn't much point in my brewing any of the plant teas.

[halemart]

[halemart]

[halemart]

After cutting almost all of the leaves off, I am amazed at the grow back rate with this plant.

I did try a round of the compost tea with 1/2 bucket of leaves, and I was amazed at how fast it broke down.    Because it did not smell right to me ( must of went a bit anaerobic, I poured it out around some small trees and not around my plants.   Net time I will have a bubbler in to help prevent this condition.

[Jesse Hull]

You can probably find it locally TC.  I can get 29% food-grade H2O2 from many hydroponic gardening shops.  Anything more concentrated has restrictions on shipping, so that's why the 29% vs the 35%, which I used to get (can't believe they actually made me use math again to get the correct dilution ratio ).

Use it carefully  -even diluted to 3%, it can mess with the biology in your compost or system.  In synthetic hydroponics, people claim it's benefits for providing a time-released (12-24hrs) source of O2, but the O2 only results after the H2O2 reacts with something in the system (which is the other reason they use it  -keeping the system as sterile as possible).  So as an equal-opportunity destroyer, in an organic-based system H2O2 is a double-edged sword.  

I have used it in aquaponics and hydro-organics, but it's tricky and the dosage is system and stage dependent.

TCLynx said:

Where do you get 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide?

[TCLynx]

Yep, I've done a bit of searching and I have found sources for it.  As I said, I would be diluting it and using it as a bleach alternative for sterilizing equipment and things (like if I have anything that needs to go from Duck world back into Aquaponics world which right now I'm stuck using bleach with is nasty to work with too.)

[Carey Ma]

@TLC

Have you tried using iodine?

[Neddy Newitt]

Has anyone used comfrey as a fish feed supplement(high in protein)?
My silvers eat it but don't jump over one another to get to it.
Or used comfrey tea to lift potassium levels in a AP system(also high in potassium)?

[TCLynx]

Comfrey is high in lots of things though so be careful not to overload the bio-filter since by dumping too much comfery tea into a system you could cause a dangerous ammonia/nitrite spike.