Pt 2 of previous post detailing experiments with Comfrey plant:
November 2023 at The Field. This was my first breakthrough plant that kick started the whole formal photo garden research project. The Field has enormous amounts of comfrey ground cover, more than enough to feed the ground with rich compost teas for the season. I grabbed a handful of leaves, slightly soggy and sad, without much hope for results. To the best of my knowledge the phenolic content of the plant travels down to the roots for the dormant season where they may do a better job of protecting the plant from cold, damp and frosts. Theoretically the developing power of the plant in my albeit highly speculative knowledge would be lower at this time.
I performed the extraction by boiling for 10-15 minutes. I developed this roll of images taken in The Field using Field comfrey, from my recollection it was a fairly standard developing session, around 12 minutes somewhere in the temperature range 24-26C. The negatives came out more perfect than I have ever recieved negatives from any photo developing shop and better than any Kodak D76 which I had been using before the ‘caffenol is a gateway drug’ journey. There was perfect contrast, and absolutely no stain. They were darkroom ready straight out of the tank.
After this test I became slightly enfatuated with the Comfrey, which seemed by its sprawling open arms to be the matriarch plant of The Field. The next years tests ventured into a love affair with Comfrey. Very little editing has been done on the below images.
