Growing Truffles - Small Farms Style

[Music] [Music] my name's alan i live here in baiwong on about 10 hectares 25 acres in the old measurements it's a fairly typical bywong property it's um basic acidic soil low fertility on a shale base today i'm just going to talk about the bits that i did to create my truffle farm which has been in for four years back in 2015 i attended a little session on truffles after looking at various things to do with my farm whether it was olive trees christmas trees possum banksias any of those sort of smaller type things that i could grow and help supplement the income for my farm truffles sort of excited me a little bit went to the session which is held at sutton i had a site visit shortly after that where they came and had a look where i had thought i could possibly plant my tough truffle trees they determined that this area below was most probably a better location 12 months just to get from going to the session having the site visit organizing for a specific soil test so a person in victoria does the soil testing in relation to truffles so they look at not just ph all the other requirements that are needed for growing truffles truffles are a fungus that forms on the roots they form where type a and type b touch it's not male and female they're just different types as they form they create what they call a brule so if you think of a cream brulee and how you get the bubbling and the browning off around it same happens around your tree indicating that truffles are actually forming so start to form in march and then harvest is usually between june july and august each year one of the reasons that i picked to do truffles was it is a short harvest period i'm not out here every day of the year having to harvest truffles truffles to me taste they're a woody taste with a nutty flavour relatively dry in flavour and they've got a very earthy tone so much more than mushrooms earthy tones like beetroot that sort of stuff usually good with eggs [Music] pasta which is my favorite way of having it pasta and a butter sauce i extremely happy that i was able to get truffles within four years they'll continue to produce truffles now by about year 20 they'll get to their maximum production stage so in 20 years if i'm getting anywhere between 20 to 25 kilos off this paddock that's where it will stay at the 20 to 25 kilos if it was really good production you are talking most probably about 40 kilos of a hectare my spacing for my trees i am eight meters apart between the rows and each tree is four meters apart would i have planted them differently is there things i could have done better oh definitely planting them more on the contour lines most probably would have been beneficial possibly putting in some small swales to help with water retention so i don't have to irrigate as much planting the trees on top of the swale so they don't get waterlogged those sort of things as far as you're planning to help determine how you do overall i'm still happy with where i got my worst case scenario was i was going to end up with a paddock full of oak trees which looks good so this is my little truffle farm i'll replace the six trees that have died and i will continue on with them

Channel: Small Farms Network Capital Region

Views: 15,136

Rating: 4.895288 out of 5

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Id: jGWkia_Sb18

Length: 5min 38sec (338 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020