Author Topic: Oh happy day!  (Read 507 times)

TNAndy

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Oh happy day!
« on: May 15, 2023, 12:53:01 AM »
After several years of nothing, my vanilla orchid is flowering!  I'm thrilled beyond measure!


I'm slowly getting the hang of hand pollination.  Some of the online how-to videos are misleading, if not wrong.  Unfortunately, right or wrong, hand pollination basically shreds the flower.  Happily, I'm pretty sure I've been successful with at least a few pods.

It's supposed to take several months for the pods to ripen.  And then comes processing, which also appears to be non-trivial.  Wish me luck!

turtle_hermit

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Re: Oh happy day!
« Reply #1 on: May 15, 2023, 07:38:14 AM »
That is awesome, how big is the plant?

TNAndy

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Re: Oh happy day!
« Reply #2 on: May 15, 2023, 12:12:53 PM »
I've got it in an 18 inch diameter pot.  There's a trellis that extends a bit over four feet above the soil.  The vine is wrapped up and down on the trellis at least a dozen times.  This includes the branches.

I think part of the reason it's taken this long to get flowers has to do with the amount of shade I had it in.  Previously, it got dappled sunlight at the most during any part of the day.  This past winter I put it in a location where it got direct early morning sun and then dappled shade in the afternoon.  It was under a T.R. Hovey papaya (to the South) and shaded in the afternoon by a coffee tree (to the West).

It grew five flower stalks (for lack of a better description).  I mostly missed the first one to flower and all of those flowers fell off.  I've had varied success with pollination since then.

Daintree

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Re: Oh happy day!
« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2023, 02:08:27 PM »
Yay!!!!!

brian

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Re: Oh happy day!
« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2023, 02:38:38 PM »
Very nice!   Every time I think of growing these I am reminded of hand pollination requirements and that the beans must be fermented before use, in addition to their already strict growing requirements.

I recently got to eat a whole, fermented, vanilla bean (the squishy inside anyway) and it was surprisingly nice and mild.  Tasted like white cake batter.

tropic_tester

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Re: Oh happy day!
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2023, 05:54:55 PM »
That's awesome!

Are you going to document as you go? I'd love to see the process and results.

Plantinyum

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Re: Oh happy day!
« Reply #6 on: May 16, 2023, 08:26:24 AM »
Good luck with your plant, as far as i know vanilla is a hard plant to force into blooming, outside its native range. Mine died due to cold, i have to buy a few more plants, now that i have better conditions for them to grow in.
Is the flower scented?

Epicatt2

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Re: Oh happy day!
« Reply #7 on: May 17, 2023, 12:48:27 AM »
To encourage Vanilla to bloom, once it reaches the top of whatever support that the vine is growing on and the vine grows a bit further so that begins to bend over under its own weight, the plant then produces certain hormones and auxins which tell the plant that since it cannot grow upwards any longer that it should initiate bloom spikes.

So, if your Vanilla vine is sturdy and healthy then in the above instance it should initiate one or more flower spikes.

OK — HTH

Paul M.
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