Alaska has been sweltering this week with temperatures in the 80s and 90s. I have been watering nearly nonstop but so many crops we traditionally grow prefer cool soils and the combination of raised beds and nonstop sun and heat has created spicy radishes, bolted brassica greens, and small broccoli heads.

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The Miss Kim lilac is in full bloom and there are nasturtium, snapdragon, and bachelor button flowers everywhere. Even the zinnias and peonies have started to open nearly a month early.

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On the flip side, the warm weather crops that sometime struggle here are doing great! The cucumbers are nearly ready to start eating, the tomato plants have exploded in size, and the green beans and peppers are in flower.

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There is a statewide ban on the sale and use of fireworks this week because of the hot and dry weather. Wrangell-St Elias National Park and preserve has banned all campfires as have the native lands in the Copper valley. There is fear of wildfire breaking out and Alaska’s resources are spread thin right now. According to the Alaska Wildland Fire Information, there are 92 active fire points in the state as of this morning. Our mountains have been obscured by wildfire smoke until a stiff wind blew it out yesterday. On our round trip to Anchorage this past Monday to pick up the business truck, the smell and taste of fire increased the closer we got to town because of the fires burning on the Kenai. It was a relief to turn around and head for the Copper Valley, which is not currently on fire and thankfully is smoke free at the moment.

In the world around us, the ducklings have grown to half size, the wild hares have small, medium, and large sizes running about, the swallows are feeding big hungry mouths, and the owlets have moved on (I have not seen them in several days). I have been intensively weeding for part of this past week to utilize the sun’s intensity to kill off some of our persistent weed plants, primarily horsetail. It is satisfying to hoe down a row and have all the weeds wilt in place!

This morning we picked and carefully divided our first strawberry into 4 pieces. Delicious!

The garlic scapes need to be cut off. Another record for early harvest…it should be ready in about a month!

This year has been slow to produce anything for sale. At the moment I have kale and lettuce. Give me a shout if you need any. 🙂

Have a wonderful 4th of July. Happy Independence Day! Though America has her political flaws, I feel so lucky to live my life with opportunities and freedoms unheard of elsewhere. 🙂

I was first introduced to the comfrey plant the summer of 1999 when I worked as a garden apprentice on an organic farm in the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina. In the spring of that year, the owner of Fork Mountain Farm had cut her comfrey plants, packed them into a barrel, added water, and left it to decompose in the hot and humid weather. I helped her add this black water to the garden later in the summer and she claimed comfrey prepared in this way was “black gold.” Comfrey fertilizer has nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and calcium.

My first Alaska comfrey plant I ever owned was given to me in the way of all the best garden plants, by a neighbor. Comfrey can be a little aggressive if it lives somewhere it likes and gardeners are often happy to share a shovelful of roots as they attempt to keep the patch from spreading. This particular comfrey plant taught me many things. It did not like to be in a raised bed as the root crown heaved too much in the winter and got too cold. It did not like to be in a dry area or a really wet one. My comfrey patch struggled for many years as I focused my small garden space on annual vegetable production and my perennials had to lump it outside the fence with moose, rabbits, and annual “dirt work” as we built our house a bit at a time. It was putting in the drain pipe right through the comfrey patch that finally did it in. Fortunately that coincided with my lake garden becoming the perennial garden as I developed my “new” vegetable garden. Premium space had just opened up for a new comfrey patch.

Two years ago I started doing some research with a friend in regards to why about 50 years ago it was decided that comfrey could not be taken internally as a medicinal herb. Comfrey has many healing qualities. According to The New Age Herbalist “Comfrey is one of the most famed healing plants. Its remarkable power to heal tissue and bone is due to allantoin, a cell-proliferant that promotes growth of connective tissue, bone, and cartilage, and is easily absorbed through the skin.” Comfrey is commonly used for healing minor burns and bruises. Due to the discovery of pyrrolizidine alkaloids during a Japanese study where rats fed comfrey leaves got liver cancer, the recommendation to NOT take comfrey internally began. It is common lore that Wild or common comfrey Symphytum officinale has less alkaloids and can be used internally in small doses and for short periods of time. Prickly or rough comfrey S. asperum Lepechin  and Quaker, Russian or Blue Comfrey S. peregrinum Lebed have higher concentrations of the alkaloids and should never be taken internally. I, however, do not have scientific studies to back this claim up. It is thought to be best to use comfrey ONLY externally.

I wanted to keep my options open though and so last year, 2018, I rooted out all the remaining bits of my potentially hybridized comfrey from the yard and planted Symphytum officinale, known as Common Comfrey, from seed from Strictly Medicinal Seed Company in Willams, Oregon in pride of place in my perennial garden. To my surprise, it grew super fast last summer and even flowered the first week of September. This spring the shoots were up the first week of April, though some hard frosts knocked it back, and currently, in late June, it is in full flower and the wild bees love it. I don’t want to chance any hybridization with comfrey from nearby gardens so I am cutting it down this week to make into comfrey fertilizer to give the garden a boost the first week of August.

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How to make comfrey fertilizer:

1. Cut down your comfrey plants. (The more you cut them back the more they will grow!)
2. Pack leaves into a bucket or barrel and fill with water.
3. Let rot for several weeks until the plants have completely dissolved into a thick black liquid.
4. Use the liquid fertilizer you have created in your garden by diluting with water (a quick google search says 15 to 1 is the most common recommendation)

Comfrey can also be directly added to the garden. You can mulch with the leaves or chop it up and add to your compost. Just don’t add seeds or any root parts as it will spread!

Comfrey leaves can be made into a wonderful healing salve for cuts and bruises or a lip balm for chapped lips.

The air is full of insects these days as well as our nesting birds hunting for chick food. Moths, dragonflies, damselflies, and butterflies are beautiful additions and make up for the (useful as food but painful as companions) horseflies and other biting insects.

And it is hot, hot, hot! It is over 80 degrees F in the shade right now and forecast to be in the 90 degrees tomorrow. Lots of watering chores in the garden while we wait for the heatwave to break. I am melting!

Till next week…