Peanuts are an interesting and rewarding crop to grow on a small scale. Farmers 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 after peak oil will appreciate peanuts as a source of locally grown protein. Everyone can enjoy the challenge of trying a new crop.

Peanuts have been grown in the U.S. since the 1700’s. The first commercial planting was around 1800 in North Carolina. Clemson University Extension Service has this description: “The peanut (Arachis hypogaea) is a tropical plant that originated in South America. Peanut is a self-pollinating plant that looks like a yelloVew-flowered, low sweet pea bush growing slightly higher than 1 foot with a 3-foot spread. After the flowers wither, a flower stalk called a peg elongates and pushes the ovary or pistil of the flower into the soil to a depth of 1 or 2 inches. The pistil then develops into the pod containing the peanuts.” Their useful publication is listed in the resources at the end of this article.

Crop requirements
Peanuts need a frost-free period of at least 110 days. (2520-2770 growing-degree-days above a base of 57F are needed for Virginia type peanuts, if you have some easy way of figuring that out). They 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. Buy some seed peanuts (we buy from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, www.southernexposure.com; 540-894-9480). 28 grams will plant about 25 feet. Prepare a bed or row ahead of time. You can warm the soil by covering with row cover or plastic for 3-7 days before planting. The pH should be 5-6, and if calcium levels might be at all low, add gypsum—the start of blooming is the latest time you can effectively add gypsum. Calcium deficiency results in unfilled pods and low yields.(See the NCSU web site listed below for more on soil nutrient requirements). We plant our peanuts in a permanently raised bed, which helps provide looser soil. (See my article in the February issue of Growing for Market for our method of relay planting peanuts with lettuce).

At the Coastal Plain Experiment Station, Tifton, Georgia, they are trying peanuts interplanted with crimson clover. See the New farm article in the resources section at the end of this article, for lots about no-till and reduced-till options, as well as flame weeding. The NCSU web site has an interesting “risk-assessment calculator for reduced tillage systems”.

Those thinking of pre-sprouting or transplanting peanuts should be alerted to a peculiarity of peanuts: they do not germinate well without soil. I have not found out exactly what it is in the soil that they need. So if you want you peanuts to get an early start, don’t try to start them in a soil-less mix, or in paper towels or a glass jar. Use some actual soil, or compost/soil mix. They can then be successfully transplanted.

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 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 kinds. Virginia Jumbo needs 120 days, produces large rich-flavored kernels, 2 per shell, and does prefer 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). So far, I’m blissfully ignorant about peanut diseases. I understand they are prone to the same diseases as beans, with bacterial wilt being one to especially watch out for. Sclerotinia blight is more prevalent at high pH.

Production details
Sow around the last frost date. The soil temperature should be 65°F at noon, at a 4” depth, for three consecutive days. For us in zone 6b or 7 in central Virginia, that’s late April. 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” deep, 12” apart, in rows 30-36” apart. Inoculating the seeds with Rhizobium bacteria can produce enough nitrogen to sustain the crop, as with other legumes. The Rhizobium bacteria live in nodules on the roots. They take nitrogen from the air and convert it into a form plants can use. 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. (This is also being tried at Tifton). 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?!)

Once the seedlings are 12” 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 inter-cropping, and you 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.

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 days to 2 weeks before harvest.

Harvesting and drying
You can wait for a light frost to kill the tops, or you can simply harvest when the plants have had enough time. In dry, light soil, you can just pull the plant and the peanuts will come up attached to the stems. In heavier soils, dig lightly—no need to go deep. If you pulled the plant, you can bunch and hang the whole plants upside down in an airy barn where mice are not a problem. If the soil was dry and loose enough for you to pull the plant, the nuts will likely be relatively clean, and you can dry them for up to 3 weeks on the vine. After vine-drying, you can pick the good nuts off the plants and cure them in the sun for a few days. If you dug the plants, you can pull the nuts off the stems into a bucket and collect the loose ones from the soil. If needed, wash the peanuts and spread them out to dry.

