Time to read 6 minutes
I love vanilla. I have loved it ever since I found the high concentrate vanilla perfume oils they used to sell at the Body Shop in the nineties. Those perfume oils have been discontinued and replaced with a diluted alcohol-based eau du toilette. Meh.
These perfume oils were different. A little went a long way. I used to place a dab on my pulse point and everyone said I smelt of marshmallow – or play dough.
Two scents I loved. It was that kind of sickly sweet smell that lingered long after you had exited buses and classrooms. Others would later ask if I had been at a place at a particular time because they could smell me. Strange looking back, but it was my signature scent as an adolescent.
That was a lasting impression. So with my penchant for exotic and unusual plants, when I found out how the vanilla bean is grown, produced and harvested, I thought I would give it a go.
The Vanilla Planifolia is part of the orchid family and grows on long vines around tree trunks of other trees in hotspots like Tahiti, Madagascar, Uganda and Indonesia.
However, it is native to Mexico because that is home to the Melipona Bee, its main natural pollinator.
Vanilla is an expensive commodity because since there are no natural insect pollinators like the Melipona Bee in other regions globally, vanilla flowers have to be hand pollinated which is a very delicate process.
This is needed in order for each flower to produce seed pods…which is what we use for the vanilla flavourings we have all come to know and love.
Growing Vanilla vines
Vanilla orchids grow easily from cuttings as they produce aerial roots all along the vine so they can extract water from the moisture in the air- no waiting for plants to root in soil so plants, or rather, cuttings, are widely available online.
But because they are tropical plants, they need a warm and humid environment.
I bought my first vanilla orchid in the Spring of 2019. I had this idea of growing it as a vine up and around the inside of my greenhouse.
I had read that the vines need to get to about 75-100 feet in length before they are ready to bloom so I had no issues with settling in for the long haul.
Fooled however, by the temporary warmth of the British Spring and Summer seasons, I kind of forgot about the cold weather so my thriving summer orchid primed to grow around the inside of my greenhouse, was not looking so great come a few cool weeks in Autumn in my unheated greenhouse.
I brought it hastily into the house but this was not enough to save it. In fact I think the rapid change in temperature and humidity from the greenhouse to the house just sped up its inevitable demise.
Success – of sorts
I didn’t waste much time in procuring a replacement. Learning from my previous mistake, I decided to grow the vine in the house from the start.
I grow it in a small pot of shop-bought Orchid mix and first started growing it around a coir moss pole, simulating the way the vine grows around tree trunks, but the vine soon got too long for that so I began growing around the window using an old curtain wire and plant clips.
I’ve no idea how long the vine is now, but there are no signs of any vanilla flowers just yet. I have had the plant for about 3 years now and it has dark leaves and lots of healthy new growth.
I may try and take some cuttings so that I can experiment with growing in different conditions. Where it is now gets the benefit of the warm air from the radiator, a gentle mist of the vine every now and again from collected rain water when I am so inclined and I hydrate the growing medium in the pot every few weeks.
Once a month I feed with a weak solution of liquid orchid fertiliser.
Really successful hobby growers have commented that they woke up one morning and found a flower on the plant which they quickly set out to pollinate as you have a very small window in which to deposit the pollen.
I am just happy that my plant is growing where it is with little effort on my part, so at this point I can only but dream of a successful bloom. I will be sure to update you all should that happen any time soon.
Homemade Vanilla Extract
So I was watching the Barefoot Contessa a few years back, I love me some sassy Ina Garten. She walked into her pantry, the size of a bedroom, and pulled out a large jar of dark homemade vanilla extract. I thought to myself… wouldn’t be great to be able to pull out my own massive jar of homemade vanilla extract from my own pantry one day?
With the amount of baking I used to do back then, it made sense to try it and I’m so glad I did. And it’s very easy to do:
I bought 10 Tahiti vanilla pods from an online store called Vanilla Mart (you get much bigger, juicy pods from a specialist retailer, than the shrivelled up and expensive pods you get from the supermarket) and submerged them in a jar of vodka.
Store and forget about it for a few months. Give it a shake whenever you remember, and that’s it. Ina has had her jar of vanilla extract for about 20 years…she said she occasionally adds fresh pods to the mixture and tops it up with fresh vodka so I will do this too.
I’ve had my jar for about 4 years now. I use it in all my baking and dessert recipes:
As you can see, it has darkened in colour from my first pic which was taken a few months after I started it, 4 years before.
I should probably add some fresh pods as I’ve since used some to make vanilla sugar- a pod in a jar of granulated sugar for a sweet and aromatic flavour, delicious in coffees, or whatever you add sugar to.
When considering the price of vanilla pods and a bottle of decent brand vodka, it’s a pretty pricey outlay considering the cost of a small bottle of vanilla extract or essence that lasts for years, obviously depending on how much you bake, but the way I see it, it’s so easy to do and you know you have pure extract without additives for what I’m hoping will be a lifetime of baking.
Plus every time I lift the lid, that sweet and yummy intoxicating smell takes me back to my adolescence.
I may put in another batch of vanilla pods again…we’re going into February now so this would be a great time to put some pods into extra jars of vodka for Christmas gifts later this year!
Related: The Pantry: Pickling, Preserving, Storing and Uses
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