Putting the 2016 Peanut Crop In

A couple of months ago, I walked into a Logan’s Roadhouse Restaurant for lunch.  Logan’s brings out those big hot yeast rolls with softened butter.  As if that doesn’t fill you up, they have buckets of salted and boiled peanuts on the table.  In the past, you could throw your shells on the floor.  The previous time I went, I began to throw the shells on the floor as I snacked and looked around and no one else was doing that.  Then I noticed another empty bucket on the table and put two and two together to determine that they now want you to put the peanut shells in the bucket and NOT on the floor.

But why?  Well, a quick Google search told me that a woman in Texas sued Logan’s Roadhouse after slipping on a peanut shell and breaking her leg.  I assume that liability concerns ended the practice of throwing peanut shells on the ground at Logan’s.

You can still throw peanut shells on the ground at Our Maker’s Acres Family Farm and that’s exactly what Benjamin and I did earlier this week.  We were planting them, though, not eating them.  You must remove them from the shells when planting, but we threw the shells on the ground as they compost quite nicely into the garden soil.

We were using an organic peanut that we’ve planted for the past two years, called Shronce’s Deep Black Peanuts.

Shronce's Deep Black Peanuts

They are called deep black peanuts because the skins are black instead of red.  Well, most of them, anyway.  We find a few of them to have red skins like the normal peanuts you get from the store or at ball games. 

The skins of the peanuts are black

They taste the same as normal peanuts and we’ve enjoyed experimenting the last couple of years planting a new crop.  I put down some chicken litter in the garden area where we had just harvested our Irish Potatoes, and Benjamin and I got busy planting the peanuts.

The 2016 Peanut Patch

We planted them an inch deep and six inches apart.

Planting the peanuts

The remaining seed that I had was from 2014, so I planted the rest of the peanut seed that I had left.  I’ll have to order more next crop year.  After all was said and done, we planted 85 peanuts on 2 ½ rows.

All done - 2 1/2 rows

We got an inch and a half of rain last night, so we’ll see how they germinate.  Peanuts mature in about 120 days, so on or about September 15^th, we’ll be harvesting peanuts.  We’ll bring them in and roast them in the oven and eat ‘em up.  Like the new rules at Logan’s Roadhouse, I bet Tricia would look at us unfavorably if we threw the shells on the floor in her kitchen.