Harvesting the 2016 Peanut Crop

I marked the date on the calendar so that I would know the exact date when the peanuts that we planted in back in early May would be ripe.  A few years ago I waited too long and although we did harvest some peanuts, many of them had sprouted in the shell and were growing.  I learned my lesson and strictly watched the calendar.  When it was time - like it was last weekend - Benjamin went out and dug them up.

If the photo below looks like a jungle - it is.  It is a jungle of peanuts and sweet potatoes.  Digging up the peanuts without disturbing the sweet potatoes that had vined into the peanut rows proved to be quite a challenge, but we got the job done with a little patience.  I'll say this, the peanuts were planted on the northernmost part of the garden, which is the highest.  If they had been planted 15 feet to the south, they would have rotted in the ground during the August floods.

Sweet potatoes on the left, peanuts on the right

I think the blooms of a peanut are pretty.  True to the "pea" part of their name, the peanut bloom looks just like the bloom of sugar snap peas, except the peanut blooms are yellow.

So how did we do?  Well, we fared better than the first year we planted and about the same as last year.  Harvesting on time really helped.  There was only one peanut that had sprouted in the ground. We timed it perfectly this year.  I was, I must admit, a little disappointed in the yield and I'm not sure what to attribute that too other than perhaps I need to incorporate some additional chicken litter into the soil?

As Benjamin and I dug up the peanuts, we placed them between the pickets of our picket fence to allow them to dry out.

When rains threatened two days later, I moved them into the garage and hung them beneath "The Garfish," our canoe to continue drying.

Just looking through the soil, I rescued a few 'stragglers' that broke off of the peanut pegs when we pulled them up.  I left them on the lawn tractor in the garage to dry, but wouldn't you know it, a rat or some sort of predator ate this handful of peanuts!

That's okay, Benjamin and I still have a nice little bounty of peanuts.  We'll roast them and make our annual batch of homemade peanut butter.  Stay tuned for that project!

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!