stumbling into hügelkultur

part 2 of creating vibrant soil

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/122486226

Welcome back you rowdy bunch of freedom loving heretics! Thanks for subscribing and liking. Doing so really helps get the word out.

It’s a busy time here on the farm. First published in 2013, I just updated this article on hügelkultur with new information, new photos and a video of me showing some aspects of fatpharm.

If you’re looking to get healthy and sever your ties to the big food industrial complex, you’ll want to read this.

the soil biome

Like its above ground counterpart, the natural soil biome is an ecosystem where everything is either eating or being eaten, where even death nourishes life.

Amazingly this works thanks to something this dark-loving world never wants to see - sunlight. The conundrum is that without sunlight above ground, plants do not grow and without plants the foundation for all other aspects of a healthy soil biome do not exist. The essential components of water, nutrients and sunlight sets this perpetual biological machine in motion.

native americans had it right

Of course this begs the question - if the soil biome is intolerant of light and air why do we kill it by turning the soil with plows, rototillers and shovels? Why do we intentionally expose these fragile ecosystems to the very things they’re not adapted to deal with? How did we come to think that turning the soil with a plow is a good thing? American Indians had it right long ago. When they saw the first Europeans plowing the prairie they asked “Why are you turning the world upside down?”

At some point in history - possibly beginning with the ancient Sumerians - someone developed a wooden plow and found that the ensuing crop did quite well. Of course we now know that the havoc a plow wreaks on soil ecology does indeed provide a short term boost to fertility, thanks to the astronomical death rate and decomposition of all of the organisms that were killed in the plowing process. This short term gain (sound familiar?) is quickly lost by demands that nutrients need to be constantly replaced to maintain fertility. The correlation to current ideology about financial gain is not accidental. Dig deep enough and one can find evidence that points to capitalism having been born alongside the plow. As we have witnessed with the covid plandemic and now the war mongering about Ukraine, destruction and profit have been partners ever since.

When Columbus set sail for the west hoping to reach the east, the plow and capitalism had already ravaged the Middle East and Europe, causing the loss of millions of acres of climax habitat rich in native food sources. Soil erosion and desertification were already well under way. However, when Columbus set foot on the American continent he found a land untouched by the plow and a people who had no need for one. His fellow explorer Cortez was to find a civilization so evolved (the Aztecs) that they had created a well fed city (Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City) that at the time was larger than London and was connected to many other well fed cities by a series of roads creating a highly evolved society - all without the use of the plow (or the wheel). (While Londoners were still wallowing in their own sewage, Tenochtitlan also had an evolved sewage system.) The question arises; why do we use this destructive tool when we don’t need to?

The irreparable damage that the plow (or any other implement that breaks up the soil) creates can be seen not only on Midwestern US farms where the soil profile is now a fraction of what it was in Columbus's day, it can also be seen at the mouth of the Mississippi where millions of tons of that top soil, along with nitrates from fertilizers, have created a dead zone the size of Connecticut. And that’s just the obvious part. The more insidious aspect is what happens to the topic of this discussion; the destruction wrought on mycelium by tractors and yes, even horses or oxen pulling the plow. Even on - or perhaps I should say, especially on - organic farms.

mycelium, the key to the soil kingdom

For those unfamiliar with mycelium; it’s the hyphae part of soil borne fungal organisms that - once enough resources have become available - produces mushrooms. Mushrooms are the fruiting body or reproductive part of mycelium, producing spores that are the equivalent of seed. Another way of looking at it is - mushrooms are to mycelium what apples are to apple trees.

Mycorrhizae is the interaction of mycelium within a plant roots rhizosphere. Rhizospere is the zone that roots create around themselves in which they exude cellular detritus and sugars to attract symbiotic biological activity such as mycelium.

In terms of acreage covered, some mycelium cultures rank among the largest living things on earth, or at least they were until their networks were severed by plows, roads and cities. The reason why mycelium is so critical to soil health is due to its ability to interface with so many players in the soil. Paul Stamets in his books on mushrooms and mycelium likens mycelium to a “neural network” because it has the unique ability to connect and communicate with numerous components in the soil while also shuttling water and nutrients around where needed.

Mushroom spores are so durable they qualify as extremophiles - living organizims that can survive in extremely harsh conditions that would kill most others - deserts, frozen tundra and yes, even in space - which reinforces the theory of panspermia.

the most destructive technology ever created - the plow

It turns out that many of our food crops have symbiotic relationships with mycelium, which when fully evolved, greatly enhance nutritional levels. The problem with modern agriculture is that ongoing tillage of the soil prevents the deveolpment of mycelium which prevents our food from being as nousihing as it should be.

organic farmer john

The roots of these plants are meant to intermingle with mycelium on the cellular level, exchanging water and nutrients. But then farmer John comes along and plows a virgin meadow with a team of draft horses, severing the critical link that the mycelium had been providing between plant communities for the past 10,000 years. If farmer John never worked that field again that link might re-establish in several hundred more years. But farmer John continues to work that field every year until he’s seventy. Then an oak tree near the edge of the field mysteriously dies and farmer John wonders why. Of course to the oak and the mycelium it matters not that farmer John’s organic farming practices were to blame for their deaths.

The plow severs more than mycelium, it severs our connection to, and therefore our understanding of, how the earth functions.

blind intuition

My farm sits at about 3,850’ in elevation and consists mostly of steep, rough, rocky hills, covered in mix of native grass, brush and mesquite trees. Not exactly what most people would consider good crop land. However, I bought it for several other reasons. The main reason being the fact that it’s prime habitat for browsing animals like deer, alpacas, goats and pigs. The other reasons are more pertinent to this piece; the rain water catchment potential all those little watersheds hold, the good cold air drainage that steepness provides, and the extra month added to the growing season I get from that.

