Today I finally got to try the vanilla that I planted in the ground almost 6 years ago. Even though the bottle date says otherwise, this vanilla was actually pollinated almost 3 years ago.

It takes almost 9 months after pollinating for a vanilla bean (technically a pod) to be mature enough to harvest. After harvesting, it takes almost another 6-9 months to ferment and then fully cure (depending on how traditional you want to be with the cure). After that, it takes an additional 9 months to a year of soaking in vodka to get a concentration high enough to be considered vanilla.

This being my first attempt at curing (or at least 2 years ago it was), I know I could have cured them longer and gotten more potency. We have a mother that this was decanted off off where we put 20 beans into 2 liters of vodka.

My partner and I did a testing today and I have to say it was magical. We compared it with the Costco brand Madagascar vanilla and it completely blew it away in terms of flavor... if the Costco vanilla was more concentrated (probably I didn't cure my beans fully).

It was much.. brighter and much more floral than the Costco vanilla. Also, and it wasn't until we went back and forth between the Costco and our vanilla to compare a few times, but because we now had this much higher quality vanilla to compare to, we actually started tasting off notes in the Costco vanilla. Which was interesting because we have noticed that before,but thought it was something else. After tasting ours, and comparing it, we could clearly taste a 'moldy' or forest floor flavor in the Costco that ours didn't have any hint of.

So just posting because this is an accomplishment almost 6+ years in the making. The number of beans harvested has gone up every year and this year we probably had 20x the number of flowers of previous years because our vines are finally becoming fully mature. We're hoping to have enough to actually sell some (just cured beans) starting maybe holiday season this year.

Thank you for engaging with this post.

(! necessary gratuitous vanilla flower and vine shots)

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[–] yakko@feddit.uk 46 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What an accomplishment! Very very cool. Are they hard to grow?

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 70 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Umm. It's hard to say because probably and they require a pretty niche environment. But they're also surprisingly hardy and pest resistant. They definitely come with their challenges because actually getting flowers is all about stress management.

Basically, if the plant is too cosy, it just won't flower. It will keeping kicking out vegetative growth and just go about it's merry way. But you'll not get flowers and no flower mean no can vanilla. However, the vines depend on getting their tendrils into the soil, and too much stress can cause their tendrils to die. But like any thing you put your self into, you figure out eventually.

Pollinating is tough in that it's a pretty precise surgical exercise. But you eventually get the hang of it. I maybe had 50% failure in pollinating this year? And you have to do it manually, every morning. And the flowers are only open for pollinating for a brief window of time. If you wait too late the flowers for that day close back up and die.

Curing is tedious because you have a whole daily routine of wrapping them up in a blanket, then unravelling them so they can rest in the sun, then wrapping them back up into their lil blankets again. At least that's the traditional approach but I honestly think it's a overkill.

So idk. You might be the better judge.

[–] guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip 27 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How the fuck do these survive in the wild

[–] stiephelando@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In the wild they are pollinated by bats I believe. But those bats only live in the native range of the vanilla orchid.

[–] InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They're bee pollinated.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

This is correct. In Mexico there is a specific species of orchid bee which pollinates them.

[–] InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

OP's write up makes them sound fussy, but it's not the full picture.

In their native habitat, surrounded in the natural conditions in which they and their pollinator evolved, these plants grow to enormous sizes and bloom just fine on a regular basis (usually annually or bi-annually).

In cultivation, their native pollinator doesn't exist (unless you happen to live in just the right geographic location with the correct climate). We're asking them flower prematurely on an accelerated schedule without giving them the exact conditions they'd have in nature. So we have to resort to tricks to get them to bloom (on our schedule) and having to do the hand pollination because the species that normally handles that work doesn't and can't live there.

OP's plants are, in a sense, small and young compared to what you'd find in nature. Basically like bonsai'd teenagers. Old enough to bloom, but not fully mature. Stunted in size because you don't really have the space for them to grow to their natural proportions. It's actually not all that unusual for flowering plant species to have one specific pollinator. Other critters may visit the flowers, but they don't have the right equipment or behavior to actually complete the pollination. Orchids are notorious for this. The entire family of plants have unique reproductive parts such that pollination is a little trickier than for something like a dandelion or a cactus. Also, Vanilla isn't just a single type of plant, there are numerous species of Vanilla. If I recall correctly, some species can even self-pollinate. It's just that those aren't the ones that are very good for the extract industry.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I wanted to engage with your comment because you've got some good stuff in here but maybe some things that require clarification.

In their native habitat, surrounded in the natural conditions in which they and their pollinator evolved, these plants grow to enormous sizes and bloom just fine on a regular basis (usually annually or bi-annually).

