Harvested a Few Peanuts This Weekend

A couple months ago I shared the photo below of the peanut plants flowering.  It is a bright yellow pretty flower a little smaller than a sweet pea flower, but very similar in appearance.

Back in August, the row of peanuts looked like this in the photo below.  They are being encroached upon by the black-eyed peas, but peanuts are hardy plants.  I knew they would hold their own.

Fast-forward to October...

Part of the plan this weekend was to harvest some items to make room to put in more of the fall/winter crops.  I got busy with another item that took most of the morning, so I didn't get to harvest any sweet potatoes.  I did, however, harvest some peanuts that I had growing on a row to the south of the black-eyed peas.

It wasn't a huge harvest, but I didn't have a huge amount planted.  I had saved some peanuts from a harvest a couple of years ago.  I wasn't sure if they would germinate or not, but put some in the ground and lo and behold, they grew.  We pulled them from the ground and tossed them over the trellis that will hold the sugar snap peas.  Those, by the way, have sprouted and will climbing on the trellis in about two weeks.  In the meantime, the peanuts will dry out on the empty trellis.

Peanuts, once they bloom, send down pegs into the ground.  On each of these pegs is an embryo and a peanut will form and grow until maturity, each pod holding 3 or 4 or 5 peanuts.

We will allow them to dry on the trellis, then we'll roast them in the oven and eat them.  I'm thinking that perhaps we'll make some homemade peanut butter like we did many years ago.  That was really good.  We experimented and made chocolate peanut butter and cinnamon peanut butter.

Although the crop wasn't exceedingly large, we didn't plant many, and we'll enjoy the ones we harvested nonetheless.  We'll be planting something else in the ground that the peanuts occupied - probably mustard greens, lettuce, or radishes.