Growing Tennessee Red Valencia Peanuts

[karstopography]

I have the seed peanuts. I have a bed in mind, my 4’ x 8’ x14” soon to be dug up potato raised bed.

What there is is a lot of conflicting information on spacing for seeding and final plants.

Any ideas or experience growing these?

4 plants per foot or is it 5? Double rows 7-9” apart on 18” centers or a single row? The spacing information is just simply all over the place.

[Tormahto]

I have the seed peanuts. I have a bed in mind, my 4’ x 8’ x14” soon to be dug up potato raised bed.

What there is is a lot of conflicting information on spacing for seeding and final plants.

Any ideas or experience growing these?

4 plants per foot or is it 5? Double rows 7-9” apart on 18” centers or a single row? The spacing information is just simply all over the place.

Keep them in their shells until planting time.

It's been well over a decade since growing Tennessee Red (Wickey strain, which supposedly has the highest rate of 4 to a pod). I have no idea where my notes are, or if I still have them. You can always split up the bed, and try 2 different spacings. I'll see if I can schedule a conference call with the local squirrels, and see what their preference is.

Gonna use gypsum?

[karstopography]

I’ve been shelling and sampling the raw peanuts seed stock, the feed store sells raw Tennessee reds in the shell, just scoop up what you want, $2.75/#. The owner was munching on them when I visited today.

Probably add a yet to be determined amount of gypsum at or before early flowering. Water source I use and have used for irrigation is high in calcium, though, so there may be sufficient calcium in the soil already. Can’t use the lime I have on hand as that might raise the Ph too high.

The squirrels are unwillingly helping me with my marksmanship. As I was typing this, I scored yet another casualty. Tate the dog got an assist. Nets trap the squirrels long enough to make them vulnerable. I’m going to put out a live trap tomorrow to relocate any remaining garden felons.

[Tormahto]

If I remember correctly, gypsum should be applied only once per season. At, or just before, early flowering is correct.

[karstopography]

Planted my peanut bed on Sunday, minutes after the potatoes made their exit.
Peanuts are now up breaking through the loose, sandy loam. What is that 5 days? Soil must be good and warm. Don’t see any gaps so the seeds must have been good.

Went to one nearby garden/tractor/feedstore kind of place with bad music looking for gypsum. Naturally, they had none. They looked at me like what the heck is gypsum and why is he asking us about it. Haven’t tried Reifels yet. Kevin will know what is gypsum. I’ll give them a call first, gasoline is too precious these days.

[karstopography]

Starting to get some peanut flowers. Went ahead and put out roughly 3/4 pound of gypsum. 1000lbs gypsum/acre for peanuts, so I read someplace. 43,560 sq.ft/acre. My peanut bed is not quite one/thousandth of an acre.

[karstopography]

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I gently lifted a peanut plant and lo and behold there were peanuts. We tried them, the skins are red, the flavor is peanut like, but they need to dry out.

I have no idea what to do next. Rain is in the forecast for the next four days. No way to dry these peanuts out outside.

[GoDawgs]

Did you mulch them, hand weed or just let the grass and weeds do their thing? I tried growing peanuts one year a long time ago and mulched them with leaves to keep in moisture and keep down the weeds. But the peanut vines had a hard time pegging down into the ground through the mulch so they never really made and I never tried again.

[Tormahto]

What to do next?

Read up on aflatoxin, and Aspergillus flavus (a mold).

Then read up on drying/storing. Many dig the whole plant, gently shake/brush off as much soil as they can, and hang them to dry.

Then read up on cooking methods, if you are to do so.

Here, the extremely few that the squirrels didn't get, I dried for about a month, and ate only a couple of them raw. The few others I tossed back to the chipmunks (the squirrels had their fill). With the unknown possibility of getting that mold, I like others, simply buy the peanut products. For me, it's mostly peanut butter, and large bags of unshelled roasted (salted or unsalted) peanuts. Rarely do I buy (my favorite) shelled honey roasted peanuts in a tiny bag, for a traveling snack. And even rarer, will I buy peanut butter powder, for making a peanut flavored cheesecake. With a chocolate graham crust, it is somewhat like a mega Reese's peanut butter cup.

[karstopography]

Did you mulch them, hand weed or just let the grass and weeds do their thing? I tried growing peanuts one year a long time ago and mulched them with leaves to keep in moisture and keep down the weeds. But the peanut vines had a hard time pegging down into the ground through the mulch so they never really made and I never tried again.

I planted them in a 4’x8’ raised bed. One that had the potatoes growing in there earlier in the spring. Zero weed issues. I did plant them about 6” apart or so. There might be ~55-65 plants in the bed.

