Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
AS I KEEP my eye on the lush growth of the tomato plants, my thoughts turn to feeding these hungry plants. This is something that I will be doing every two weeks or so as soon as the plants start to produce fruit. Rather than buying liquid feeds, for some years now I have been making my own organic version by soaking the leaves of the comfrey plant.
Comfrey is a perennial herb with big, broad hairy leaves that produce small purple flowers. It has long been used as a feed by organic gardeners, particularly the variety “Bocking 14”, named after the town of Bocking in Essex which was the original home of the organic gardening research association, Garden Organic.
Nature’s fertiliser
Comfrey is a remarkably fast-growing plant and is one of nature’s great “miners” – that is, it sends its roots deep into the soil and brings up nutrients, most notably potassium, from deep in the subsoil.
It is this nutrient in particular which will be of benefit to the tomato plants, and in fact all fruiting vegetables in the garden (eg pumpkins, courgettes, squash). The basic idea of making a comfrey tea is to harvest leaves and soak them in water for about a month.
This potassium-rich “tea” is then applied as a feed to fruiting plants. I use a shears and literally cut the plant down to about 2 inches from the surface of the soil. Use a pair of gloves, as the leaves are a little prickly. You can harvest mature comfrey plants 3-4 times each year. It grows back quickly and can be cut again about a month later.
Planting
You should be able to source the plants from a good garden centre and then plant them out about 2ft apart. They will tolerate a shady, even damp spot in the garden. Mine are thriving in a corner of the garden behind the tunnel.
Keep the bed well watered until the plants get established and don’t harvest leaves from it in the first year. Strangely, comfrey doesn’t seem to be able to mine the nitrogen very well that it needs for itself, being a fast-growing leafy plant (similar to a brassica).
I generally mulch the plants when they die back in the autumn with lawn clippings. In addition to making a comfrey tea (see below) you can also add comfrey leaves to the compost heap where they will accelerate the de-composition of your heap and add potassium.
You can also use the leaves as a mulch, putting a layer of leaves around a plant where they will break down and release their nutrients more slowly. I’ve heard of people putting comfrey leaves in a trench when planting potatoes and also planting comfrey underneath fruit trees as a companion plant.
The Basics – Comfrey tea
There are two ways to make a comfrey tea. You can either make a concentrated tea that will have to be diluted, or a ready-to- use version.
1. Concentrate
Harvest comfrey leaves and shove them in a bucket with a lid. Weigh the leaves down with a brick or something else heavy. Drill a hole in the base of the bucket and place a container underneath.
As the leaves rot down a black liquid will start to drip down from the bucket into the container. This is your comfrey feed. Dilute one part comfrey liquid to 15 parts water.
Advertisement
2. Ready to Use
Harvest your leaves and put them in a bucket. Fill the bucket with water until the leaves are covered. Cover with a lid and leave for 3-4 weeks. This type of tea is ready to use without diluting.
This week saw our first new potatoes from a January-sown crop in the polytunnel. It’s one of my favourite harvesting moments of the entire year. You don’t want to do anything fancy with the first harvest of new potatoes – a sprig of mint in the sauce pan when boiling them and then lots of good Irish butter and Bob’s your uncle.
It’s a tradition in our house that I eat so many on the first sitting that I get a pain.
For the second, third and subsequent harvests it’s time to get creative and keep the delicious spuds centre stage. This classic tortilla recipe from The Natural Cook (Tom Hunt) does exactly that. Serve as a generous lunch or light dinner with a salad of peppery green leaves. Serves 4.
Ingredients
350g new potatoes, washed
A splash of olive oil
A pinch of sweet paprika
Salt and black pepper
2 onions, sliced
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
4 eggs, lightly beaten
Directions
Cut any large potatoes in half so all the pieces are roughly the same size. Bring to the boil in a saucepan of salted water, then reduce the heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes, until just soft.
Drain and cool, then dry, cut into cubes and fry in a good glug of the oil over a medium-high heat for 10 minutes. Keep turning to ensure a good all-round, golden, crisp skin.
When ready, sprinkle with paprika and salt and set aside. Slowly saute the onions for 15-20 minutes in light olive oil until they are very soft. Add the garlic and fry for another 2 minutes.
Add the onions to the potatoes and allow the whole lot to cool. Now add the eggs and mix, crushing the potatoes a little as you do so. Season with salt and pepper.
Heat a deep 15-20cm frying pan with a good splash of the oil. When it begins to smoke, pour in the egg mixture. Reduce the heat to its lowest and cook for 4-5 minutes, shaking the pan from side to side to prevent it from sticking.
