VANILLA STORIES SERIES

In the ensuing pages you will find cultivation information from our grower farms located in the following places of vanilla cultivation which becomes our supply backbones.

The cultivation and processing in vanilla happens in these farms. Shown are Farms located in (1) Niligiris Biosphere- Ooty,coonoor , silent valley area-Mannarkad, Gudalur areas (2) Shimoga in Karnataka known as shimoga vanilla farms (3) Trivandrum orchid belts , Trichur and palakkad sectors (4) Pollachi and mettupalayam of coimbatore districts.

In each segment the cultivation methods and micro climate are different and we will see a variety of techniques used for cultivation.

Also shown here are our grower farms located in different countries like Myanmar, Malaysia and Mauritius, Madagascar etc.

SHIMOGA VANILLA FARM A EXPLORATION

Located in the interior Kranataka near to the Jog falls is our place caled shimoga where we cultivate some part of vanilla plants and where our mother plants nursery is located.. In the Areca supari belt most of the arecanut trees are used as trainers for new vanilla and vanilla and areca have great affinity to each other.

In shimoga we grow our vanilla under supari - areca catechu trees or on them as shown here

Mostly vanilla vine support could be out of erythrina and glyricidia plants-trees

Vanilla under bloom in our farms

Vanilla blooms just after pollination

Vanilla pods after a few days of pollination. You can see the beans with the disheveled flowers at the end of the beans

Matured beans after 30 days of flowering

Stressed vanilla plants just back to growth with flowering blooms appearing all over.

Fully clothed with beans this vine looks overloaded.

Canopy of Areca trees where the vanilla is culitvated.

Typical undergrowth of the areca plantations where you can see the micro climate and light levels.

Some of the wild views inside the farms

You can see some cymbidium aloifolium plants growing naturally on the trees

Some of the wild cymbidiums on the trees in our farms

Closeup views of the cymbidum cluster

Areca, banana and orchids as intercrops

Areaca palm in bloom

Young vanilla shoot just emerging...