how to propagate it and making comfrey fritters. At one point, I wrote an extensive blog called “everything I know about comfrey so far” just to get it all out there and clear up a few myths. As an extension of that blog here’s a more detailed look at using comfrey leaves as mulch, aka “chopping and dropping”. 
We’ve got a big bank of comfrey downhill of our young espalier orchard which is on a small terrace carved out of a steep slope – you can see the design below and some of its development story here. The design matches reality around 99%, it’s now all there and thriving – we just decided to not run our chooks there for the time being. 
This particular type of comfrey grows *big*, well over one metre – providing a whole lots of biomass that can be cycled back in our garden. At least twice a season I’ll go through and chop the leaves off at the base and drop it straight back on the ground or move it to an area that needs mulch. This time round, I mulched the bank it grows on and the neighbouring currants and globe artichokes. Coming into summer, this is such a valuable resource – it means we don’t have to buy in mulch at all, our soil is protected and nourished for free. 
Comfrey has a reputation amongst keen gardeners as a “dynamic accumulator”. While there isn’t solid scientific data on this, you just can’t ignore the countless gardeners who swear that by adding comfrey to your garden, you end up with healthier soils and crops -we’ve observed this ourselves. You can read up on this here and here.
And after a solid hour of chopping and dropping – our bank now looks like this….
While it looks like I’ve completely devastated the plant – rest assured I haven’t, new growth will start to pop back up within 1 – 2 weeks and the whole process will repeat again. You can’t kill this plant – or at least it would be really, really hard to.
Our currant bushes with a comfrey mulch
One of our espaliered apple trees with a comfrey mulch on one side and calendula on the other – lucky apple tree.
Hi thankyou for your article, very useful information! I am wondering why you wouldn’t have your comfrey at the top of the slope so when you chop & drop the nutrients flow down-slope to the orchard?
It’s all about context Coralie. For tour context, we needed a deep rooted plant downhill of our orchard to stabilise the slope, provide mulch and that can survive in a tough environment – comfrey won.
I am 83, year’s old, I think this will be my last year for a garden, I have a lot of Comfrey, I will fill the whole garden with Comfrey and chop and drop, get about 3 cutting a year