Anyone who manages to coax a lush bloom from a vanilla orchid and carries out the pollination manually will be rewarded with aromatic vanilla pods. The high demands of a Vanilla planifolia in terms of location and care cannot be easily met. These tips would like to contribute to successful private vanilla cultivation.
How to grow vanilla at home?
To grow vanilla successfully, you need a warm, humid greenhouse (25-28°C, 70-80% humidity). Maintain the plant by watering, spraying and fertilizing regularly. The flowers must be pollinated manually to obtain vanilla beans.
How to get a rich bloom from a vanilla orchid
The better it is to generate tropically warm and humid conditions at the location, the sooner the vanilla orchid can be motivated to bloom. Cultivated as a normal houseplant, you will hardly be able to grow vanilla yourself. It is better to offer the plant a place in a greenhouse that is warm all year round and flooded with light at 25-28 degrees Celsius and a humidity of 70-80 percent. This care sets the course for a rich harvest:
- Water the plant moderately with lime-free water, allowing the substrate to dry in the meantime
- Spray every 2-3 days with soft, filtered rainwater
- From March to September, fertilize every 2 weeks with a low-s alt orchid fertilizer (€6.00 on Amazon)
Tie up the tendrils regularly according to their growth rate. Each cut extends the waiting time for the first flower.
Manual Pollination Guide – How to Replace Bees and Hummingbirds
Gardeners who want to grow vanilla themselves should be careful during the flowering period. Within a flower cluster, a bud opens every day in the morning hours. If it is not pollinated now, it will die by evening and the hope of a vanilla bean is gone. This is how manual insemination works:
- Use a pointed stick, like a toothpick, to carefully slit the flower on one side
- The male and female sexual components are separated by a membrane in the hermaphrodite flower
- Pick up the yellowish pollen and transfer it to the pistil underneath
After pollination, it takes between 6 and 9 months until the former flower turns into a long, green vanilla pod.
Tip
TV chefs always cut open vanilla beans to scrape out the seeds. In fact, the pods contain more flavor than the contents they enclose. If your efforts in growing your own vanilla are successful, don't throw the capsule fruits away. Cut the peel into small pieces or grind it after drying in the oven to enjoy it as well as the pulp.