Is this a soil disease?

[budb7]

I recently started my own garden. My cucumber is doing great but I noticed something weird around the soil the other day. There is a top layer of what it seems to be dead soil. Part of it looks like dead soil and part looks like very weird white stuff. Almost like a pest of some sort. I started taking out around my cucumber and then I second guess myself, what if it is the cucumber roots? It looks weird for it to be roots. I looked it up online and nothing.

Does anyone know what it could be?

 

[MowgFace]

Looks like it could be Mycelia to me.

Probably feeding on and breaking down the woodchips.

 

[Chuck]

Looks like mycelium which is basically a fungal body. It breaks down organic matter into a form which plants can uptake as nutrition. It is normally a good thing to see. However, if you see green or blue patches in the mycelium this is not a healthy thing to have in your soil. Yours appears to be healthy and a good thing to see.