Anyone with an allotment?

No water goes into the pipe - just leaves pressed down by a weight which over time decompose and release a thick black liquid.

Ah that makes sense. Cool contraption, how long do they take to decompose? Really want to get some comfrey now.

Yeah that looks banging, def gonna knock summat like that up. Comfry for days all over our site.
So just stuff leaves in anything with a tap at bottom yeh?

how long do they take to decompose?

Not ages. I cut the comfrey back 3 times last year & stuffed the barrel full each time. It rots quicker when warmer. It is still draining out now despite last fill being end of summer

So just stuff leaves in anything with a tap at bottom yeh?

Pretty much!

I’m going to put some of this in my hot composter to zhuzh up the compost

Comfry for days all over our site

You need to use the Bocking 14 variety which is sterile and the reason you have comfrey all over your site is probably because its a variety that isn't and seeds all over the place.

Oh, well that’s an arse then. Never mind.

Tomatoes, sweetcorn, peppers and chillis planted out today, neighbour came over with another 10 toms so we’re all set. Came home with a sack of spinach off their plot too.

My plot has a roughly 3' drop from the parking spot at the top, any great ideas for building planting/composting structures across the drop? We're not allowed to use cement so my best idea so far is trying to get hold of scaffolding poles and hammering them in to the ground or some kind of ramshackle timber structure with timber stakes.

Any good ?

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Yeah good shout. One thought was to make a tall frame and use the 14mm mesh I have to enclose stone big old compost heaps with bonus growing room above.

I’ve got one compost bay made from 3 pallets and looking to build a couple more and maybe a little log store asap.
They’re just screwed in the corners with a few extra bits for diagonal bracing across the top made from a broken up pallet

Yeah ours are similar, made from pallets and random scraps of wood, but they are neither accessible for easy turning of compost or structurally sound enough to traverse the levels change so we've got a fairly big chunk of unused ground at the moment.

There are alternative ways to use comfrey, you can stick it in a bucket of water and let it do it’s thing or even just rip the leaves up and stick in a hole with a new plant.

The nice thing about the leaves being left to produce the extract is it doesn’t smell.

Water and comfrey leaves stink

I was that bastard neighbour years ago when I emptied out a plastic dustbin full of ripe matured comfrey tea over the little garden we had then . Did this early in the morning and when I came home in the evening my wife said there had been complaints all day about the awful smell in the neighbourhood. I think we got away with it by blaming the Pura food processing factory over at Canning town and the wind direction.

It stinks of death !

Yeah they definitely stink. Makes your plants grow like wildfire though

Bunch of people had plants dug up and stolen last night. We didn’t have any plants taken but they broke the catch on our polytunnel and took my nice shiny s&j trowel and hand fork, loppers and shears. Fucking fuming.

I decided to make comfrey tea at home in our green wheelie bin in the garage. Que hot summer the place stank you could even smell it out side

Progress today

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This took a while

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And a money shot

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Lottment thievery is really shit. Ours got hit in March but we hadn’t anything worth pinching but stealing plants is a c*unty thing to do :(

Strong work.

people had plants dug up and stolen last night

Thats odd 😕
I've had mindless vandalism ( sweet corn tops all lopped off and squash chucked around) and ready to pick crops stolen before but never whole plants dug up and stolen.

Commiserations on the tools :(

We suspect they were looted to be sold at the local market today possibly.
Across the dozen or so plots that were tapped up they only took tomato and strawberry plants, easily 50-60 of each.
There were trays of young toms in pots left alone while bigger ones in the same tunnel were dug out.
It’s about £50 worth of tools we lost which isn’t the end of the world but partner super upset at the invasion of space.

Apparently produce theft is fairly common later in the year but this hasn’t happened before.

That's awful, the fact people even think to do this is beyond me.