The Tropical Fruit Forum

Another flower bud from Flower 1's cutting opened a day later, even though it was a day after the cutting was taken.








Flower 3 and 4 - Harvested from one vine growing in very close proximity to the vines of flowers 1 and 2. For all I know these could all be the same plant, because they travel along the forest floor until they find a suitable tree. The part along the ground could have broken off and decomposed long ago.












Foliage of the vine of flowers 3/4

Today I realized that I had overlooked an old pod still clinging to a piece of vine from the plant that produced flowers 3 and 4. From the looks of it, the pod had probably been hanging up there for about a year. Here's what that pod looks like compared to some poorly cured pompona pods that someone gave us. I picked it and gave it a sniff. No real tell tale vanilla smell, which is probably not much of a surprise since you can see mold starting to form on the pod. The pod's aroma, although faint, reminded me of the wood smell from a good sauna.

A lot of interesting stuff here and parallels. I’ve read about fermenting vanilla and tried with some wild v. palmarum without much success. Seems like a nightmare. In Brazil we have a severe labor shortage so it’s off the table. One thing I’ve learned and tried is basically gathering wild vanilla that splits or is sub optimal, lazily semi fermenting it and drying it and then creating extract in alcohol. It worked well for personal use!

Here I’m seeing people planting on cacao trees supposedly without messing with the cacao.

Pamplona has a supply chain and high price, but hand pollination increases productivity drastically and that with fermentation seems super laborious. Most of the other species have never been tested even for culinary appeal. Embrapa (Brazilian usda) is doing some preliminary tests. We’ve found vanilla palmarum, phaentha, and cribbiana here and lots others unidentified.

In Costa Rica you find enough workers I take it and ones who don’t trash the plants? Id love to ferment vanilla if I could find a way to make it work.

Do you have photos of your cribbiana by any chance? The photos available on the internet seem to all be from central america.

We have loads of rangpur lime and can’t sell it! No one seems interested except every person in the cities struggling to find it.

Agroventuresperu come visit anytime. We have space. I’d love to visit as well but we’re prisoners on the farm with animals and the year round harvests.

Growing up in Santa Barbara, California, we used to have one of those lime trees in our yard. The best thing about that tree was when someone would visit us and pick and eat one without permission, thinking they were tangerines.

I would love to take a trip and visit. Never been to Brazil. I'm in the same boat as you, though. We recently started with cows, so they can help us with the land maintenance since it's cost prohibitive and difficult to find workers to help weedwack everything. We're doing rotational grazing, and I'm finding that it's more work than I had anticipated. Feels like if we're not getting ahead, we're falling behind. Haven't had much to harvests so far, but it looks like the Annona squamosa trees are going to hit hard this year. Any ideas for a value-added product with the Annona pulp? We've found ice cream isn't a good idea, because the local milk yields cream with some off flavor and inconsistent texture. Not sure why, but I heard a cheese seller say they found the same with cows here in the jungle compared to cows from the higher altitude mountain regions. I'm not a fan of the cheeses they sell here in the jungle. It's true that the cheeses that come from the mountains have much better flavor.

Found another vine in a completely different area of our property. This was the last pod on that vine. Was hard to separate from the plant. Still had a faint vanilla smell even though it had been hanging in the open air for who knows how many months. I'll probably cultivate this plant, and maybe the others too. The only samples of pompona pods I've been introduced to locally didn't really have much aroma at all. At least this wild plant that had been hanging in the open air for who knows how long still had a faint and agreeable aroma. According to a local friend, I just haven't been exposed to "properly cured" samples of pompona. But I'm not willing to take the risk of paying the exorbitant prices to get some pompona that smells mediocre at best.

Wild Vanilla from our forest. Still not sure what species these are. It looks like only one or two species. Probably cribbiana or hostmannii. If anyone here can help me ID these, I would love it!

First some habitat photos:







Left to right - Flower 1 and Flower 2. Flowers from different vines growing in very close proximity.



Flower 2 (same specimen as above photo)









These flowers have a pretty strong aroma. Reminded me of Brugmansia flowers.

Besides glyrcidium I also like appropriate erythrina. It’s another nitrogen fixer that can be established by sticking a stick in the ground.
Also, what I saw in Mexico is using citrus. Lime or orange have clean trunks, give some shade and, unlike cacao, the fruit is borne more terminally on the branches so the fruits don’t get in the way of each other. Limes is a good crop for small scale farming. Bars will buy hundreds of them.
Peter

What is the species of Gliricidium? I'm not sure I've seen that here.

