It’s easy to make your own plant feed – you can even use garden weeds

Comfrey is my favourite because it’s so nutritious for flowers, fruit and veg, but nettles, dandelions and groundsel are good too

I hope that, as you’re reading this, your veg patch is in full swing. Despite my slightly later than usual start to the season (spring was confusing, weather-wise!), my tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes are growing well, and I have just planted out another round of lettuce and spring onions. Now we’re in midsummer, much of our attention is taken up with keeping our crops watered, well and harvested. It is also a good time to consider adding supplemental feeding.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a trip to the garden centre, because it’s fairly easy – if a little stinky – to make your own plant feed. There are a number of plants that you can use in this process, but my favourite is comfrey since its leaves offer up such a nutritious elixir that crops seem to really respond to. Comfrey is a perennial plant that produces thick, hairy leaves and clusters of drooping pink, purple or white flowers; it thrives in damp earth. It can be found by the side of streams and rivers, though it’s robust enough to grow in less welcoming ground, pushing a taproot deep into the earth and pulling up nutrients into its leaves, where we can harness them. A huge added bonus is how much the bees, hoverflies and butterflies benefit from its flowers, especially in spring.