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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.
Not enough love for the rich flavor of vanilla out there. Very sweet to grow your own.
It's a tragedy that the word we adopted for "plain and boring" is an incredibly complex flavor derived from a difficult to cultivate tropical vine.
Vanilla is great
It's also basically "dessert MSG". It can go in almost anything and definitely makes it better.
I've though the same. It's because vanilla and vanilla-like flavors are often defaults
They’re really on defaults in America because vanilla flavoring a byproduct of the petroleum industry so it’s very very cheap. In many other countries, “milk” flavor is the default.
Love a good vanilla ice cream
Me too, but only with a shit ton of chocolate syrup on it. I should just buy chocolate ice cream but I'm ashamed to say I'm addicted to the shitty flavor of Hershey's syrup.
I prefer that chocolate coating stuff that hardens when it gets cold. It’s fun!
Yeah that stuff is good too!
I don't otherwise like Hershey chocolate, but their chocolate syrup on good vanilla ice cream slaps.
Chocolate ice cream and vanilla with chocolate syrup are entirely different. You can buy vanilla with chocolate syrup swirls, but it's not as good as drenching it yourself.
Is there a lot of work required to grow vanilla or a certain environment?
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.
Would love to know that too!
Woah, that's so cool! Does it smell good? What agriculture zone are you in?
I'm in the tropica but a locally dry area. I have to irrigate to grow vanilla.
That's really neat, thanks for sharing! And a lot of work from farming to curing! No wonder vanilla is expensive!
https://vanillator.com/how-to-dry-vanilla-beans-master-the-curing-process/
I've learned a ridiculous amount due to this post. Thank you.
Green (vanilla) beans.
pretty vanilla tbqh