Comfrey Poultice When You Need It

I grow a LOT of comfrey in my herb garden. A LOT. I probably have over sixty of them tucked away in various places in the yard and of course comfrey has it’s own place in the garden. I can cut it down to the ground four times a year and it bounces right back. If I need comfrey for an acute incident (like a sprained ankle or a nasty bout of eczema) I can just walk out and get it.

But what if I need a comfrey poultice in the dead of winter? What then? Can you use dried leaf or root? Well, you can, but I have a better way! Make comfrey poultices ahead of time and freeze them. That is how you’ll have a comfrey poultice when you need it!

Let me show you…

These were the last leaves of the season. The larger older leaves contain fewer pyrrolizidine alkaloids (if you are concerned about this see Is Comfrey Safe?

Next, I grind them up in a blender…

After I grind it all up and make a paste I spoon it out on a paper towel doubled. You can use parchment if you’d like. I chose paper towels because, as you’ll see later, I can simply pop it out of the freezer and mold it around where I need it. It will be cold which helps a LOT with sprains and bruising.

I shape them so they will fit in a zip lock bag…

The, I fold another paper towel over it to make a top…

I usually put two in a sandwich baggie. Then I can put three packages of two in a quart freezer bag. The comfrey paste you see spread out in the back on the pink cardboard paper is going to be dried and used to make comfrey infused oil.