| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Truffle |
Growing truffles!!Hi All,I thought I would start a thread dedicated to growing truffles in the UK! There is species of truffle completely suited to the UK that many people can grow in their back gardens. I was chatting on another website about this and one of the people suggested I posted here as there may be lots of interested parties. So lets have this thread dedicated to truffles and other fungi... An introduction: My name is Dr Paul Thomas, our website is: www.PlantationSystems.com. We sell truffle-trees but also work with farmers/land owners to establish truffle plantations. If anyone would like to know more, post here! or e-mail us at shop@PlantationSystems.com Cheers, Paul ------------------------------------- www.PlantationSystems.com- Grow truffles!!! |
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| tahir |
Only truffles? Which species of oak do you use? | ||||||
| cab |
Hi Mark! Good to see you over here. The evergreen oak mentioned on your website, is that the holm oak? | ||||||
| Treacodactyl |
I've often wondered, if you are planting up an area of woodland can you mix in a few truffle trees and would the truffle fungus spread to other non-inoculated trees? | ||||||
| Truffle |
Hi everyone,
Wow- great to see such interest in truffles! Tahir: We use two oak species, Quercus robur and Quercus Ilex, Q.robur is most adapted for the UK but Q.ilex makes a fantastic specimen tree. Most people would not recognise it as oak at all as it looks more like a holly but with acorns. Cab: Great avatar by the way. The Quercus ilex we work with is the toothed form that looks a lot like holly, a fantastic specimen tree! Treacodactyl: This could work. However, there is always the chance that contaminating fungi from the non-inoculated trees could compete with the truffle fungus and create poor yields. Although, if you are planting an area I think it would be a fun experiment to try… Cheers, Paul ------------------------------------- www.PlantationSystems.com- Buy truffle trees! -Grow truffles!!! |
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| cab |
Paul, how does your work over here differ from what Daniel Wheeler has been doing over in the States? Do you get a better success rate with your inoculum? | ||||||
| Bugs |
Ahem. It's Paul, judging from his introducing himself as, er, Paul How long are you finding it takes to produce truffles, Paul? And is it quite reliable (ie take proper care and plant in the right place and Bob's your uncle)? Also, from your site - http://www.plantationsystems.com./Tinvest.html
That's very exciting, I don't think I'd ever heard of anyone managing to "farm" boletes before, in fact I'm sure we chatted about it here before? Are you able to tell us any more about how you've done so far or is it all top-secret or very early days? |
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| cab |
Ok, someone was talking to me at the same time and I got confused 
Sorry... |
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| tahir |
I'll be very interested to know more on that. |
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| cab |
Me too. |
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| Truffle |
Hi everyone,
Cab: as far as I am aware, Daniel concentrates on the Oregon white truffle. I do not know if he has experimented with the European black winter truffle or the UK summer truffle- so really I am unable to comment on this. I think, I may have to get in contact with him just to confirm. Bugs: As long as every precaution is followed and all our advice is adhered to then truffles should certainly be produced. Regarding the boletus trials, it is VERY early days- no one I know of has ever succeeded in cultivating them from inoculated trees. However, some excellent results have recently been observed using mature-tree inoculation trials. Because this is such new technology no production/yields can be predicted (unlike truffles) and the trials should be treated as exactly that- a trial. We are keen to develop experimental sites and if anyone has suitable land then we would attempt and inoculation as long as we can have access to the land for data recoding and there is a contribution to inoculation costs. Whoever’s land we use has the benefit of perhaps producing boletus on their own land! I am quite excited at the moment about our chanterelle trials, again its early days but we are currently inoculating a large number of trees and applying a couple of different treatments to try and stimulate fruiting. Its going to be a while before we get any meaningful data from this but it is quite an exciting prospect. Really we want to concentrate on the establishment of UK truffle plantations with landowners and revive our once thriving truffle industry! Paul Buy truffle-trees – www.PlantationSystems.com - Grow truffles |
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| tahir |
What about harvesting truffles? | ||||||
| Treacodactyl |
You need to get yourself a dog to find them. 
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| tahir |
Just wondered if Mr Truffle had that angle covered |
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| Bugs |
Yep, a spaniel is compulsory I'm afraid T. Grin and bear it 
Perhaps they all push themselves up out of the ground? At least you'll know where to look if you've planted/innoculated your own trees I suppose. Thanks for the extra detail on the boletes Truffle/Paul, I hope it's a great success for you and you never know, we might be customers one day 
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| cab |
If I recall correctly, he has made some efforts with other truffles too. Long time since I swapped emails with him on that, though. His website says that he grows several truffles. How many of those he's inoculated and how many he's just picking wild-ish, I don't know. Still, he's always seemed like a really interesting bloke, so you can't lose anything by talking to him. |
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| Treacodactyl |
While foraging it is noticable that some patches of woodland produce a few boletus appear but never that many. Assuming the soil is ok (I've seen them grow in all sorts of soils) and they have their host trees can anything be done to encourage them? |
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| Truffle |
Hi everyone,
Once again, an excellent set of questions! Tahir: To find the truffles, if you have a plantation then you need to employ the help of a trained dog. The majority of disciplined dogs are very easy to train and we provide full instruction/guidance to all our partners. If you just have a couple of trees in your garden then you don’t need a dog and can try various techniques from: 1) Looking for cracks in the ground- sometimes truffles can be seem breaking the surface. 2) Sniffing the ground!- In small areas this can actually work 3) Carefully scarping the soil to look for truffles 4) Look for the ‘truffle-fly’ All our trees are supplied with full instructions- finding the truffles is half the fun! Bugs: Thanks for the support! Cab: Thanks, I’m sending him an e-mail now- I think it will be interesting to compare data. Treacodactyl: An excellent question. The stimulation of fruiting in natural habitats is an area that is currently being researched by a number of institutions. There have been some good results with the removal of leaf litter- but these results only last for a year or so and then production declines. One of the most important factors I think is irrigation and irrigation of dry woodland has been shown to stimulate fruiting. The differences you observed may of course be due to localisations of the fungi and throughout a woodland there may be many or very few patches of boletus depending on the local fungi-flora. Also, bear in mind that many boletus can fruit over a very long season so regular harvesting trips are pretty essential. Cheers, Paul Grow truffles- www.PlantationSystems.com – Buy truffle-trees! |
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| cab |
My money is on fungal-plant interractions being further complicated by bacteria being involved. I'll bet that makes a big difference for the fruiting of chanterelles especially, I'm sure that those guys are bacteriologically wierd.
