Now What Do I Do With It?

This is my beautiful comfrey plant.


Actually this photo is a couple weeks old, and it's rained (a lot) since then, so now it's much bigger.

And it's an herb, and now I have to figure out what to do with it. Especially since it's a perennial, and will be back next year, probably laughing at me, if I can't figure out what it's good for.

So - besides having huge broad leaves, with fuzzy fibers all over them, loving full sun and lots of water - what else do I know about it?

It has beautiful, fairy-like tiny purple flowers.

It grows as a wild-flower in Britain, with a long history of medicinal use.

It is the herb formerly known as knitbone, and modern research has confirmed that it contains allantoin, which speeds up cell replacement and helps with bone injuries and ailments.

Comfrey has been used to treat everything from lung disorders (asthma, bronchitus), to broken bones and sprains, to arthritis and ulcers, as well as burns and acne.

It was also believed at one time that a comfrey bath would repair the hymen, thereby creating born-again virgins. (I wouldn't count on that one too much.)

Internal use (teas and such) is no longer recommended -although I know many who use it for that, but I don't, being the one who prefers to err on the side of caution.

But comfrey salve is wonderful and making your own is easy. (Look for a post shortly on making salve). It can be used on sore muscles, bruises, burns, rashes, etc.

This is what a proper comfrey bed looks, much bigger than my medium-size potted comfrey.The plants can be propagated simply by dividing the clumps (much like daylilies or irises).
It spreads easily and is hard to get rid of (like horseradish).


But if you have one of those proper beds of comfrey, the cut leaves make a great mulch for plants that like a lot of potassium (flowers, fruit or nut-bearing plants, also onions, gooseberries, currants, roses, potatos, tomatos).

The leaves break down into a thick black sludge, and a few added to your compost heap will produce heat, and help the rest of the compost plants decompose.

Or, if you have rain barrels, several comfrey leaves can be added, producing a manure tea after 4-5 weeks.

Such a sweet little plant in a pot, but capable of so many uses.

Look for the comfrey salve post in the next couple days.

Forty Square Feet of Mint

I decided to try Damsel's recipe for making peppermint oil.
(http://damselindisdress.wordpress.com/)

In the process I discovered what I thought was peppermint in my garden is actually spearmint. At least I'm think it is.

After googling both, and finding they both basically can be stored and used for the same ailments (including relieving asthma), I decided to use Damsel's recipe with only one change: I used olive oil instead of vegetable oil, only because that's all I had, and it saved me a trip to the evil that is Walmart.

Going on the belief that any harvest should be done in the morning, to get the strongest and freshest produce, I pulled up approximately a 1 foot by 1 foot area of my mint bed. That only leaves me with another 10 foot by 4 foot patch. What will I ever do with only 40 square feet of mint?

This photo is for no other reason than I like it: this is my favorite harvest basket. I picked it up several years ago at some rummage sale, and even though it's seen better days, it's still perfect for cutting long stemmed herbs, and easy to carry even when loaded. (The reader can imagine some bucolic Hudson School painting with earthy, full-figured harvest women balancing baskets full of wheat shafts on their womanly hips, the sunlight falling softly on the fields behind them - at least that's what always pops into my mind.)

See - it's fairly shallow but you'd be amazed at how much holds.

Holds a lot huh?


The basket is sitting on top of a bucket filled with cold water. After the photo, the entire bundle of plants was placed in the water stems down, to keep them fresh until this afternoon when I could work with them.

And you know mint loves water. Not only did it stay fresh, but I think they almost started growing again right there in the bucket.

Just like Damsel instructed, strip the leaves from the stems. I too have an overabundance of mint, and no need to use the stems.

The entire bucket stripped down (watch that phrase get caught up in the search engines) to a pile of leaves about this size.

Chop into smaller pieces, again and again. (Note: the whole chopping event will clear up any symptoms of asthma, as well as clearing out your sinuses really, really well. It may have actually removed my sinuses. Plus the kitchen smells really good. )

Then pack the leaves into these classy little jars (picked up at the-mother-of-all-church-sales a couple weeks ago; read my other blog http://365daysinmoonshinecapitol.blogspot.com/ if that interests you).

Meanwhile I heat some olive oil to approximately 160 degrees (turns out you can use a meat thermometer to test the temp of liquids - who knew?). On my electric burners this means leaving it on the burner for approximately 10 minutes, with the heat set at a bit less than "3". It also turned out this was not enough oil, so I had to heat a little less than the same amount again to top the jars off.

Here's what the mint-and-oil-filled jars look like.

Aren't they pretty?

Apparently I have enough mint to make thousands of jars just like this.

We'll see what they look like after a month in the dark.

Thanks again, Damsel!