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[karstopography]

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I dug up the peanut bed. This is the useable portion after the sprouting ones, the hollow, the too little and the bug infested were culled out. I’m pretty pleased. Going to make crock pot boiled green peanuts. Supposed to be a 5-7 hour process. Should be ready about dinner time.

[karstopography]

Yield per acre in an American peanut farm is something like 4,000/acre. But, in 1950, it was like 1,750/acre. My plot was 32 square feet, or 0.000734 of an acre or about a yield of 1.25 pounds/32 square feet using the 1950 yield numbers. My semi-shaded spot did alright.

[GoDawgs]

Those are gonna be good! It's getting to be football time and there will be a few vendors along some roads set up and boiling peanuts; especially highways leading up to UGA.

I buy raw dried peanuts and roast them myself. MUCH better than bagged already-roasted peanuts. For my oven it's 28 minutes at 350. A minute less and they're slightly underdone. One minute more and they're too done.

[karstopography]

I found a few more good peanuts when I went out around lunchtime today and planted the vacated peanut bed with “Rolande” French Fillet beans. Call it an even pound and half for the boiled peanuts in the 4’X8’ bed. Sort of a fun and easy crop that didn’t require anything expensive or difficult, no fertilizer or bug spray needed, but only a sprinkle of gypsum in the early flowering time frame. I may or may not do peanuts again, but the seed was cheap, they were a low effort, low maintenance type of crop. Some take care of themselves not so needy type of crops don’t hurt my feelings at all. I’ve got enough Divas out there already. An attractive, low cost hot weather place holder with some upside potential, that’s peanuts in a nutshell.

I’ve roasted the bagged raw dried ones too. And the raw dry ones from the feed store. The bagged raw dried ones that HEB carries are the bigger Virginia type peanuts. The feed store carried the Tennessee Red Valencia type. Both are good, but I give the nod on flavor to the Valencia ones.

But fresh from the oven home roasted Virginia or Valencia do taste great. I did mine on the BGE, but that is like an oven.

[karstopography]

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Harvested about 1/4 of my peanuts today for some boiled green peanuts. These are spanish peanuts, not the valencia/Tennessee Red type.

I tried a few raw ones, not as sweet as the Tennessee Red peanuts either. These peanut seeds got planted May 1st.

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[karstopography]

Raw Spanish peanuts are very good boiled, richer tasting than Tennessee Red, more “peanut buttery”.

[karstopography]

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Harvested the remainder of my Spanish Peanuts. These got planted May 2nd. Really pleased with the results. One peanut had sprouted, a small percentage got attacked by something that drilled into the peanut shell, but most were clean and in great condition.

All the seed peanuts were one or two peanuts per shell so the ones I harvested are consistent to the form of the seed peanuts.

Spanish peanuts flavor raw or boiled is quite a bit different than Tennessee red peanuts. Raw Spanish peanuts have almost a raw fresh ripe coconut type of flavor. Boiled Spanish peanuts are richer in flavor than the Tennessee reds, but not as sweet.

Dug up the area, found only one loose peanut. Spanish peanuts really cling to their plants better than the Tennessee reds.

Cypress roots had completely invaded the bed. Cypress roots will travel many many feet beyond the canopy in search of water. I got a good workout dig out those roots. Didn’t seem to bother the peanuts. Most peanuts found on one plant was 100, singles and doubles each counting as one.

[GoDawgs]

Nice peanuts! I wonder if nematodes mess with them.

I really sympathize with you on the cypress roots. I wage war with grapevine and crape myrtle roots twice a year.

[karstopography]

Nice peanuts! I wonder if nematodes mess with them.

I really sympathize with you on the cypress roots. I wage war with grapevine and crape myrtle roots twice a year.

I didn’t see any sign of nematode damage on the roots or peanuts. The roots themselves had plenty of root nitrogen fixing nodules, but those look different than nematode damage. I grew peanuts in two different spots, one where the cypress roots intruded was the amended native topsoil. Theoretically, that silty soil should have root knot nematodes.

[karstopography]

https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-shee ... eanut.html

Looking at the link above listing various diseases and problems with peanuts, I can see I had just minimal symptoms of root-lesion nematode which is different than Root knot nematodes. Root-lesion nematode make speckling on the pods. My raised bed had more sign of this on the pods than the other bed.

I also had a smattering of black hull, mainly in the in the ground bed. Spanish peanuts are said to be especially susceptible to black hull. Maybe one percent of the peanuts had signs of black hull.