So this one is like, yes, somewhat, and maybe/ we don't entirely know. So I didn't mention this in the post but I've been doing the work of finding and collecting Vanilla from around the islands over this time. Its all either V. planifolia or V. tahitiensis if you believe there to be two species and that its not actually just two varieties/ an artifact of colonialism. But the basic story goes that Vanilla planifolia (or tahitiensis) was spread throughout the tropics during the early days of colonialism and while it only found production levels in Tahiti and Madagascar, its spread actually may have come earlier than the knowledge of how to pollinate it, or coincident with that knowledge.

So incidentally, if you know where to look, there are plantation ruins you can find where there are still vanilla plants growing. Likewise, there have probably been many more introduction events into our jungles since. So if you are paying attention, you'll find vanilla growing "in the wild" here. And I have a few cultivars I maintain that I've collected searching for these kinds of situations. One is 100% from an old plantation, and another is from an off the grid homestead a Mexican family had built up in the 1970's. Now both of those locations, the vanilla is growing totally unmanaged and has been for decades, if not the better part of a century. And yes, its enormous, it grows 30-60 meters up to the top of the canopy. However, thats not to say that much smaller vanilla plants aren't "fully mature". The plant doesn't need to reach these great heights to be considered fully mature. Its more similar to banana or ginger where you might have any where from 18-36 months to be considered a "mature" flowering node. But I think we really don't have the data on that to say either here nor there.

What I can say is that typically vanilla flower "on the down", which is that the basic pattern is for the plant to grow straight up; its very very apically dominant and only wants to grow "up". But once it gets to the top of the canopy it might get knocked down by wind or a branch falling, and you end up with a vine where the node-internode-node pattern gets inverted. And thats often where you see the flowering. In Mexico, I expect this to be related to high wind events/ hurricanes. Big wind event comes through, trashes a bunch of jungle, and the plants respond by going "oh fuck we gotta breed". But I wouldn't agree with the statement that these plants aren't "fully mature". Its just not a correct conception of the vanilla lifecycle, and a 6 ft fine could be just as fully mature as a 60 foot vine.

Now in terms of flowering, and I'm literally meeting with another researcher about this later this week, I also think this is a woefully understudied aspect of vanilla biology.

These are some figures for a publication I'm working on related to vanilla growth.

Being a scientist and a vanilla grower, my partner and I have taken care to do things in a manner where we can draw certain conclusions. The above is a growing degree day model we've developed for vanilla growth as an estimating tool to compare different climates. We'd like to do the same for flowering, but as far as we can tell, no one has done so yet. SO maybe stay tuned. We're meeting with a researcher this week from South florida who does publish on vanilla and we're looking to collaborate.

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[–] sleepmode@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Good grief and i am just happy when my peppers grow. That is some serious work.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

our tomatoes have had a few seasons where they didn't turn red and we've weighed the benefits of letting them return to the soil versus fried green tomatoes. fried green tomatoes has been winnining more and more lately

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 15 points 1 week ago

Floored. I'm fucking dead, you're a god. I can't even keep my lucky bamboo alive.

[–] Guenther_Amanita@slrpnk.net 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Hey, chemistry nerd here. Regarding extraction.

Many people here talk about ethanol (vodka, everclear), but with that, you either need to evaporate it to concentrate it, which kills a lot of flavor, or you need a high ratio of beans to solvent.

Another great option might be dimethylether (DME).
It is sometimes used for making cannabis concentrates for example, so you can get it specifically for extraction purposes on Amazon for example.
It's delivered in pressured cans, you fill a metal pipe with your beans, and blast it through.

It will be freezing cold (-30°C), and the solvent evaporates very quickly and without residues. It pulls out everything, but mostly flavor compounds and lipids.
That way, you can get a highly concentrated extract without alcohol.

Maybe that's a tip worth considering?

[–] LetThereBeNick@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

How sure can you be that DME bought on amazon will leave no residues? Are there food grade solvents anyone can buy?

[–] BreadOven@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Asking the important questions.

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[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Neat!

Would like to read more on all this, curious about your statement "need to evaporate to extract" - I've never done this, and my vanilla extract is far better than any store bought stuff (I've experimented with many different beans and alcohols).

[–] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 17 points 1 week ago

I envy you to have your own supply of vanilla. But after reading your comment about the difficulties: you earned that! Enjoy!

And I didn't know it takes that long to extract it. Is heating it up gently not a possibility to quicken the extraction?

[–] pigup@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You do good work dingdong

[–] Vex_Detrause@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

I would like a sniff of this tropical dingdong.

[–] Tempus_Fugit@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Awesome work! I know vanilla is notoriously difficult to cultivate so bravo! Thanks for the detailed write-up. I'd never have known.

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You know what, I have to say I'm sorry for the back and forth we had about The Watchmen. I know it's an odd callback but I've seen your comments around and with this post I've come to realize I was simply wrong in how I conducted myself.

