Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: LotuSeed on November 02, 2014, 20:34

Title: Peanuts!
Post by: LotuSeed on November 02, 2014, 20:34
Not enough to make peanut butter, but I think it's been a successful experiment nonetheless!
Put the seedlings out at the end of May and just pulled them up today, Nov 2nd.

Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: snowdrops on November 02, 2014, 20:37
Well done, do you eat them straight away or do you have to keep them.
Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: LotuSeed on November 02, 2014, 20:42
Gotta let them dry/cure for a few weeks and then I'll roast some to eat (my parrots will likely get most of them :tongue2:. I'm going to save some un roasted ones to use as seed for next year.
Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: Gryphon on November 10, 2014, 15:35
Congratulations, I have often thought of growing some for fun but never gotten around to it. Very well done! :) I am assuming that you grew them under cover?
Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: LotuSeed on November 10, 2014, 16:19
Congratulations, I have often thought of growing some for fun but never gotten around to it. Very well done! :) I am assuming that you grew them under cover?

Thanks  :D.  Because of my location (hot enough for long enough) there was no need to grow them under cover. Boy were they in the ground for a long time! I think there are some varieties that only take 90 days to mature and those might work better for areas with shorter growing seasons.
Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: Bing on November 10, 2014, 19:22
they taste the best when fresh!

nothing compares
Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: Fairy Plotmother on November 10, 2014, 20:12
Well done! How did you manage. I had a go .....but nothing happened. :ohmy:
Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: GrannieAnnie on November 10, 2014, 22:18
I would love to grow peanuts LotuSeed,  well done you!  I've always thought of Washington as being as high up as us in the UK, and it being a bit chilly, so shows you how bad my geography of the North American Continent is!  :D :D
Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: LotuSeed on November 10, 2014, 23:27
Well done! How did you manage. I had a go .....but nothing happened. :ohmy:

I bought the plants as seedlings and put them in fairly friable soil. I think the key to actually getting peanuts to produce is their ability to readily penetrate the surface of the growing medium. After a flower is fertilized, the petals fall away and a peg forms which then must be able to burrow deep enough into the soil where the legume can develop. If the pegs can't dig themselves into the ground, you get no peanuts. I've read some sources that say earthing them up can help improve yield, however this would only work on parts of the plant whose flowers have been fertilized.

GrannieAnnie you're not the only one guilty of having a wonky sense of geography lol.


Title: Re: Peanuts!
Post by: tosca100 on November 11, 2014, 03:02
I tried to germinate some this year, but we had a freak wet summer so they probably wouldn't have done anything anyway. I am going to have a go at a couple of other unusual (for a Brit) things this year since I have space to waste.