I'll also bet that the health of the tree makes a big difference to Boletus; I've certainly observed that in years when a young tree seems to stall a bit in its growth, the fruiting of boletus around it stalls too. Truffle, for Boletus, have you gone down any kind of spawning route or are you thinking of direct inoculation of the roots? If its the latter, would that be spores, mycelium from the ground, fruiting bodies or what? |
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| Treacodactyl |
Thanks for all the replies Paul. As Bugs says (she's my OH) this is the sort of thing were interested in but we're a couple of years off buying somewhere at the moment. But like some other members, we would be looking at a place where we would no doubt embark on a fair bit of tree planting and some carefully placed truffle trees are certainly on the list.
Which brings me to another question, assuming things go well and you start to crop a few decent truffles, is there a market for them in this country and how would people go about selling them? Do you run or plan to run any form of scheme that will buy them or help with a market? Another less pleasant question is would there be any security problems if the truffles are successful, after all they are a very valuable and easily pinchable crop. Sensible precautions like not planting the trees near footpaths etc would seem wise. |
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| Truffle |
Hi all,
Cab: I think your certainly right. Mycorrhizal interactions are extremely neglected in terms of biological research and I firmly believe they deserve much more attention! There are certainly many complicated interactions we are unaware of. Interestingly there was a paper published in Nature a few years ago where it was claimed that a 1 year old inoculated tree (inoculated with chanterelle) spontaneously produced a fruiting body whilst it was growing in a sterile medium- there could of course been some form of bacterial contamination that the researchers where unaware of. As for the boletus, we can culture the fungi in a medium although growth is extremely slow. It is this medium that we are trailing for the mature tree inoculations. Treadactyl: There is a huge market for truffles in the UK. There is an even bigger demand for truffles produced in the UK, especially from restaurants/gastro pubs. As part of the partnership programmes we run, we offer to distribute all the truffles from the plantations through our network- there are certainly no problems in terms of distribution. Security is of course an issue and the best safeguard is to not tell anyone the exact location of your plantation- after all, to the passer-by the plantation looks like a regular tree plantation. Security is no way near as much of an issue as it would be if the plantation was in the South of France where there are many plantations! Cheers, Paul Grow truffles: www.PlantationSystems.com : But truffle-trees! |
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| cab |
Isn't there a picture of a chanterelle in a pot with a tree seedling in one of Stamets books? I'm amazed if chanterelles are growing in a sterile medium, and I'll be even more amazed if any kind of sterile medium with a tree seedling and a fungus in it really makes any kind of practical sense. My experience is that for complex or large systems (big fermenters, compost, plants growing for a long time in supposedly sterile media) real sterility is more of an aspiration than an attainable goal. Even the smell of chanterelles is a bit [/i]Pseudomonas[/i] like. I'm delighted to hear that you've looked at Boletus in culture. And I'm almost as happy that you're finding that it grows very slowly, that fits in with my own experience from years back, I'm kind of comforted
I got a few tips for speeding it up a little, can't remember who it was, someone at the BMS gave me a few pointers. Names gone, I'm sure it'll come back to me. We should talke media. |
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| Truffle |
Hi Cab,
Sorry for the delayed response, I haven’t checked in here for a while. Don’t you find that the smell of chanterelles vary enourmously? I’ve had some that are amazingly ‘apricoty’ and others that are pretty much devoid of scent… Also, I understand where you are coming from with the sterility issues. We have a small trial (~150 trees) with chanterelle inoculation in media with varying degrees of sterility. It will be interesting to see what happens. Regarding the boletus, to be honest its all on the back-burner at the moment as this time of year is really busy for our truffle-stuff. I think its going to be really interesting to talk media and methods, I had a brief e-mail conversation with Tahir today and it looks like we should all be meeting towards the end of this month and so we can have a good long fungi chat lol.
Cheers, Paul Grow truffles: www.PlantationSystems.com : But truffle-trees! |
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| cab |
Thats certainly true, and I would guess that the aroma is going to be based on genetics, bacterial partners, associated tree, and conditions. But there's this nagging background smell that I normally find, something 'planty' about them, that I always associated with bacteria. All a gut feeling of course, but I rekon that most of them will sooner or later be covered in bacteria (what isn't covered in bacteria though? I wonder, has anyone done the basic bacteriology on what you would be likely to find on the surface of mushrooms?).
Fascinating; keep us posted here, it sounds like an exciting project!
Excellent, I'll look forward to it. |