Great job dude, I hope this is the first step in a long line of horticultural success :).

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

A nice bottle of vanilla extract and inspiring some personal growth. Not bad.

[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I may need some tralala with that

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

some dingdingdong?

[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Yes

[–] Mpatch@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have so much respect for your dedication and efforts to make this vanilla.

[–] Noodle07@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Truly the best aroma, little bean is blessed by the gods

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Its absolutely my favorite.

Around the holidays I make espresso with yuzu peel, and then I top it with vanilla whipped cream with vanilla caviar. My absolute favorite treat.

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[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

that's literally the name of my penis dude.. like wtf?

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[–] brem@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Today I Learned: A vanilla bean is called a pod & takes the same amount of time as a not late baby to be born. Apparently, you can leave these pod babies hangin' around for a bit, eventually (3 years, but probably longer for Xtra taste) you get a bit o' flavour that is very vivacious.

This is how human babies are made.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I assume you live someplace warmer?

[–] brem@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Actually, they are my neighborus and we live in 3 dimensional rifts, thank you very much.

The layers occasionally overlap and become one,👏 eventually. But don't take my word for it! Read weird books!!!!

[–] RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

There's a number of plants I'm surprised we manage to cultivate and have exist, and vanilla is one of them! Looks lovely!

[–] tuxiqae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Crazy! Care to share the resources you follwed throughout the journey or a guide that details everything you've accomplished?

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Crazy! Care to share the resources you follwed throughout the journey or a guide that details everything you’ve accomplished?

Yeah, absolutely. But I'm in a bit of a hiatus/ transition. I had a youtube channel going for a while, but i'm in the process of moving that over to peer-tube/ https://makertube.net/ , but I've not been great about prioritizing it. Just too much irl shit to deal with. But once I get it all done and done, makertube is where I'll post videos and interviews.

[–] Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 4 points 1 week ago

This is incredible, I dream of fresh vanilla (I've made it from cured beans and it's delicious! Can only imagine curing from scratch!)

Can you elaborate on your growing environment? Is it indoors or outdoors? Do you live somewhere tropical or are you able to simulate with a greenhouse?

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Would everclear work better than vodka for extraction?

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 points 1 week ago

I've made it with both high alcohol concentration (everclear) and regular strength vodka - in my opinion there's no difference.

There's also no difference after 3 months. I've tasted at 30/60/90 days and 3/6/9 months (many times, many different beans, different alcohols). 90 days is the sweet spot, beyond that it's no more complex, no stronger vanilla flavor.

I'm sure someone's going to disagree - this is my opinion based on about 15 years of on-going vanilla making/testing.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Amazing! Would an ultrasonic agitator, fine blending or automated stirrer accelerate dissolving the vanillin or whatever alkaloids are needed into alcohol? What about more pure ethanol with less water?

Love the work

[–] Afaithfulnihilist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago (6 children)

You need a balance of water and alcohol. I use 50/50 everclear and distilled water.

You can buy the beans in bulk on Amazon, it's not even in the same league as getting fresh beans that haven't been shipped but it's light years beyond anything you're going to buy that comes in a bottle.

You can buy a pound of beans for like $100 and with that You can spoil yourself rotten for the rest of your days or start churning out amazing gifts in 9 months.

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[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

10/10 name

[–] flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Wow, this is amazing!!

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

So cool. Well done. I'm realizing how little I know about vanilla. Have I ever even truly tasted the real flavor!?

[–] Flaco_waton@feddit.cl 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is awesome, good work. What climate zone are you in?

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[–] Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Congrats. Sounds deliceous.

[–] enshu@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Well done!

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

~~what did you cure it in~~? edit i can read closer duh we have some in some local vodka (which you can get in the brewery canned as a lemon drop and fuck yes) and i had to remind my wife (okay it was my me guilty as charged) that it was cooking vodka, not drinking vodka.

fuck now i want more of that vanilla. maybe it's just the vodka the lemon drops are really good too. unfortunately they just got bought out by a not local place so i'm not 100% sure if they are still a good place anymore, but i've been checking in and if they are still a good place to work i kind of want to sent you a few liters

edit: i turned soil (added some master start and a bag of $10 planter mix to some raised beds) and planted basils and dill yesterday. the basils will likely be dead by week's end, either by overeating or mint takeover. i'm a really bad gardener but i have a textbook written by a friend in the... 90s probably? maybe 70s. i don't know. if i follow the textbook i get to blame my friend when my garden catches fire for no reason.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2 points 1 week ago

Impressive!

I'd love to grow my own - just not today.

And it really doesn't take 9 months to make extract. 3 months at most - I make my own every year (use a LOT of it). It's faster with a higher concentration of alcohol, but I've found even standard strength works fine.

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