First Time Vanilla Blooms
 

I thought I'd die of old age before this chid bloomed, but it finally happened and it only took 4 years. Enjoy! Vanilla planifolia - Orchid Board Galleries

Beautiful bloom! Well worth the patience. :) I hope that this is the first of many blooms for this plants. How long did the plant have to get before flowering? I've heard that they need to be quite large.

I have the same question as Camille. How big is the plant? I hope one day I can have a green house or live somewhere where I can grow this orchid species. Beautiful plant! Congrats on the blooming!

Great growing!

Its beautiful! There seems to be lots of contradicting advice about the size or length before they bloom. I've started to collect vanilla's and wind them around bent bamboo that I wrap with coir. Im keeping them a bit cooler than they like to keep them slow growing until we move soon to somewhere with more room.

Great growing!!!!

Congrats on the bloom! Your patience paid off! How large is your plant as I've heard several different stories too on how big they need to be to bloom.

Judi

Thanks everyone. Gosh, I really don't know how long the vines are, but my best estimate would be over 50 ft. I know they grew at least 20 feet last Summer. Here's a photo taken last month.

Woo hoo! Congrats! It's a gorgeous bloom!

:yikes: holy smokes!

That's enormous!! :faint: Reminds me why I don't have space for a Vanilla plant...

Good work!

Ramon:D

It looks great! Very envious!
How old is your plant? On plantations the vines start flowering anywhere between 2 to 4 years after they are planted as cuttings usually about 3 feet long. The tips are also pinched out about 10 months before the flowering season to encourage blooming.
How many inflorescences has it had?

:blushing: I'm blind ! - I see it took 4 years!

Currently there are six clusters of buds in various stages of development. It was an 8" cutting when I got it. It's always grown rapidly but the bigger it gets the faster it grows, especially over the last 2 years. I've never taken cuttings and to my knowledge she's only branched once.

Great Growing! Congratulations very nice reward for all that patience! Although I still think that's rapid growing considering the size that your plant is now compared to 8" !!

Thank you. Yeah, she's a fast grower. She really takes off as our rainy season kicks in. She's already grown about 4' this Spring in spite of it being dry. When the rains kick in she really breaks loose with vine growth and aerial roots. Last year some of her aerial roots grew to over 2' in length. :shock: I didn't realize they could get that long.

Amazing. I would for sure don't have room for that!! I greatly admire your lath house

Thank you. If my vanilla had "her way" she'd be climbing all over the shadehouse.:)

I'm sure she would!! I have always loved shade houses/lath houses!! I simply Don't have a place to build one!! I grow on my deck under a tree in the summer it works ok but takes up some space on the deck that we could be using for people lol. Again,Nice work on your vanilla orchid!!

Beautiful! With green sepals are you sure it is a planifolia? I'm no expert I'm just asking. I bought one as a planifolia but after blooming and pollinating it turns out it's pompona. This is too pretty to be pompona. I had a pompona bloom at 6 ft long. Not sure what I did different to it to get it to bloom. Seen pics of commercial plants blooming at 6ft though.

WOW! This is amazing ! You are the first person I know who managed to bloom this plant...I have a couple of friends who managed to keep on killing their plant...year after year and yet they never quit

That's a nice healthy looking plant! Many years ago I had a vanilla in my office window where I was working at the time. I always wondered what the blooms would look like.

Thanks, guys. I think my luck has more to do with climate and air circulation than anything else. I still don't have the lighting just right because the bud clusters formed only on the shadiest sides of the plant. If it was grown under a canopy of trees it would do much better. Humidity and temperature are important factors too. In spite of her size she's been kept potted so she can be brought indoors when the temperatures drop below 45. Her pot is weighted with river rock for wind stability making her quite heavy. This winter I had to use a dolly to transport her. Next winter she might be too large to move. Her potting medium is African Violate mix.

I also found the shade light requirement to be true for this particular species(planifolia and pompona). I moved mine to the west side of my green house and they took off and bloomed. Too much sun on the east side. I read that there were vanillas that liked high light but haven't seen this yet. You guys know anything about that?

Most of the literature I can find on Vanillas in the wild all seem to indicate that they like to grow in indirect bright light but under shade. My V. planifolia variegata grows in the North side of my house about a foot from a large window - I thought I was being mean and that it might like some morning sun so I moved it slightly just so that it would get some weak sun for about half an hour early in the morning. Needless to say it developed a deep bronze burn on a couple of it leaves so I very promptly moved it back.

Beautiful. I have a vanilla pompona that's bloomed but not a planifolia. Still working on that. I had a pompona bloom that was only 6ft long. not sure what the secret was. It was getting more light than the very large mother plant. I had others burn though.

Planifolia is supposed to be big enough at 3-4 years or 3-5 meters. But the light is the main issues, I have one for nearly 30 years, after all its adventures is about 5 meters now (thriving since last repotting). But it never flowered as I did not know the light trick.

It needs half-shade under the tropics, can do with a short period with a bit more light there. But in Europe, north of the US, it'll need direct sun to flower.

Got mine for 2 week on a west window, with sun directly from 3-4 in the afternoon, that's the best I can do, we'll see.

Congrats junebug, next step: transforming the beads.

Thanks to everyone for all the nice comments. My vanilla's bloom cycle ended about 3 weeks ago. Then she began branching. Last year there were only 2 branches and this year there are 7. The new growths are growing at the rate of about 10 inches a week.

Same here… And some say orchids are slow, NOT Vanillas ;)