Is it possible to grow truffles?Would it be like growing mushrooms?
Well sure…after all, that’s what they do already. They grow. Just like mushrooms, since that’s what they are, though they grow under-ground. Now, if you mean is it possible to grow them domestically, I’d say that it’s POSSIBLE…but that, afaik, no way has been found to grow them both domestically and economically. Thus the pigs…
(Actually, they use dogs now in some cases, but the visual of hunting pigs sniffing out truffles always tickles my fancy)
-XT
Title edited to indicate subject.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Yes it is possible to farm truffles. It is not like mushrooms. You have to plant trees to host the truffles.
An Irish garden centre has recently started stocking hazel trees with truffles. They claim that after a few years you can harvest 1kg of truffle per year per tree.
Some people in North Carolina are trying to cultivate them. But the article notes, “A $20 sapling whose roots have been inoculated with truffle spores can take 5 to 10 years to actually produce a truffle. There are weather and disease to contend with.” See also the website for the North American Truffle Growers’ Association.
It’s being done on the Baltic island of Gotland.
My parents have one of these trees in their garden. It’s been there a few years but we’ve not seen any truffles (might just be because we lack a truffle pig to find 'em!)
Someone on the UK television show The Dragon’s Den (upon which the U.S. show, Shark Tank, is based), got funded by one of the ‘Dragons’ for a patented truffle-harvesting method. No idea if anything came of it, though.
I saw a cooking show, it had a feature on farmed truffles. Some gourmets showed in double blind tests that they could tell the difference between farmed and wild, and stated the opinion that farmed ones were slightly inferior, but not much.
Is that because the pigs will eat the truffles and the dogs won’t?
No it is not.
That is why there is no such thing as truffles.
But… wait! I saw a movie about this dang it!