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.

The 2015 Peanut Crop is Dry!

Three weeks ago we harvested our heirloom Shronce's Deep Black Peanuts that we had growing on a row in the garden.  It is our second year to grow them and although I'm still learning how to grow peanuts, judging by the amount of peanut plants we pulled up, we should have at least quadrupled our yield from last year.

The one problem I seem to be still struggling with is knowing when to harvest.  I pulled up one plant at 110 days after planting and there were peanuts that weren't fully ripe, so I let them continue ripening for two more weeks and tried again.  This time, there were quite a few peanuts that had cracked open and begun to sprout.  I would assume 20% of the yield was lost due to this, so I'll be more diligent next year and check weekly after 110 days.

I attribute some of the problems with ripening due to a very, very dry summer, and I think this stunted the growth.  Even though I watered with a water hose, there's just no comparison to nice soaking rains when it comes to getting things growing. Nevertheless, we harvested the peanuts and allowed them to dry hanging upside down in the garage for 3 weeks under the canoe.  When 3 weeks passed, the leaves were crinkly and dry and I knew they were dry.

Peanuts drying underneath the canoe

Peanuts grow at the very tip of "pegs" that are like shoots that grow down from the flowers and into the soil.  You can see the peanuts attached to pegs below.  It is a good idea to have soft soil around the peanut plants full of organic matter so that the pegs can easily enter the ground and produce peanuts.  I learned from someone to mulch around the base of the peanut plants with chopped leaves, and I'll employ that strategy next year.  From different articles I read, each plant can yield between 1-3 pounds of peanuts.  Ours did not do that well at all, but as every gardener says, "Wait till next year!"

Peanuts grow on pegs

Benjamin and I stood out on the back patio and pulled the peanuts off of the plants and pegs, and then we chopped up the peanut plants to compost back into the garden soil using the trench composting method.  We had a nice bucket of peanuts when all was said and done - a nice improvement from last year, but not as good as I was expecting.

A bucket of fresh harvested and dried peanuts

I asked Benjamin what he'd like to do with them and he agreed that we would roast half of them in the oven and eat them like that and that we'd make peanut butter with the other half.  That sounds like a good plan.  We ate a few of them raw just last night. They're okay, but not as good as 'parched' peanuts or homemade peanut butter.

Deez Nuts!

In case you were wondering why they are called Shronce's Deep Black Peanuts, it it because the skins of these peanuts are black as opposed to most other peanuts that you see with red skins.

Shronce's Deep Black Peanuts

When we get the final three rows of the garden planted and the pasture seeded with rye grass, we'll reward ourselves and parch some peanuts and make some peanut butter.  We're looking forward to that!