Mice really love peanuts, and they will run off with them and stash them at a phenomenal rate. The other enemy of efforts to dry peanuts is mold. Moldy peanuts contain toxic aflatoxin, so set up fans, or dry the peanuts outdoors in the sun, in order to get them dried fairly quickly—three days is a likely amount of time. See below for information on a wonderful solar dryer. Meanwhile, if you don’t have one of those, you could use our previous method, which involved spreading the peanuts on clean compost-screening trays on wheelbarrows. Just wheel the barrow from place to place to catch the sun, or wheel it under cover if rain threatens. A second compost screen inverted over the first keeps mice away. This system works for very small-scale production. You could also make mouse-proof lidded trays from rat-wire, and dry peanuts on greenhouse benches, with fans.

If the fall is wet, you might be advised to pull the plants early, when the seed is almost ripe, and hang them in a barn to cure. This will minimize losses due to rotting.

Curing and storing
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 below, kept facing east. It’s important not to heat the peanuts higher than 85°F. Drying too fast causes skin slippage and kernel splitting. To find out when peanuts have finished curing, taste some and see. If they still have the watery crunch of water-chestnuts, they are not ready. Once they taste good, they’re done. 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.

Solar drying and curing
We have built an excellent solar food dryer, following plans from Home Power magazine. Plans are on their web site: http://www.homepower.com/files/fooddeh.pdf. It can be built for around $150, and operates by natural convection. The food is placed on racks in the back portion, out of direct sunlight. Solar energy passes through a sloping box topped by a glazing material. The heat is absorbed by layers of black metal window screening, and the hot air rises into the drying chamber. This food dryer is designed to reach temperatures of 110-180°F in order to dry food in two days or less. Our use for curing peanuts could be called an “off-label” use, as we are trying to avoid such high temperatures. So, instead of turning the dryer on its wheels to track the sun and get maximum solar gain, we keep it facing east. Thus it gets early daytime warming, but does not overheat. Proper attention to opening vents in the morning and closing them later in the day to prevent rehydration is important.

Seed saving
After your first year, you can save your own seed, and grow as much as you care to. Seed saving on this scale couldn’t be easier! Peanuts are largely self-pollinating, but are visited by various bees, so cross-pollination can occur. Grow only one variety (or if you grow more, isolate the varieties from each other.) Commercially isolation distances of 1,000 ft are used. Seed quality is easier to maintain in unshelled peanuts, so store them this way until planting time. After curing, set aside sufficient quantity for next year’s seed, in a very mouse-proof place. You can select for size and number per shell at the storage stage. To select for flavor, save twice as much as you need. At planting time, open the shell, eat one kernel, then decide whether or not to plant or eat the rest in that shell. Don’t eat too many, of course! To select for disease resistance or per plant yield, you will need to make the assessment at harvest time.

Peanuts in hoophouses?
We have tried growing peanuts in our double-poly hoophouse, but don’t rate it as a success. Possibly we didn’t water enough. Possibly mulch would have helped keep soil moisture in. We got spindly plants and low yields, compared with our outdoor planting, so we’re in no hurry to repeat the experiment. Perhaps others will have more luck. I’d love to hear about it. ï ¹

Pam Dawling manages the vegetable garden for Twin Oaks Community in central Virginia. The gardens produce a wide range of organic produce to supply the 100 residents with almost all of their fresh vegetables, large quantities for processing for off-season use, and a considerable quantity of berries.

Resources
North Carolina State University has an excellent site: http://ipm.ncsu.edu/Production_Guides/Peanuts/contents.html

The Virginia Tech Extension Service has very good information on commercial peanut growing (not organic): http://www.ext.vt.edu/resources/anrpublications.html#DEPT41CAT17

Clemson Extension Service Peanut Factsheet: http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/HGIC1315.htm

University of Florida, “Producing Quality Peanut Seed”: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/AG190

The New Farm: “Are they nuts? Southern researchers and farmers tackle organic peanuts.” http://www.newfarm.org/features/2005/1105/peanuts/culbreath.shtml

Home Power solar food dryer design: http://www.homepower.com/files/fooddeh.pdf

Coastal Plain Experiment Station, Tifton, Georgia, : http://www.cpes.peachnet.edu/

Saving Our Seed: www.savingourseed.org