Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
Peanuts are an interesting and rewarding crop to grow on a small scale. Growers who offer farm tours will enjoy showing how the flowers “peg down” to develop the nuts under the soil, those concerned about local food security will appreciate peanuts as a source of locally grown protein and oil; and everyone can enjoy the challenge of trying a new crop.
Peanut Crop Requirements
Peanuts need a frost-free period of at least 110 days. Virginia type peanuts require 2,520–2,570 growing degree days (GDDs) above a base of 57°F (14°C). Consult Weatherspark.com to make sure you have enough frost-free days. One way of tracking GDDs is on the Climate Smart Farming Growing Degree Day Calculator website from Cornell, which can show you the season to date and the 6-day forecast, as well as the 15-year average and the 30-year “normal” for your location.
Peanuts like warm or hot conditions, with adequate but not excessive water. If you can provide these conditions, as well as relatively light, loose, free-draining soil and attention to controlling weeds, then I encourage you to give peanuts a try. We plant our peanuts in a raised bed, which helps provide looser soil. They can be hard to lift from heavy soil.
We get our seed peanuts from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Twenty-eight grams will plant about 25′ (7.6 m). Prepare a bed or row ahead of time. You can warm the soil by covering it with rowcover or plastic for 3–7 days before planting. The pH should be 5–6, and if calcium levels are at all low, add gypsum — the start of blooming is the latest time you can effectively do this. Calcium deficiency results in unfilled pods and low yields (see the “Peanut Production Practices” chapter in the annual Peanut Information publication from NCSU Extension for more on soil nutrient requirements). The NCSU website also has an interesting “Peanut Risk Tool and Field Log.”
Those thinking of pre-sprouting or transplanting peanuts should be alerted to a peculiarity of the crop: they do not germinate well without soil. Exactly what peanuts need from the soil remains a bit of a mystery. So if you want your peanuts to get an early start, don’t try to sow them in a soilless mix, or in paper towels or a glass jar. To successfully transplant peanuts, use actual soil or a sand/compost/soil mix.
Peanut Varieties
If you have a relatively short growing season, I recommend starting with the 110-day variety Tennessee Red Valencia. It’s easy to grow, very productive and has large sweet kernels, 2–5 per shell. If you don’t want to hill, this variety is said to be the most accepting of this. Another 110-day variety is the unusual Carolina Black, an heirloom with a black skin. It’s sweet-tasting and slightly larger than the Spanish varieties. Virginia Jumbo needs 120 days, produces large rich-flavored kernels, 2 per shell, and prefers loose soil. Whopper also needs 120 days, and its claim to fame is obvious. Carwile’s Virginia is a 130-day heirloom variety with superior flavor and good drought resistance (though only average disease resistance). MorningChores.com has an excellent beginner description of seven pests and two diseases. Peanuts are prone to the same diseases as beans, with bacterial wilt being especially damaging. Sclerotinia blight is more prevalent at high pH.
Sowing Peanuts
Sow around the last frost date. The soil temperature should be 65°F (18°C) at noon, at a 4″ (10 cm) depth, for 3 consecutive days. For us that’s late April. May is safer. Count back from your first frost date to find your last sowing date. The beginning of June is about the latest I’d want to try here. Shell the nuts (don’t split the kernels into halves) and sow 2″ (5 cm) deep, 12″ (30 cm) apart, in rows 30″–36″ (76–90 cm) apart. Inoculating the seeds with Rhizobium bacteria can produce enough nitrogen in root nodules to sustain the crop, as with other legumes. Active nodules are pink or red inside.
The seedlings may be slow to emerge, so preemptive weeding may be needed. If you have not interplanted, you could try pre-emergence flame-weeding. Peanuts are native to an area subject to periodic drought and fire, and have evolved to withstand heat. You can flame them soon after emergence, as the growing point is still in the soil. Older peanut plants may be damaged and then recover. The seedlings look somewhat like peas or clover. Because they grow slowly for the first 40 days, they will not thrive if you lose them in weeds (guess how I know?). Flaming or careful hoeing as soon as the peanuts emerge will effectively deal with broadleaf weeds. Grasses are not killed by flaming.