When it is cooked halfway through, it is ready to turn. Flip the tortilla onto a large plate. Return the pan to the heat and slide the tortilla back into the pan, raw-side down. Shake from side to side again to make sure it isn’t stuck. Using a wooden spoon, tuck the rough edges underneath to make them rounded, then cook for a further 5 minutes.
Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article.
Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.
That won’t stop some from trying to defend the officer’s actions I’m afraid. Some will say “it’s his fault for resisting arrest/being overweight/having asthma …”
others will try to deflect by asking “how is this a race issue?” in reality, the reason this is becoming a race issue is that where blacks kill blacks, they get jail. Where whites kill whites, they get jail. It now seems that where a white cop kills an unarmed Black man, it’s impossible to get jail. This is why it’s becoming a race issue.
Ferguson – perhaps arguable if the guy tried to take the gun (though bring shot six times is not on at all)
12yr old boy – shocking, shot within two seconds with the toy gun still in his pants – still, he had a replica so if you’re a loony right winger you could make an argument.
But this one ? FFS unarmed, surrounded by 5 armed cops and choked to death in broad daylight with not even an effort to resuscitate – a man with 6 children.
It’s time to stop defending the indefensible folks.
For the record I think the cop involved in the choking death was completely in the wrong and should have been charged too, but before making sweeping assumptions you could at least do a bit of cursory research. It took me about 10 secs to find this link – less than the time it took you to write your comment.
Third cop to be charged this year for shooting an unarmed suspect, in South Carolina alone, so its clearly nonsense to suggest that cops never get charged.
Why does everyone keep saying he died from being choked to death? He died of a heart attack. If you are saying you can’t breathe, I have news for you, you can breathe.
I did. Did you not read what he died from? You need air to speak. If you are speaking you are not being choked. Try it. Did the way he was taken down lead to his death, yes. But he was not choked to death this is a fact not opinion.
You should add to the article that the use of a chokehold is forbidden by the NYPD themselves. The deceased was also unarmed and surrounded by police officers.
The officer in question really needed to be arrested and tried for this.
Give over with this left wing v right wing stuff would you, it’s pretty tiresome. We hardly ever hear of cop v black person deaths, here’s a list of tonnes of names from 2013 alone. How many of them were reported here?
Because you know what it’s like to live as a black person in America? It’s the same as saying men get sexually harassed too — which they do. White people suffer racial injustices, too, but not nearly — not even slightly — on the same scale as black people, or women in the case of sexual harassment. It’s that white male privilege again, reading it’s ugly head and missing the point, yet again.
Here are some more shocking statistics: More than 1,600 Whites are murdered by Blacks each year. Blacks murder Whites at 18 times the rate Whites murder Blacks.
About 1 million Whites were murdered, robbed, assaulted, or raped by Blacks in 1992. In the last 30 years, 170 million violent and nonviolent crimes were committed by Blacks against Whites in the U.S. Blacks under 18 are more than 12 times more likely to be arrested for murder than Whites the same age.
Some 90% of the victims of race crimes are Whites. Blacks commit 7.5 times more violent interracial crimes than Whites, although they comprise only one-seventh of the White population.
On a per-capita basis, blacks commit 50 times more violent crimes than Whites. Some 27 million nonviolent crimes were committed in the U.S. in 1992 alone. 31% of the robberies involved Black offenders and White victims; only 2% involved White offenders and Black victims.
1.3 million of the 6.6 million violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year are interracial. Between 1964 and 1994, more than 45,000 people were killed in interracial murders in the U.S., compared to 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam and 38,000 killed in Korea.
Why would I give over? Ideological bias in the media is one of the most dangerous aspects of any society. I’ve spent many a time criticizing ultra conservatives in FOX comment boards as well. In Ireland, it is totally skewed to the left
Are single fathers privileged for getting to see their kids once a week?
Less men go to university than women despite their “privilege”.
The chance of a man ending up in jail, being violently attacked or committing suicide are all higher than for the same to happen to a woman. That old privilege again.
Dunno where you got your stats but I’m sorry to say that even if the figures are accurate you’re conclusions are completely flawed.
Put simply, assuming your figures are accurate, blacks don’t commit 50 times more violent crime then whites, they are convicted of 50 times more violent crime then whites.
I think a lot of it has to do with the war on drugs to be honest, which is more a war on the poor than a war on a specific race. With their history in the country there are more black Americans living in poverty than white Americans, percentage wise at least, and so the war on drugs does affect their community more than the white community.
That being said, and keep in mind these stats are about people who have been convicted, I’d like to know how those that think white and black America receive the same treatment explain this.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison.
Any white male who thinks he’s less privileged than women or any other race in western society is, quite frankly, delusional, and is clearly living in their own self-pitying dream world.