Same here about the labor shortage. I've seen how things went from lots of eager, available workers at the beginning of 2020, to basically having to beg anyone to show up nowadays. Hiring someone with their weedwacker to work for a day has doubled in price in that time frame. Can maybe get WWOOFers to help with more easy tasks. I've debated about advertizing for them here, as it's mostly just rough work. Don't think it's a good idea to throw the volunteers out into brush taller than them with a weedwacker with metal blades.

Planting on cacao sounds like a good idea. Here, we're going to plant onto many different species, so some cuttings will definitely perform better than others.

There are some wild vines that flowered recently in our forest. Not sure what species they are, but we took some photos from far below and some folks think they're pompona. I've been reading that the flowers are quite morphologically distint from one locale to the next when it comes to pompona. I've been reading about the genus in Peru, and it's one of those topics where I call into question the taxonomy. Like maybe there's actually different species that haven't been splitted yet or perhaps other species are variable to the extent that they might almost look identical to certain pompona flowers. Maybe it's one of those cases where there's only one PHD in the entire country who could identify a species and say that it's a pompona with a different-looking flower instead of a completely different species.

What I mean by this is that maybe no one really knows. I started reading a book, El Genero Vanilla en el Peru, and already I'm seeing some major contradictions, mostly having to do with the different subspecies, the Regiones where they grow, as well as their altitude. Seems to conflict with the common knowledge that pompona is native to this area {the Alto Mayo [Selva alta norte], part of the San Martin [SM] region}, which is a valley that ranges in elevation from about 800-1000m. Apparently there are two susbspecies, but it still doesn't add up. According to page 35 and 36, neither should be found in our area, even though lots of people have found them growing wild here, and cuttings have been taken from the wild specimens to use in the commercial production in our area. https://fondoeditorial.cientifica.edu.pe/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/el-genero-vanilla-avance-de-lectura.pdf

I also came across one study that shows significant morphological differences from a fairly small geographical range in Mexico. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/15/11/1125

And here's a photo showing the variability from four different countries: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/anilla-pompona-different-flowering-specimens-showing-variations-across-its-geographical_fig29_347787100

It sounds like one of those things you can't really put your finger on. Just wondering how worthwhile it would be to harvest our own wild cuttings based on some experienced people opining that it's Pompona. If there's that much variability amongst the flowers, then fruit quality probably also varies widely.

It's mostly about weather, climate, species, variety, genetics and management. Apparently I missed the memo that production has nothing to do with the mineral content of soils, their properties and management.

Hi
So yes I am growing vanilla as a business but my model might be kind of unique. I have dabbled in vanilla for more than 30 years. I also grow black pepper commercially as well as several different tropical fruits. Many of those fruits were introduced by us to Costa Rica. As far as I can tell we introduced salak, terap, champedek, and several others. We commercially grow mangosteen and durian. These crops and some others are all successful on a small scale.
Vanilla is a diversification like most of the rest of this stuff. We do t rely on a single crop. When you said you were looking a seed propagation since you envisioned planting 1000 plants I was thinking that’s quite ambitious. I have less than 150 plants.
I also grow cacao and make fine chocolate. I mention the chocolate because a couple of years ago that was a better business than it is now. I try to be versatile, have several irons in the fire. But not too big. If I sold 1kg of vanilla per month I’d be happy along with the other stuff I do.
I dehydrate fruit as well. So, dried fruit, black pepper, and vanilla store well which is a plus over hustling to find buyers for durian that will spoil quickly.
But to get back to vanilla; it is work and we grow it on living fence posts spaced 2m apart. Within 3 years it should flower. The flowers are easy to find and take less than a minute to pollinate. Depending on how much you harvest it shouldn’t take so much time out of your day to attend to the routine of curing the vanilla. It is kind of a big deal but the vanilla is worth a lot of money. I recommend to anyone to start small, take your time, and see how it works out. Twenty to fifty plants is something to start with. Give it a good shot. Don’t cut corners or run cattle with vanilla. 
Peter

What are the living fence posts? Erythrina? We planted one tree every 3.2m in tresbolillo, so the plan would be to designate areas that can be easily accessed and tended with manual maintenance, using machetes, sickles and weedwackers (areas free of livestock), and put one or two vanilla plants at the base of each tree in those areas. Then tie jute ropes from tree to tree, add foliar spray with duck pond water and maybe some sort of foliar product from the agro store with zero nitrogen and high K2SO4 to encourage good fruiting.

