Vanilla planifolia – January 2015

Sometimes I really wonder how I get talked into doing things!  Anyway one of my really nice clients who run a retail nursery asked me to grow a Vanilla Orchid for them so that I could share my experiences, and I suppose curiosity got the better of me.  So after having the orchid sitting down in the propagation house for a few months, which it took as an opportunity to really grow, I finally mounted it onto a hardwood post.  Now I was scratching my head as to where to put it so that it could really grow well and I came up with the southern wall of my covered greenhouse, which has a couple of nice galvanised steel posts backed by a 30% shade cloth.  The southern wall of the greenhouse is 7 metres high, so plenty of room, and generally is a high humidity area with a stable temperature.  Also the placing of the post has the orchid getting irrigation and fertigation from 2 sprinklers, so the hardwood post will be wetted down each day the irrigation runs.  The orchid was potted into a 140mm squat pot, standard coco/perlite potting mix and some 12 month slow release fertiliser.

Now I explain why I really wonder why I’m doing this.  A quick look at OrchidWiz has the following description of the Vanilla planifolia growth habit.  It’s a monopodial epiphyte or vine that can grow up to 30 metres (100 feet) long, that produces the fleshy leaves and roots at each node.  Plants that grow into the rafters of a greenhouse can send out roots that reach the floor!  So I currently foresee this orchid loving it’s position and growing up and along the shade cloth to the roof of the greenhouse, maybe even spreading out to cover the southern wall.  So lets watch with interest, I’ll try to post regular updates about the Vanilla orchid and its efforts to take over the greenhouse.