Truff at the top

Coming to a tree near you: within a few years, you could be harvesting truffles like these from your own tree. Photograph: Boris Harvat/Getty

The nearest I've come to eating a truffle is troughing on a box of Ferrero Rocher. And in the wake of the decomposition of a �28,000 giant truffle bought at auction only to rot in the safe of a London restaurant while the chef was on holiday, I fear that's unlikely to change. Unless I can find a way of growing my own.

The good news is that -as with most things in life - the power of the internet and a cash injection mean I could be growing my own truffle in, oh, less than five years.