How do we add flair and flavor to the food we eat? A typical answer to this question is adding spices with a specific flavor profile. When it comes to desserts, vanilla often takes the cake as some describe it as having a similar taste to marshmallows.
Although vanilla extract or flavoring is readily available in markets, authentic vanilla extract from pods is the second most expensive spice in the world. Besides a labor-intensive production, the vanilla flower only blooms for 24 hours, which requires manual and immediate pollination to produce its highly sought out pods.
Despite these conditions, Jay Cabutihan, a 53-year-old self-made businessman from Rizal, took on the challenge and has been successfully producing vanilla on his urban farm, which he began in 2017.
“We owned a farm at one point years before hence my interest in farming and crops. So, I figured that we needed a new crop to grow here in the Philippines,” he told Manila Standard Agriculture.
He and his wife work as florists in their flower shop business, while Cabutihan engages in vanilla tissue culture and larvae rearing of giant freshwater prawns. Yet the primary and sole reason he began cultivating vanilla was to help less fortunate local farmers increase their income with only a tiny plot of land.
In his case, Cabutihan transformed a portion of their home into a garden where he cultivates vanilla plants after he acquired the seeds from his friend in Mindanao.
Aside from the noble cause, there are many rewards to reap from growing vanilla. Although Cabutihan shares the plants are easy to grow, it also comes with challenges because vanilla plants are extremely sensitive.
One of the things vanilla farmers need to remember is that the plants don’t fair well against waterlogging. It also needs around 50 to 70 percent shade to grow lushly. Too much sunlight on the plants can cause sunburn on their leaves, which could greatly affect the plant production and quality of the vanilla pods.
When growing vanilla from cuttings, Cabutihan advises people to use coco peat, carbonized rice hull, and vermicast as the soil medium as it’s rich in nutrients. Water using a sprayer thrice a week.
“In the first year, the harvest should be approximately 500 grams. In the second year, one kilo, and in the third year, it increased to 1.5 kilos. There will be an increase in production for up to seven years. After seven years, it will likely decline, so farmers should start replanting cuttings in the fourth year for continuous harvest,” the urban farmer advised.
Since the vanilla flower only blooms for 24 hours, Cabutihan painstakingly pollinates it by hand before it expires. The best time to do it is within six hours after the vanilla orchid first bloomed. When the pods develop, it takes roughly six to seven months to mature and be ready for harvesting.
Good quality vanilla pods, or beans, can range between P200 to P250 per piece. But Cabutihan doesn’t want anything to go to waste. He turns beans not entirely up to par with market standards into vanilla extract.
“Fermenting process can take about two months. Quality-wise, it would be better to age the extract for eight months to ferment very well,” he shared.
With seven years as a vanilla farmer, Cabutihan acknowledges that he’s still far from becoming an expert in the topic. Like with other ventures, he knows there always be challenges along the way, but learning is a constant process that helps him and other farmers improve at what they do.
“The only word of advice I can give is to plant right and be patient–harvest time will follow, and in time, you will reap what you sow,” Cabutihan said.