In the winter of 2001/2002 I built a rain water catchment at the mouth of one of those small watersheds using urbanite, which can be seen in the photo above and in the video link at the top. In an effort to take up some of the space required to fill in behind the retaining wall with soil, I tossed in a pile of scrap bamboo wood (used in constructing my house) and recent pruning’s from nearby native mesquite trees - perhaps several tons of woody material. This was filled in with soil, biocharred and mulched heavily.

The following summer brought above average monsoon rains and by August I was rewarded with a tremendous flush of numerous species of mushrooms that erupted above the area where the scrap bamboo and branches had been buried. I didn’t make the correlation until the following winter when I decided to expand that garden. In the process of digging I uncovered some of the branches and found they were riddled with mycelium. It was an “aha” moment. In the ensuing years I’ve replicated this retaining wall/catchment/mycelium charging process in four other garden areas.

(Also, see the video link at the top of this piece)

Some years later I stumbled across my first exposure to hügelkultur - an article online. Although my belief that I had discovered something really important was dashed, I was nevertheless happy to be vindicated.

Hügelkultur is German for hill or mound culture, likley an ancient practice. If I stumbled upon it, over the past 10,000 years, it’s a good bet many others have as well. However, the term didn’t get any recognition until 1962 when a German by the name of Herrman Andrä talked about hügelkultur in a gardening booklet he published. Interestingly, Mr. Andrä was a student of Rudolf Steiner, who talked about a similar system of gardening back in the 1920’s. All you hard core gardeners will know that Steiner was the founder of biodynamic gardening/farming, which then led to organic gardening/farming. (Regular readers know that I’ve referred to Steiner several times in earlier articles.)

In recent years, permaculture enthusiasts have latched onto hügelkultur, helping moving the practice forward.

current practices

There are many ways to generate a hügelkultur. Currently, one of the more popular ways is to utilize wood chips from municipal sources or chipper/shredder machines to process branches into chips onsite for use in a hügelkultur. The former is great for those living in the city who have no access to tree branches or machinery, while the latter is great for those who might have a large yard or a small acreage and have access to dead and down branches or on-site tree trimmings.

Due to thier nautral toxins, allelopathic trees are less desirable, although given enough time the wood will succumb to mycelium. Black Walnut and many Eucalyptus are allelopathic.

My Luddite bent tends to make me eschew fossil fuel powered equipment, so I’m always looking for the least energy intensive way to achieve something. Hence, all of my hügelkulturs have been made with tree branches pruned and cut into managable sizes with my folding saw.

what I’ve learned since ’01

The traditional hill or mound system of hügelkultur was developed in an area where excess rainfall and moisture can keep garden soils too boggy. If you live on such a property, hilling, mounding or the use of raised beds is a fine way to provide a fertile habitat above boggy ground. However, here in the arid SW US, I prefer to use the traditional native American system of growing everything in lowered, sunken beds that also serve as rainwater catchments. This keeps plants below the worst of our drying spring winds while creating a low spot for our limited rainfall runoff to accumulate right around the plants.

Turns out what I did accidentally 21 years ago - sunken beds that serve as rainwater catchments created by urbanite retaining walls in the lower reaches of small watersheds, then backfilled with native wood prior to topping off with soil, is a very effective solution for this and many other regions.

Add some biochar to that top soil, mulch deeply the first few years and you’ll have the ultimate long term fertility soultion for your soils.

I’ve used native and non-native wood and it does seem that native mesquite is colonized by mycelium more quickly. This might be due to the rough nature of the bark harboring a lot of viable spores. It could also be due to the native mycelium and mesquite having evolved together. Or both.

Dead or fresh branches both work but here in this drier climate I’ve noticed that colonization of mycelium occurs more quickly on fresh or recently cut branches verses dry ones - likely because of the higher moisture and nutrient value in the green wood. Although I have no scientific proof, it also seems that there may be species that prefer to colonize during our mild winters and others that prefer our summer monsoon.

Branches that have been laying out in the elements for years will have had many of their nutrients leached out by weather causing them to be less attractive to mycelium colonization. After having been buried for some time, I’ve found leached branches like this untouched by mycelium - even when lying right next to green branches (buried at the same time) that are heavily colonized. Eventually, as these older pieces absorb nutrients from the soil they become more attractive to colonization.

This is less of a problem with chips - when dry and green branches are shredded together - and more of a problem when burying large, dry branches. The close proximity of the smaller chips tends to force the mycelium to intertwine itself with both dry and green chips, whereas the space between larger branches is not conducive to this.

If you’re like me and you’re not inclined to use chipper/shredders, soaking dry branches in a rich compost tea for a week or two before burying will enhance colonization.

Scrap lumber has the disadvantage of not having been exposed to the elements. Over the course of years, a limb from one of your trees will harbor thosuands of spores it has gleaned from the multitude of wild spores constantly wafting through the air. Fresh cut lumber will carry a lot fewer spores and those few may hale from a different climate (where the trees were harvested), so they may not perform well in your garden. The solution is to make a tea from your compost pile - which was hopefully made with a lot of spore-laden material that came from your property or nearby - and soak the scrap lumber in that for a week or two before burying it.

The colonization of mycelium and the ensuing decomposition in a hügelkultur made of large pieces of wood - such as cord-wood - is a very slow process, but it has it’s advantages. One of them is that the benefits derived by having an active mycelium culture is extended over a greater length of time - verses a hügelkultur made of chips which will break down much more quickly.

When taking the slow road the old saying “patience is a virtue”, applies. As with much of what I do here, I find it comforting to think of those who will come after me.

Try it at your place and let me know how it works for you.