Looking to expand Delaware farming with truffles

About 18 months into an experiment to grow truffles in Delaware, Ray Prince said he is optimistic.

“The success rates are very low, but this is something I’ve wanted to do for years,” Prince said while walking through rows of various species of nut trees that he and his wife, Bernie, planted at their Blue Skies Farm, off Gravel Hill Road near Georgetown. “But if it’s successful, there’s the opportunity to increase the diversity of crops here in Delaware.”

Bernadine and Ray Prince opened Blue Skies Farm in 2012. In 2016, they received roughly $34,000 as part of a Delaware Department of Agriculture Specialty Crop Block Grant Program to help get their experiment off the ground. The grant, funded through the federal farm bill, gives farmers $5,000 to $50,000 to grow specialty crops, including fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture and floriculture. Projects may run for one to three years, and funding cannot be used for field crops, such as, corn and soybeans, or animal agriculture.

Ray said the grant Blue Skies Farm received went into purchasing four species of nut trees growing on the farm – the American hazelnut, bur oak, English oak and pecan. He said these trees have been inoculated with Perigord black, Burgundy, Bianchetto and pecan truffle spores. In addition to trees planted, in the woods on their property the Princes have put tomato cages around approximately two dozen hickory trees that have naturally sprouted on their own.

Ray said if the truffles are successfully grown in the woods, the project may help identify an alternative source of income that could boost the preservation of privately owned agriculture and forested lands. Truffles are a type of edible mushroom that falls under the ectomycorrhizal category, Ray said, like matsutake, porcinis and morels. These mushrooms grow on the roots of trees, predominantly nut-bearing trees, he said.

The other type of edible mushrooms, saprotrophic mushrooms, Ray said, live off decaying material. He said examples of those include shiitake and button mushrooms; they can be grown commercially inside, under controlled conditions. Ray said, at one point in history, truffles were considered a poor man’s food because they grow naturally, but they have to be dug out of the ground and were seen as a last-resort type of food. Now, he said, truffles are highly prized by fine restaurants and hotels all over the world.

Ray said growing truffles is a bit of a wait-and-see game. He said tree roots can be clipped and examined for truffle spores, but ultimately it’s tough to know if the experiment will work. “With saprotrophic mushrooms, it’s like growing chickens,” he said, pointing to the proliferation of grow houses in southern Pennsylvania as an example. “There’s a dependable level of output. With truffles, there’s a big investment, but an uncertainty about what will come.”

Ray said truffles grow better in a field that has been cropped for years and left low with nutrients, which he said describes the farm’s field where the experiment is taking place. He said he isn’t fertilizing his trees, because the truffles help find nutrients for the trees.

“You got to remember,” Ray said. “You’re trying to grow truffles, not trees.”

While the truffle growing is really more of Ray’s experiment than Bernie’s, she said she’s still excited to see how things turn out. “Even if we don’t get any truffles, we’ll have contributed a lot,” she said, looking out over the 100 or so nut trees. “At the very least, in the future we’ll have a beautiful forest, but maybe it will work, and our model can be used by other farmers.”

For more information on Blue Skies Farm, call 202-441-5907 or 202-546-6622, email bernieprince@blueskiesfarmde.com or go to www.blueskiesfarmde.com. The farm also has other produce and is selling it at the Historic Lewes Farmers Market.

For more information on the department of agriculture’s  specialty crop grant, go to de.gov/scbg.