In total, it takes an average of 6 to 9 months to grow vanilla beans. How long does it take to grow vanilla beans? This is probably one of the reasons that it is the second most expensive spice in the world, second only to Saffron. There are no short cuts, nor any type of fast-track approach to growing, harvesting, and curing vanilla. If you want to learn more about how vanilla beans are pollinated by hand, please click this link. Add to this the complexity of needing to pollinate each flower within a 12-hour window, and you start to appreciate how and why it isn’t easy to grow and harvest vanilla. When you consider that each flower can open at any given time, and multiple flowers will open every day over a period of many weeks. However, pollination outside of Mexico is done by hand. Today, commercial vanilla is grown in the Caribbean, Comoro Islands, Hawaii, Madagascar, Indonesia, Tahiti, and Mexico. For many, many years, Mexico was the only location vanilla was found, and this is because its natural pollinator is the Melipona bee, a specific type of bee that is only found in Mexico. It is most commonly grown in subtropical and warm tropical climates across the globe, with origins from Mexico. The vanilla orchid, also known as Vanilla planifolia, is the only orchid in the world that produces edible fruit. At the point the vanilla beans start to bloom, those precious flowers will only stay open for a single day, and they need to be pollinated within no more than 12 hours of their blooming. The plant itself will not actually start to produce any vanilla bean pods for at least three years. Jennifer Reed is the Editorial Director of Naples Botanical Garden and a longtime Southwest Florida journalist.Whether you’re considering trying to plant and grow vanilla at home, or you simply want to learn more about how vanilla beans are grown and harvested across the globe, this article will tell you everything you need to know and answer any questions you might have.Ĭultivating vanilla is an incredibly labor-intensive process. According to him, the United States is the world’s largest importer of vanilla beans, but domestic production is scant.Īlthough the Garden is not directly contributing to his research, Nick and the professor are in contact and considering some collaborations down the road. There is, in fact, a push to make vanilla a commercial crop in Florida, led by University of Florida Assistant Professor Alan H. (Worldwide, there are about 108 species of vanilla orchids.) Eventually, the Horticulture Team hopes to supply Fogg Café with Garden-grown vanilla. They have slightly different flavor profiles. planifolia, and Nick will plant another variety, V. Now you know why a tiny bottle of extract fetches a big price! Vanilla is the world’s second-most expensive flavoring, behind saffron. The pods are harvested, exposed to heat to kill the plant cells placed in plastic bags and “sweated” at elevated temperatures for 24 to 48 hours exposed to sunlight a few hours a day for 12 to 15 days dried on trays for another 70 days and conditioned over one to two months. If the orchid is successfully pollinated, it’ll produce string bean-looking seed pods that grow for eight to nine months. “You’ll have one flower that opens up for a night, and then it closes down the next day, and that flower is done, and then the next day or a couple days later, there might be another flower that opens, and so there’s kind of a blooming period where you’re checking each day for flowers.” “They produce spikes that bloom sequentially,” explains Director of Collections Nick Ewy. (You can learn all about vanilla’s origins and migration here.). Vanilla planifolia, the most commonly cultivated variety, originates in Central America, and its pollinators weren’t exported along with the vines. It begins with hand pollinating the flowers each morning while they are blooming. Going from bloom to bean is a long and cumbersome process, which we’ll be able to show you more directly as the vines mature. Those flowers are where vanilla flavoring gets its start. They’re individual strands now, but they’ll fill in like a hedge, a thicket of green that will produce greenish yellow flowers each spring. In the Kapnick Caribbean Garden, behind the Pastore Caribbean House, you’ll find a set of trellises with slender Vanilla planifolia vines twisting through them. Our Horticulture and Operations teams have teamed up to bring these flowers, which produce the seed pods that make vanilla extract, down to eye level. Their vines snake up trees, blending into foliage, and their blooms often appear up high and out of sight. Vanilla orchids are a favorite talking point in the Garden, but not always the easiest show-and-tell.
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