The police are not as free to kill as in the past. In San Francisco the Bart cop got a year or two and lost his job for shooting the kid who was lying down on the platform. Cell phones have slowed the cops way down from when I was young. In 1969 the cops could beat a white kid to death in front of witnesses in Cambridge, MA. Now I think it really needs to be a poor, black guy and it is usually LAPD ( getting better, I hear) Chicago ( recovering from their torture era) or the newly infamous NYPD. America cannot be compared to Europe. Reagan turned the US away from that social democratic/human rights model. AlHaig, ” them nuns had it comin’” symbolized the honesty & honor the ordinary people could expect from the agents of the oligarchy.
In the real, conservative sh*t**le states the crime is twice as high as the Northeast and this stuff never makes the papers. They hit you with a huge charge and you plead out with whatever part of your life you can save.
That being said I think almost all our local forces around Boston really do protect & serve nowadays…State Police are still occupiers and thugs though…
The face of the stirrer in chief Al Sharpton appears in one photo above, African -Americans as they like to be called have a very poor selection of leaders
Hi Shane, I believe that the NY Daily News are using the phrase to refer to their reaction and that of people in the US, they ‘can’t breathe’ because they’re shocked at the jury’s verdict.
I understood the headline as saying “we can’t breathe”, as in “the black community in America can’t breathe” due to the excessively violent behaviour of a minority of policemen.
I think the headline is not for the black or white communities, but for all Americans. You will find the majority of all Americans are outraged that a man can be chocked to death in a wrestling move, on camera, and not face charges.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the jury would have been 50:50 black:white for a case like this? If so, does his own people not think the killing was wrong?
150 rounds of drinks ordered at the Dáil's bars on the day TDs failed to elect a new Taoiseach
29 mins ago
561
9
Dublin
What exactly is 'affordable' housing ... and how much should it cost?
6 hrs ago
2.2k
Darndale
Discovery of human hand in yard of Dublin primary school not thought to be malicious
Updated
12 hrs ago
54.2k
Your Cookies. Your Choice.
Cookies help provide our news service while also enabling the advertising needed to fund this work.
We categorise cookies as Necessary, Performance (used to analyse the site performance) and Targeting (used to target advertising which helps us keep this service free).
We and our 152 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device. Selecting Accept All enables tracking technologies to support the purposes shown under we and our partners process data to provide. If trackers are disabled, some content and ads you see may not be as relevant to you. You can resurface this menu to change your choices or withdraw consent at any time by clicking the Cookie Preferences link on the bottom of the webpage .Your choices will have effect within our Website. For more details, refer to our Privacy Policy.
We and our vendors process data for the following purposes:
Use precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Store and/or access information on a device. Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development.
Cookies Preference Centre
We process your data to deliver content or advertisements and measure the delivery of such content or advertisements to extract insights about our website. We share this information with our partners on the basis of consent. You may exercise your right to consent, based on a specific purpose below or at a partner level in the link under each purpose. Some vendors may process your data based on their legitimate interests, which does not require your consent. You cannot object to tracking technologies placed to ensure security, prevent fraud, fix errors, or deliver and present advertising and content, and precise geolocation data and active scanning of device characteristics for identification may be used to support this purpose. This exception does not apply to targeted advertising. These choices will be signaled to our vendors participating in the Transparency and Consent Framework.
Manage Consent Preferences
Necessary Cookies
Always Active
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work.
Targeting Cookies
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Functional Cookies
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then these services may not function properly.
Performance Cookies
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not be able to monitor our performance.
Store and/or access information on a device 104 partners can use this purpose
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development 136 partners can use this purpose
Use limited data to select advertising 106 partners can use this purpose
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).
Create profiles for personalised advertising 78 partners can use this purpose
Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.
Use profiles to select personalised advertising 77 partners can use this purpose
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.
Create profiles to personalise content 37 partners can use this purpose
Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.
Use profiles to select personalised content 33 partners can use this purpose
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
Measure advertising performance 127 partners can use this purpose
Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.
Measure content performance 60 partners can use this purpose
Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.
Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources 75 partners can use this purpose
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
Develop and improve services 82 partners can use this purpose
Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.
Use limited data to select content 38 partners can use this purpose
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
Use precise geolocation data 43 partners can use this special feature
With your acceptance, your precise location (within a radius of less than 500 metres) may be used in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Actively scan device characteristics for identification 25 partners can use this special feature
With your acceptance, certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Ensure security, prevent and detect fraud, and fix errors 86 partners can use this special purpose
Always Active
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
Deliver and present advertising and content 96 partners can use this special purpose
Always Active
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
Match and combine data from other data sources 68 partners can use this feature
Always Active
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Link different devices 50 partners can use this feature
Always Active
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Identify devices based on information transmitted automatically 84 partners can use this feature
Always Active
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
Save and communicate privacy choices 64 partners can use this special purpose
Always Active
The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
have your say