What would be the preferred fruit trees to provide shade and support? Can you produce 1kg of vanilla beans per month with 150 plants? Is that a reasonable expectation? I like the sound of your operation. Smart not to put all your eggs in one basket. We are very early stages here, but want to do something similar. It's been a major uphill battle (no pun intended) with the steep landscape and poor access. The topography was something I knew would be challenging before we started, but I never expected the soil to be so poor. Luckily about a third of the property is moderate to high fertility. The other 2/3 is low to extremely low fertility with plenty of Al3+ toxicity. We planted about 40 different tree species total, and now we're brainstorming value-added enterprises. We're close to a very touristy spot, so we're working on making our own farm fresh ice creams. Do you ever feel like you spread yourself too thin though, with all the different enterprises/crops?

Do you mind if I PM you different questions about the business aspect of vanilla and perhaps other stuff?

I generally have good soil but am growing about 100 vanilla plants mostly where there is some problem with the soil. They’re basically grown in a mulch medium on top of the soil.
But why grow pampona?  Most people grow plenifolia.  We are growing mostly a hybrid of plenifolia and pampona that is basically two thirds plenifolia.  Pamplona is very niche market. I’d be nervous about that.
The vanilla price is not like pataya. There is an international market price which is always going to affect the local price in a very big way.
We are getting about $4 per bean right now.  You say you are too busy with other stuff to have the time to properly cure the vanilla properly.  Just what are you doing that it’s not worth it to spend time curing vanilla?
I feel strongly that trying to combine cattle with vanilla is not a very good idea.
Suerte!
Peter

Another reason it's not like pitajaya is because one is a fresh fruit and the other is a spice. Fresh fruit is something that's culturally appreciated by locals whereas the spice is something that most people here would be perfectly content to just use vanilla extract from the store. The pitajayas had local demand from Peruvians. As you say, the Vanilla is more of an international market.

"Why not planifolia?"

That's the one being grown everywhere. You have to compete with the likes of Madagascar. Pompona, here, is regarded as being the native Vanilla, and it seems that's the one being promoted in our area. Although we also bought a few cuttings of planifolia.

I'm not looking for more things for the to-do list. Already pretty much single-handedly taking care of over 10,000 trees across ten hectares of extremely steep Andean hill country, (blink and the weeds get out of hand) so I'm not exactly looking for more horticultural activities. Though sometimes I'm guilty of getting a little overzealous and propagating things, I often regret starting projects like that as it just becomes another thing to do, and more plants (not less) doesn't sound very nice to me at this point in my life. I grew up in the suburbs, and my family does not have a farming/ranching background, so I was really just a young, clueless, "permaculture" guy going into this, naively thinking that somehow some sort of permaculture magic would cause everything to pretty much take care of itself. I definitely bit off more than I could chew, so now I live with the consequences.

Are you growing Vanilla as a business? What do you have to do post-harvest? The guy here explained that you have to wrap it up, sweat it, lay it out in the sun, etc. etc. over and over again. Sounded pretty annoying actually. Like it's not something you can just stick in a food dehydrator for a day or two and be done with it. Maybe that's just a bunch of marketing gobbledeegoook though? How about the hand pollinating? Watching the flowers like a hawk every single day to not miss a single one? Could be very finnicky, tedious work to hand pollinate once the flowers open? Did you have to build a trellis/structure? How did you do that? Is there a better way to incorporate it into an existing fruit orchard? I.e. What do you think of the idea of just tying some jute rope from tree to tree without having to install separate posts or trellises?

Do you make a net income from selling Vanilla? If so, how much are you paying yourself for your time and labor in the calculation?

I'm interested. Don't let all that discourage you from convincing me otherwise. I'd really like to be influenced and hear how the Vanilla is the one thing that I should concentrate on more than anything else, and how it could provide me with more income than any other farm enterprise that I could be doing. I appreciate your views on the topic.

I bought a piece of Atemoya fruit from Robert is Here fruit stand in Homestead. The piece of fruit was in a fridge when I bought it. I saved the seeds and planted them about two weeks later. That was in May, here we are Oct 1, and none of the seeds have sprouted.

From the same time frame, I also planted seeds of Sapodilla, Canistel, Star Apple, Katuk, and Pitomba. Many of those seeds sprouted months ago, but nothing from the Atemoya seeds. Is Atemoya a sterile hybrid? Did the refrigeration kill the seeds? Maybe the fruit was irradiated?

Is it safe to say that those seeds will not sprout this late? I'd like to use the pots and soil for something else.

But complaining about a ~2 week delay is nothing and needs some perspective over what's going on in the background.

2 weeks and no communication. Personally, at this point I'd assume they're out of stock and are fighting silverfish seeing what they can throw together from the Y2K bin that hasn't yet turned into a puff of dust.