My Comfrey Business Journey
Act 1: Crowns and Roots ~ April-May 2025
"I remember the day vividly: It was April 28, 2025. Our family sure could use some extra money: Medical bills, a new roof was years overdue. I felt pinched a little bit on each side.
When I feel this way, I like to take a walk outside: it puts things in perspective. Years before, in 2018, I had bought 50 Bocking 14 comfrey root cuttings from another farm in New York. About half of these went into a rhizome/weed barrier near our vegetable garden. The other half went out in the apple orchard...
By the vegetable garden, the comfrey was emerging from the ground. Here it is the first picture I took of it that started this journey:
The thought of comfrey sales was always intriguing to me: Comfrey always seemed to be in short supply in the spring... I wonder... Lots of doubt crept in: It's awful late to start. How much can I really make? Will anyone buy it?
In a book I've read, War of Art by Steven Pressfield, I recognized these feelings. It was "The Resistance". I pressed on in spite of the resistance.
I got out my trusty shovel, an Orbit Tools "Root Slayer" I'd gotten for Christmas a couple years earlier, dug up a plant, separated out the roots from the crowns, took some pictures, created an Etsy account, and crafted two listings: one for Comfrey Crowns and one for Comfrey Roots. I posted them.
Four days later, on May 1, my phone made a funny "Cha-Ching!" sound. What was that, I wondered. I checked. It was an order for comfrey crowns! A few hours later: "Cha-Ching!"
May 2: 3 orders. May 3: 7 orders. And so on. By the end of the first week I had 16 orders shipped.
The second week: 38 orders shipped.
May 21, I was sold out. Out of that 35 foot row, planted years earlier and let to grow, I had harvested and shipped out 98 orders and sold about $4000 worth, and after expenses (boxes, shipping tape, shipping labels, taxes, fees), put $2154.07 in my family's bank account. This was 3 weeks worth of income, working about 6 hours on weekends harvesting and packing orders.
Act 2: Plugs and Starter Plants ~ June/July/August 2025
One thing that did not sell quite as much as I had hoped were the comfrey roots. I used the ones that did not sell to establish 6 new, 35' beds for coming years.
I also planted 450 small root cuttings in 50 cell trays, 9 trays in total. I already had the trays, and it cost me about $13 worth of potting medium and 3 hours of time total over the 3 weeks to fill 450 trays with soil mix and 1" root cuttings.
The crowns that did not sell I planted in quart starter pots, again spending about $13 in potting medium to pot up 60 starter plants.
Mid-June, about 4-6 weeks after I had potted them, they were rooted and ready to go.
I created another two listings: One for what I call "plugs" and one for "starter plants". The response was not as enthusiastic as the late spring crowd, but by Mid August all of these were also gone and I had put about another $2000 in the bank.
Near the end of July, I harvested one plant and potted up 14, 50 cell trays! Now this plant is 6 years old, but from this one plant I got 700 new plants to sell. This plant and the idea and benefit behind having it on your property is the basis of what I call my "Comfrey Investment Fund". It's not a piece of paper sitting in some fancy brokerage on Wall Street or, more likely, a series of bits representing some value out in some app on your phone. It's a plant, growing each year and capable of being broken down and sold when you need it, just like we did.
Act 3: Spread the word and perfect the process ~ September 2025 and on
Are my results typical? I cannot say. I cannot guarantee if you tried to replicate this that you'd have the same outcome.
I can however say I'll continue to work on my process, business skills, and I want to share them with you.
You see, I feel I have just scratched the surface of this opportunity this idea creates: Small plants, propagated at home from mother plants, and sold in your neighborhood or online. I have tried one plant in one region of the country and found a fair profit at a reasonable time investment.
What this has shown me though is that this type of small plant nursery business can succeed and I'd like to show you how I did it to inspire you to do likewise.
If you've made it this far, I invite you to read a little more about how I did this and I hope it inspires you to do the same.
