Anyone grow peanuts?

[flowerbug]

thank you for a diversion while i was resting up...

no it did not answer your question, but i think it is simply piling more dirt up along the plants as they grow so they have somewhere to grow their peanut forming shoots. don't some potatoes grow like this too?

oh and as a p.s. there was no bundle of peanuts she pulled from the ground that looked like that. a bit of creative editing there... hmm... who'd a thunk it?

 

[heirloomgal]

I know peanuts can be grown here, because I grew a few plants as a kid & got a handful of ripe peanuts. Now I want to delve further down that rabbit hole (mainly because I just have a thing about anything bean related). I will be growing a White Valencia this year, and hope to trial other varieties (especially some of the black/purple ones) in coming years. But reading up on peanut culture, I see references to "hilling". Has anyone who grows peanuts done this, or can describe the process?

Annapolis seeds in Nova Scotia has made selective efforts with peanuts, and that is not the usual climate for peanuts for sure. He selected from his peanut crop for some years he said before selling his peanut seeds. He did say somewhere that it is a crop which responds well to selection, which is a plus. His growing guide doesn't mention hills that I can see.

A gardening friend in another province starts her peanuts in pots with great success. I imagine the hilling is much like for potatoes, trying to provide more earth for the legume to produce pods in as the peanut pods form along the stem underground.

 

[Zeedman]

I plan to start the peanuts as transplants too, just as I do for limas & long-DTM pole beans. If they do at least fairly well this year, I will try others. I'll keep an eye on the pegs as they form, to see whether hilling may or may not be necessary.

@flowerbug , I loved the video! Beautiful scenery, relaxing music, and very instructive. To judge by how the peanuts were dried, obviously there are no squirrels where that was made. Hopefully there will be enough peanuts for us to try both of the recipes demonstrated... that looked like a wonderful meal.

 

[jbosmith]

I know peanuts can be grown here, because I grew a few plants as a kid & got a handful of ripe peanuts. Now I want to delve further down that rabbit hole (mainly because I just have a thing about anything bean related). I will be growing a White Valencia this year, and hope to trial other varieties (especially some of the black/purple ones) in coming years. But reading up on peanut culture, I see references to "hilling". Has anyone who grows peanuts done this, or can describe the process?

I've had decent luck with Valencia here. A few others are marginal but I mostly end up just replacing my seed. The hardest thing for me is that EVERYONE wants to eat the baby peanut plants.

 

[meadow]

@flowerbug , I loved the video! Beautiful scenery, relaxing music, and very instructive. To judge by how the peanuts were dried, obviously there are no squirrels where that was made. Hopefully there will be enough peanuts for us to try both of the recipes demonstrated... that looked like a wonderful meal.

You may enjoy this video by the woman that started that genre (I don't think she is hilling up her peanuts either, at least not in the way one does for potatoes):

 

[Zeedman]

Those peanuts (or one similar) are one of the varieties I hope to try in the future. It is really inspiring to watch the whole process start to finish, from planting, to harvest, to processing, and to meal preparation. I doubt that I will ever be 1/10 as skilled or self-sufficient, as much as I strive to be. The videos themselves are very well done, pure poetry. DW & I will enjoy watching them together, as we did the AG2T videos.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

One caveat to anyone wanting to BREED peanuts (as opposed to simply growing and selecting them). According to something I remember reading a while back, it is illegal to import the wild relative the pinto peanut (Arachis pintoi) into the US from outside the country presumably to protect US peanut crops. (Though the fact that there already ARE sources for this plant inside the country would seem to make such a ban moot).

 

[tripletfeb]

I grew peanuts once and didn't know it! My neighbor feeds the squirrels and the little buggers planted some in my garden to over winter their food and I didn't know until the following fall when I was digging up my sweet potatoes and dug up peanuts as well!

 

[Zeedman]

I've had decent luck with Valencia here. A few others are marginal but I mostly end up just replacing my seed. The hardest thing for me is that EVERYONE wants to eat the baby peanut plants.

(added emphasis mine) That is actually of greater concern to me than the DTM. I'm not worried about the foliage, since the area is well fenced to keep out the herbivores which would otherwise ravage my soybeans. Voles are a bigger problem; if they find the peanuts, I probably won't get many. The peanuts are planned for the rural garden though, where ironically, they will be safer... the property owner's semi-feral cats have no problem jumping the fence, and prowl the garden relentlessly.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I grew peanuts once and didn't know it! My neighbor feeds the squirrels and the little buggers planted some in my garden to over winter their food and I didn't know until the following fall when I was digging up my sweet potatoes and dug up peanuts as well!

I imagine that would actually happen pretty often, were it not for the fact that most people who feed squirrels peanuts feed them the kind that are sold in bags for human consumption, and are therefore already roasted and non-viable.

Actually, given the sheer number of nuts people feed to squirrels, I sometimes wonder why our forests and neighborhoods aren't littered with small volunteer Persian Walnut and European Hazel trees (pecans and almonds both need warmer climates than we usually have up here in the northeast, and Brazil nuts are, of course, tropical (and given that most are still wild collected, probably not very inclined to germinate) But Walnuts and Hazels certainly grow here, and I don't mean the native ones.)

One other thing I thought I should mention about growing peanuts, they can shrink over generations. That is, if conditions are not perfect, the peanuts you get back at harvest can be MUCH smaller than the ones you planted. When I grew mine, I used the BIGGEST raw peanuts I could get my hands on (ones the size of my thumb in two seed pods) and what I got back was normal sized, if not somewhat on the small size.