The Amazon Vanilla Project oper­ates in the San Martín dis­trict of north­ern Peru, pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion and sup­port for local farm­ers to grow vanil­la as a cash crop. The project is spon­sored by Sekut Vanilla Co. which pro­vides cur­ing and mar­ket­ing ser­vices to local farm­ers. Vanilla, like cacao, can be grown in a for­est set­ting with lit­tle change to the for­est itself, pro­vid­ing a fam­i­ly income while pre­serv­ing the nat­ur­al diver­si­ty of the Amazonian rain­for­est. Vanilla is grown under the for­est canopy, using small trees or trel­lis­es built from avail­able mate­ri­als in the for­est. Since vanil­la is an epi­phyte, its cul­ti­va­tion does not require fer­til­iz­ers or oth­er chem­i­cals. They are nat­u­ral­ly pest-resis­­tant grow­ing in a diver­si­fied set­ting in their home envi­ron­ment. … (read)

A few weeks ago, when I was in the vanillery doing a gen­er­al prune, I came across sev­er­al seedling deep under a dense sec­tion of vines. I took note of the loca­tion with the inten­tion of mov­ing the seedlings to pots so they can get a bit big­ger before I plant them out in the new vanillery.

Lisa and I spent a good part of the morn­ing out in the vanillery pol­li­nat­ing the flow­ers. We’ve been out there every morn­ing for sev­er­al weeks already, but today was dif­fer­ent. It seemed like the entire place was ablaze with the pale blos­soms: every­where you looked, flow­ers beck­oned as if to say “come taste my sweet nec­tar” but of course, we were not there for that. Pollinating a vanil­la flower takes del­i­ca­cy, a steady hand and a famil­iar­i­ty with the anato­my of the orchid’s bloom. After a while, you can do it quick­ly, which is good, because there are sev­er­al hun­dred of them ready to go today. There’s no wait­ing for these flow­ers, they’ll be closed for busi­ness by noon…it’s like… (read)