Vanilla is the pod of an orchid plant that bears a scentless celadon-colored flower. Vanilla planifolia is one of the 20,000 varieties of orchid, the only one that bears anything edible (except for a few edible flowers like vandas).
The Hawaiian Vanilla Company starts the majority of the plants in its vineyards, by taking cuttings from mature plants. Planted in the perfect soil mixture the healthy keiki’s are then transplanted into containers and trained upwards until the time of flowering.
The key to the production of a vanilla pod or vanilla bean is pollination.
Vanilla Pollination
Buds form on the vine of the vanilla plant after three years (see photos), blooming only one day per year, for just a few short hours.
Vanilla has one natural pollinator, the Melipona Bee, which must be there exactly when that orchid orchid bud blossoms. The coincidental timing is virtually impossible, so the vanilla plant must be hand-pollinated in order to produce a vanilla bean pod.
To do this, orchid grower and vanilla expert Jim Reddekopp uses the tip of his fingernail, though some growers use a small hand-carved bamboo pick, about five inches long.
In the flower, under the pollen cap, there is a spec-like mass of pollen about the size of a sesame seed. Jim takes the pollen on his fingernail (or the tip of his wooden pick), and transfers it to the stigma of the flower.
“The more time you put into pollination, the better the chances of getting a pod,” explains Reddekopp. “Efforts equal return.”
If you don’t hand-pollinate, you won’t have any vanilla bean pods. Even if you do pollinate, the vanilla bean pods may not form.
But if the “marriage of vanilla” is successful, then vanilla bean pods will form and mature about eight to nine months later, looking like round green beans about six to seven inches long.
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