As any Mycophile knows, the more you understand about mycelium, the more you understand its intrinsic connection to all things. The real magic of mushrooms is their ability to provide life-sustaining solutions for creatures big and small, and it all starts with the soil.There’s really no life form that is not touched, in some way, by fungi. So, when we talked with Permaculturist Michael Judd, he enlightened us to his world – DIY permaculture, agro-ecology, even the life lessons to be gleaned from farming – but we eventually landed back at the beginning. They say all roads lead home. Home, for Michael Judd, is the soil.
Fantastic Fungi (FF): Permaculture sounds…intimidating. What advice do you have for novices like myself?
Michael Judd (MJ): I like to break it down into projects. People can understand a project. It’s incapsulated, it’s manageable. In my book, Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist, I lay out the steps and materials needed for individual projects.
People always feel like they have to learn more, read more. We don’t need to read more! We need to get out there and start doing. That’s the only way to really achieve success. If you start with a small project and you complete it, you have success. Then, you do another, and another, and the projects build upon themselves. The magic is that it begins to thrive and overtime the projects begin to weave together and you get that synergistic landscape. But it only happens by doing the first project. Trust it, and it will meet you.
FF: That’s a great metaphor for life. “Begin anywhere” is one of my favorite sayings. Just start. How did you start?
MJ: I started with whole system design while living in Mexico with the Lacondon Mayans. The Mayans were geniuses at creating functional landscapes that mimicked nature. About the same time, permaculture was just coming onto the scene, and there were a lot of synergies. I combined these practices, and in 2001, I created a non-profit called Project Bona Fide in SW Nicaragua. The project focused on creating food security through food forests that maximize use of the land. Today, we’ve grown 26 acres of linked design systems that mimic nature while also meeting the needs of local economies and ecologies.
FF: That’s very inspiring. Can you explain the difference between permaculture and agro-ecology, which you also talk a lot about?
MJ: Agro-ecology focuses on how we can intelligently grow food for animals, ourselves and to benefit ecology as a whole. One example is alley cropping, planting perennials between spaced out rows of other crops, like cabbages. You create diversity by stacking functions, and there’s added benefit because the perennial rows are filtering, wind breaking or creating another product the farm might need. Agro-ecology and permaculture go together well, but have different applications. Agro-ecology farming can be umbrellaed under permaculture.
FF: So, let’s go a little deeper (pardon the pun) to fungi. You provide a great explanation for the role fungi has in farming in your book. You write: “Working with fungi is one of the rare win, win, win scenarios where every step of the process has a myriad of benefits. By thinning trees for growing mushrooms, you help rebalance the forest; by inoculating wood with fungi, you speed up the soil building process; and by spreading more fungi in the landscape, you strengthen ecosystems and increase runoff filtration. On the economic side, growing mushrooms for market is as lucrative as a legal crop gets. Local farmers markets and restaurants pay top dollar for outdoor fungi. Value add the harvest into a bottled sauce or oil and you‘ll be rolling.”… This begs the question: is fungi a scalable solution in large scale agriculture?
MJ: That’s a good question. I’m sure Paul Stamets has done more research on this than I have, and there’s Mark Shepard who wrote Restoration Agriculture about large scale farming with permaculture. But, what I know from experience is that fungi are going to thrive wherever there’s consistent organic matter. That’s what will spread mycelium and nutrients. Working on a homestead urban scale, where there’s no end to huge piles of wood chips and where landscape is fertile, you can keep it perennially covered, so you don’t need additional fertilizer. When agriculture is scaled, and the land is used up from heavy cropping, it disrupts the natural balance needed to maintain the land, so they need fertilizers. Existing agricultural models need to become diversified. There is a deeper context here of needing to eat locally and seasonally. Point is, it’s hard to inject fungi into a continually depleted farming system.
FF: So, is it realistic to suggest that in order to make the biggest impact to our food supply and ecology, it will require a lot individuals doing what you’re doing? Small, diversified farming equals big change?
MJ: It’s a realistic solution to go small scale and local, but it shouldn’t be like anything it ever was. Everything needs to be different because of our new realities. A small diversified plot is more productive than large scale agriculture. We need more small scale diversified operations. There are many young farmers who are doing this. They’re learning and encouraging each other.
FF: Where have you seen permaculture at its finest?
MJ: Bullock Homestead on Orcas Island. Douglas and Sam Bullock are great teachers and their land is stacked to the limit.
To learn more about Michael Judd and his new book “Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist,” visit ecologiadesign.com and projectbonafide.com.
I live in the high planes desert. We have rocks and smaller rocks, and haul in lots of horse and alpaca manure and have planted lots of worms. We have been trying to make soil for a long time. Our progress is minimal and we have now decided that all of our gardening has to be in containers so that the soil and worms don’t dry out. We have an average of 15% humidity and 6 inches of rain annually here at 6,000 feet in New Mexico. Our water is alkaline and we have been in a drought for many years.
We usually get a week or two of below 20 degrees each winter, but lots of sunny days, then lots and lots of wind. Most of our trees have either died or suffered from the prolonged drought so there is only a bit of Juniper trees around here, and sparse grasses.
Any suggestions for success in fostering fungi and other mycelium in containers with these harsh conditions? I once had a magic box that anything would grow in because it was so alive with mycelium, but that was indoors.
Hi Lynn;
My suggestion is to do a little research on Hugelkultur. I am currently working on a property where the owner had cut down everything & left it onsite. We covered it with cardboard last year as the rains started and had lots of wood chips brought in (Seattle – may be a bit different for the desert, but there are some examples of hugelkultur in African deserts on youtube). We planted in some pockets, with a little added fertile mulch and soil. This was a very hot summer. Nothing we planted got any additional water until late August/early Sept. We will be planting more this winter. Didn’t fully plant out due to multiple reasons; cost of plants, wanting to see how much bindweed, ivy, and blackberries would push up through cardboard & chips.
Lynn,
Hats off to you for living in such a tough climate. Fungi can thrive there but some long term re-patterning of the landscape has to come first. Most fungi we eat and harvest are all about moisture and organic matter to consume. Water builds organic matter so let’s start there. Capturing water on the landscape and holding it in the soil can be successfully accomplished by swales on contour which are usually dug but can also be as simple as lining up all those rocks you have along the contour to begin slowing and sinking what rain you do get. If you have any dead juniper trees or access to other woody debris you can fashion hugelkultur beds to both harvest water runoff and build soil from inviting in ambient fungi. Both these techniques are step by step described in my book but I would also recommend getting Brad Lancaster’s books on ‘Rainwater Harvesting for Dry Lands and Beyond’. With time your landscape will change dramatically as you can see in this seminal video by permaculture leader Geoff Lawton -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1rKDXuZ8C0.
Dear Sir, I have recently been on a ‘fungi Foray’ organized by the local wild life trust team. A group of people were instructed to collect Fungi from a little wood near where I live. I am a photographer and conservationist and this plundering left me shocked and appalled at the destruction. I have expressed my views to those in charge who say they are collecting data and it does no damage!!I would very much like to hear your views.
Thank you
Sue Wilson
That’s a subtle way of thkniing about it.