 Hello and welcome to another Larry's Orchid Growing Guide. Today we're going to be talking specifically about vanilla orchids. It's a very commonly requested video because it's awesome to grow for all varieties of growers. If you're even an orchid collector or not, it's a great and unique addition to your collection or just a plant to grow in your house. It is an orchid so orchid lovers do love them but I will start off by saying that it is a long-term investment. If you're hoping to give vanilla beans within a year or two, it isn't going to happen. However, it's still a very beautiful plant so that's just an added bonus in my opinion. So first off we're going to talk about just some basic care type things. So watering is extremely crucial. When you have your vanilla orchid here, you're going to notice that it's not in a bark like a typical orchid. It's in a spagnum moss. And spagnum moss will hold on and moist your lot more. That indicates that it likes to be a little bit more damp than most orchids. So make sure that it doesn't dry out all that much because of the fact that it prefers to be a little more on the damp side. Now soaking wet is another thing. I wouldn't make it soaking wet but damp, yes, I would make sure it stays damp. Now another thing is the growing conditions here. It is a vine and that's what makes it very unique is it's a vining orchid. And so here we have this beautiful, beautiful specimen plant. And this is about a year and a half to two years old so they do grow very fast. They're very fast growing orchids. However, there's two ways you can grow them. You can put them on a charles like this one and there's two ways of thinking. If you have high humidity conditions like we do in the warehouse, this will do just fine because it has aerial roots. And aerial roots are roots that can absorb the moisture in the air just from giving it high humidity. However, if you don't have that, you're going to want to give it something to cling onto. The aerial roots will cling onto spagna moss and you can take a pole or rod and you can wrap spagna moss around that and then take some floral twine, floral metal wire and wrap that around the pole to secure the spagna moss to that. And then you simply can grow the vining orchid right up that and then you just missed the spagna moss pole and that is what will keep it moist and keep the orchid growing straight up in a vine pattern. However, this is absolutely fine growing the way it is as well if you have the right conditions for it. Now another thing that is unique is you can trim these if you'd like, if it's getting too tall and you know, too out of control, you can trim the vines and they won't mind whatsoever. So it's very versatile for your growing conditions. If you don't have, you know, it's 20 foot ceiling, like I don't know many people that do, you can trim them so it stays nice and compact for you and it's still a very beautiful plant. Now we're going to talk about fertilizing. Fertilizing is extremely important when you're dealing with these type of orchids. When you fertilize, they are not picky about their fertilizer which makes it great for beginners and it makes it great for people that don't like hassle because they'll pretty much take any type of fertilizer. However, they don't like a strong direct fertilizer because of the fact that they're in spagna moss, their roots are going to come in far more contact with the fertilizer that they normally would with any other orchid in like a bark mixture. And when the fertilizer is close to the roots like that, you can burn them very easily. So make sure it's diluted but it doesn't matter what type of fertilizer it is which makes it nice. Now we're going to talk about really quickly sunlight, temperature and humidity. Like we talked about with the growing conditions here, they like it very humid. They like it as humid as you can give it to them. However, they can do just fine about 60% humidity as well. We always, you know, sometimes we'll give them a misting because that also helps to kind of replicate that humid environment if you can't get it up to 70 or 80% humidity. But like I said, 60% is going to do just fine and they'll respond to a misting pretty well as well. Now when it comes to sunlight, you want to give them strong sun. They like strong sun similar to Cadillac I would say. It would be probably my best comparison if you're familiar with growing Cadillac orchids. They like about 70% sunlight. So put them in a nice south-facing window. But put some blinds or a shade over because again, they don't like that strong, strong sun. You'll notice that they'll start to burn. So there's some things to take into consideration when growing your vanilla orchids here. And then also the last thing is temperature. They can handle some variances but they like to obviously warmer. They're tropical. So when it comes to tropical plants, what do we always say? Warmers better. And warmer is always better when growing your tropicals. So 80 degrees is good. 85 degrees is probably optimal I would say. So anywhere in that variance, however they can grow in about 70 degrees would be the lower end of where I would want to be, where I'd feel comfortable growing a vanilla orchid just because they grow better in that humid, hot environment. But they are versatile. So they're not going to be dying on you if you have it in less of conditions. So I would suggest giving them a try. Again, we do have these three available on Larry'sOrchids.com. Hopefully this growing guide helped. Hopefully you learned something new. And I would seriously suggest giving them a try. They're very fun and unique as well. And it's just a great conversation piece. When you have them growing in your home, someone walks by and says, hey, what is that? You can now tell them you're growing vanilla. So it's something that not many people can try. So hopefully you all enjoyed this episode. If you did, please click the subscribe button. That always helps us know who we're reaching. And it also helps you stay up to date on all the other cool tips and tricks and growing guides and just fun things we're doing on this channel. And also if you have any friends that are thinking about growing vanilla's or maybe you might be interested in growing vanilla's, share this video with them because I think they'll enjoy it as well. And as always, this is Luke from Larry'sOrchids. Thank you for making us the number one stop shop for all your orchid and tropical needs. Thanks. Bye.