Peanut Cultivation
Once the seedlings are 12″ (30 cm) tall, you can hill them up, as you would potatoes, to increase yields. We skip this step —the peanuts have no difficulty pegging in the loose soil of our raised beds. We’ve grown Virginia Jumbo and Carwiles without hilling and got plenty of peanuts. But if you are not interplanting and have a good hiller attachment on a tiller or wheel hoe (or a visiting school group, perhaps), then hilling can deal with weeds and provide more loose soil for the nuts to develop in. Avoid disturbing the soil after pegging has begun.
Watering Peanuts
There are two periods when adequate watering is vital. The first is at planting, to ensure germination. The second is from 50 days after planting, when pegs start to enter the soil, until 2 weeks before harvest. This is the time when the pods are filling. Stop watering 10–14 days before harvest, to help the peanuts dry for storage.
Harvesting and Drying Peanuts
You can wait for a light frost to kill the tops, or you can simply harvest when enough peanuts are mature. You’ll have to dig some up and open them to see. The University of Florida has a helpful publication, “Methods to Evaluate Peanut Maturity for Optimal Seed Quality and Yield.” If the fall is wet, it might be best to pull or dig the plants early, when the seed is almost ripe, and dry them indoors. This will minimize losses from rotting.
Credit: Ethan Carter, UF/IFAS
In dry light soil, you can just pull the plant, and the peanuts will come up attached to the stems. Then you can bunch and hang them in an airy barn. Mice really love peanuts and will run off with them and stash them at a phenomenal rate, so be sure to set traps or provide a good cat. If the soil was dry and loose enough for you to pull the plant, the nuts will likely be relatively clean, so you can dry (and cure) them on the vine, which takes up to 3 weeks.
In heavier soils, dig the plants up lightly — no need to go deep. You can pull the nuts off the stems by hand and gather loose ones from the soil. For small-scale production, you can strip peanuts off the vines by dragging the plants through a V-shaped piece of equipment, from the far side towards yourself, letting peanuts collect in a tote.
If needed, wash the peanuts, spreading the loose ones out on trays to dry. Mold is an enemy when drying: moldy peanuts contain toxic aflatoxin, so get them dried quickly. Set up fans indoors, or dry the peanuts outdoors in the sun: 3–7 days is a likely amount of time. You could spread the peanuts on screens on wheelbarrows. Just wheel the barrow from place to place to catch the sun, and under cover if rain threatens. A second screen inverted over the first keeps mice away. This system works for very small-scale production. You could make mouse-proof lidded trays from rat wire and dry the peanuts on greenhouse benches, with fans.
Curing and Storing Peanuts
If vine-drying, you can also cure the peanuts on the vine, as described above. Otherwise pick the good nuts off the plants once they have dried and cure them in the sun for a few days. Peanuts will cure to a storable state in 2–3 weeks indoors at ambient temperatures or 6 days in a solar dryer of the type described in my book. It’s important not to heat the nuts higher than 85°F (29°C). Drying too fast causes skin slippage and kernel splitting. To find out when peanuts have finished curing, taste some. If they still have the watery crunch of water chestnuts, they are not ready; once they taste good, they’re cured. For long-term storage, a sealed container in a freezer works well. They need to be kept very dry. Like most seeds, peanuts are very good at drawing moisture from the air.
Photo https://www.daringgourmet.com/boiled-peanuts/
Boiling Peanuts
Immediately after harvest, you can eat all or some of your bounty, without drying or curing. These are a big hit! Here’s how we cook them for a party: fill a large pot two-thirds full of water, add 2 handfuls of salt and enough peanuts (in their shells) to fill the pot, but still have enough room to move. Cook for 5 whole hours, strain, and serve.
Roasting Peanuts
To roast peanuts, spread them shelled or unshelled in a single layer and cook at 350°F (175°C) for 20–25 minutes in the shell, or 15–20 minutes shelled.
Read More
This post is adapted from a chapter in my second edition of Sustainable Market Farming. The chapter in that book also includes peanut history, information on growing peanuts in a hoophouse, interplanting lettuce and peanuts, solar drying them, and saving seed.
