Better Living Through Permaculture: Inviting Fungus Among Us... Or At Least Among Our Trees

[IrateCitizen]

In the last post, we looked briefly at how coppicing and pollarding can be used to encourage a sustainable wood harvest. I coppiced a large black walnut tree in my yard last year, and had new shoots in the past spring. Just this weekend I coppiced a rather sick tree in my front yard with the hopes that by cutting it back I could give it a new lease on life, and pollarded another that had been damaged by our freak Halloween snowstorm. For my efforts this weekend, I netted a modest amount of firewood, some decent straight poles that can be used either for outdoor building projects or firewood, and a couple of good-sized piles of brush.

Here’s a pic of those piles of brush again. A “typical” landscaping operation would look upon these piles as a waste product to be discarded, or at best as fuel for a chipper to turn into wood chips. But I’m interested in permaculture, in “closing the loop,” and generally in doing as little work as possible in the long run. So, I came up with some different uses for my brush piles.

I took the brush from the walnut tree downed last year, broke it up into manageable pieces, and stored it under an overhang behind my shed. After several months of drying out, it now serves as useful tinder for starting fires in my woodstove.

This brush had a different use in store for it....

READ THE REST HERE

[JDPriestly]

1. Very interesting.

[DCKit]

2. Check out the website fungi.com.

I've bought from them in the past with great success.

My garden mix two summers ago was:
Native dirt
Composted manure
Charcoal
Mycorrhizal fungi spawn

Until the critters found my garden patches in mid August, I was giving stuff away.

Hate lawns, but they have mixes for that too.

[IrateCitizen]

3. Thanks for the reference!

Just out of curiosity, what part of the country are you in? I only ask because of the makeup of the mix you used -- I've read a fair amount of stuff about charcoal and biochar, and that it is more suited toward tropical climates that can't hold organic matter (and hence, bacteria and fungus) for considerable lengths of time like more temperate climates can.

[DCKit]

4. Trust me, biochar and charcoal are good everywhere.

I'm in DC, the farm is in the mountains of western VA.

The fungi colonize the carbon and use it to store nutrients and water. When the plants need something specific, it's delivered by the fungi. The fungi receive carbs and sugar in the trade.

It's a seriously symbiotic relationship. Look it up. Everything I know I learned doing Internet research and common sense. My first garden since the 70's just proves I've got good instincts.