inveniam viam

I'm still learning a lot about the practice of food forests and permiculture.

We're planning on taking down 5-10 trees this year. Big trees. Mike has been thinking about the management of the fresh lumber. I've been thinking about the stumps.

Stumps are rather amazing things. They hold water, and as they decompose, they release nutrients into the surrounding soil. They nurture the soil mycelium:

Plants have something the fungi needs: energy from the sun in the form of sugar. The fungi on the other hand, has something the plant needs: access to the nutrients trapped in complex organic molecules. These nutrients are not available to the plant. So, like a small child who cannot open the cookie jar, the plants must bribe their fungal partners with sugar to open the jar and hand them a cookie (nutrients). This relationship plays an incredibly important role in our forests. Fungi do more than form connections with individual plants. The mycelial network of one individual fungus connects with many individual plants, forming a vast interconnected web of shared information and nutrients throughout the forest. Amazingly, mycorrhizal fungi can do more than just exchange energy and nutrients with the plants they are connected to, they can also act as a mediator between healthy and unhealthy individual plants, passing vital nutrients from the healthy to the weak. Mycorrhizal fungi are the communication and resource transportation infrastructure of the biological world.

Mayne Island Conservancy

What I do with the stumps will depend on where they sit, of course. But mostly I'll be putting in perennials like garlic at one stump and asparagus at another (those two dont play well together). Likely, there'll be a stump or two inside the greenhouse - a strawberry bed would work well there.