Truffle Seedlings for a Black Truffle Plantation

Truffle seedlings are young host trees raised in a nursery with the black truffle fungus, Tuber melanosporum, already established on their roots.

They are what a plantation is made of: at the grower’s density, 300 of them per hectare.

This page covers what the seedling is, when it goes in the ground and what happens in its first years.

What a truffle seedling carries on its roots

A seedling on its own is a small tree. A truffle seedling is that tree plus a fungus living on its fine roots, in a symbiosis where each feeds the other.

The grower puts the practical side plainly: if the plant lacks food, it gives none to the fungus. The seedling’s health in its first years is what the fungus depends on.

Counting seedlings for the surface you will plant

The grower plants 300 per hectare, which for forty hectares came to about 12,000 seedlings.

That number sets the order size and the timing with the nursery, which is why the surface is the first thing we ask for.

When truffle seedlings go in the ground

Autumn, and the grower recommends it without hedging: October and November. A seedling planted then has the winter and the spring to build roots, and does not face its first summer with almost none.

Spring planting is possible, and plenty of it is done, but only where springs and summers are cool and damp. Anywhere else the seedling struggles through the dry months and needs support watering through that first year, with late frosts to avoid on top.

What is not done is planting in the depth of winter, in the weeks when hard frosts run for days on end.

• Autumn, October and November: the recommended window.
• Spring: only in cool, damp regions, with support watering the first year.
• Never in mid-winter, during spells of extreme frost.

The state of the ground on planting day

The ground should be neither soaked nor dry: what the grower calls good tilth, a middle point with some moisture held in it.

Time the planting for a spell of stable temperatures and just before a run of rain. Do that and the first support waterings take care of themselves.

One more constraint to check before fixing a date: where the plantation is funded by a subsidy, the terms often set both the planting dates and the spacing.

The first years of a truffle seedling

Nothing visible happens for years, and that is normal. First truffles appear at five or six years in token amounts; commercial production starts at eight to ten.

In the meantime the work is care: the grower prunes in spring and weeds in autumn, and pruning a truffle tree is not ordinary pruning. Which branch, when, where and why, with disinfected shears.

Ordering truffle seedlings for next season

Send the surface, the country and the season you want to plant in. You get the number of seedlings, the price and whether delivery to your destination is possible.

Live plants are subject to plant-health rules that vary by country, so the destination is confirmed before anything is committed.

Related pages:

• Truffle Trees for Black Truffle (Tuber melanosporum)
• Inoculated Truffle Trees: How Black Truffle Mycorrhiza Works
• Truffle Trees for Sale: Black Truffle Plants from Spain
• Black Truffle Orchard: Planting, Pruning and Pests