Why You Need Mycorrhizal Fungi

Muh Muh Muh Mycorrhizae!

If you see this in your garden, jump for joy, and thank the Lord for His forethought and perfect design.  This amazing little fungus connects the entire planet, and not only helps to break down fibrous materials in your garden, but it also is what FEEDS your plants in an organic gardening environment.  Read more to find out why this awesome organism is so important to your garden.

Whether you believe in God, or believe that millions of species, with millions of different types of digital coding, got here on accident because lightening struck a puddle with amino acids in it...the fact remains that our forests lawns, and organic gardens are connected with a fungal net called mycorrhizae or mycorrhizal fungi. 

This "net" is truly like the internet of the soil, allowing plants to communicate back and forth on their needs for minerals and moisture.  These white strands pictured above, called "hyphae", connect INTO the roots of all of the plants in your organic, no till garden.  Then, if a plant gets sick, or needs additional moisture, the moisture and nutrients will be siphoned to that plant, until it heals.  IMHO, this is not by accident, but by design.

Importance of No Till/No Dig Gardening
We have a good reference for tilling the ground, found in the Bible.  Genesis 3:23 tells us the following: 
"So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to the ground from which he had been taken."
Biblically speaking, man did NOT till the soil in the Garden of Eden.  God made things grow, as is His nature, and when Adam and Eve were banished, is when they began to till the soil, where weeds, thorns, and thistles would be among them.

What does this tell us?  Nature wasn't designed to be tilled.

Tilling kills the soil life, and breaks up the fungal net in our soils, making our soils disconnected, dry, cracked, and parched.  This causes erosion of top soil, and makes farmers spend a LOT more money on water than is necessary.  If we want healthy soils in our lawns, farms, and gardens, we need to STOP the tilling, and start planting cover crops like multi-way legumes, and seed mixes, especially in dryer climates that might get less rain.   When you stop tilling, and start planting cover crops, you are building soil and creating an environment to hold a LOT more moisture than before, eventually allowing you to farm without irrigation, but ONLY if we stop tilling and keep the fungus alive!

Using wood chips from your local tree service (not bagged mulch) is a great way to getting the fungus you need in your garden, and a way to bring in soil life to a high level.  When you do this, you will have a very successful, organic garden, that doesn't need pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or chemical fertilizer.