This year's vanilla harvest starting, and with the hot weather, moving fast. This year I'll harvest around 100 pods which I'll process into cured vanilla over the next few months.
It's also the time of year for "tipping", where you go through and break off the growing tips to hopefully induce flowering, which will start as early as October November. I'm going to be rooting and possibly even selling some vine material from the tipping events.
yeah I mean, it's definitely work, and a bit more technical than most other plants, but it really thrives when given the right conditions. its about a 18 month process to cured vanilla, so you end up with all phases going at the same time.
It's less like growing an orchid and more like drowning something between a houseplant and a succulent.
It takes around 3 - 4 years to get fully established vines. They really need daily if not twice daily watering, and it really helps to water the whole plant not just the ground.
How do you cure it?
So the first step is to either blanch of freeze the vanilla to stop the ripening process. If you dont do this the pods keep ripening, and split, which is not what you want.
I typically store pods in the freezer until I have enough to do a batch. Then its a slow process of curing them over several months.This involves a food dehydrator and a humidity source, because you actually don't want the pods to dry too quickly. I use a small plastic container with a lid I can adjust the opening on, and a barely moist paper towel in a food dehydrator on its coolest setting.
Oooo kinda like curing cannabis? Is there a specific humidity level you target each week/month?
huh i wonder like ryannathans, i use those silica gel packs that have specific humidities with cannabis and they are cheap nowadays. i wonder if those might help simplify your process.