Surprise! Peanuts do not grow on trees like other nuts, peanuts grow in a garden. You really can grow your own peanut butter nuts right there at home where you can keep them safe from chemicals and preservatives.
Where To Grow Peanuts:
Peanuts love warm places. Peanuts want warm weather for about 5-months of growing time. This means that most of us have to work to convince peanuts that we are just as warm as the next guy; we start the peanut plants indoors and later bring the peanut plants back inside, or cover the peanuts with a warm shelter whenever any danger of frost is present.
What Kind of Soil Peanuts Like:
Peanuts need sand with lots of compost mixed in to grow in. Peanuts grow underground, and they are not strong enough to move heavy clay soils out of their way while forming. The sandy soil must be light and airy so that your peanuts do not bump their heads and knock themselves out before getting big enough for you to eat them.
Where to Get Peanut Seeds:
Peanut seeds normally come two to a package down in the bulk food bins at your local grocery store. Those 2 nuts inside of a peanut shell will make you two peanut plants if you plant them in your garden. When shopping for peanut seeds to plant, buy unflavored, unsalted, raw peanuts. You want the raw plain peanuts that man has not fiddled with.
How to Start Peanuts:
Plant your peanut seeds one per starter cup inside. They want a sunny window to start in, but they will share the sun when necessary. Keep rotating your starting peanuts into the sun as you can. After they sprout, and after their true leaves have formed, they are happy enough taking a second row seat at the window and will grow towards the sun.
Peanuts are related to peas, they make an interesting addition to your houseplant collection while you are waiting for the warm outside weather to happen. You may transplant into bigger pots as necessary while waiting, and add light fertilizer if you wish.
Transplanting Peanuts Outside:
If you have sandy soil, you may transplant your peanut starts straight into your garden about 4-inches apart. Everybody else will have to create a sandy area for the peanuts to grow in:
Ideas: Find a discarded child’s plastic wading pool, and poke drain holes into the bottom. You can grow your peanuts in sand inside of the wading pool without adding sand into your main garden plot. Peanuts will also grow one plant per deep plastic dishpan on your patio. Large garden pots can be used, but they need to be pretty wide so that the peanuts have room to grow off to the sides of the plant under ground.
Watering Peanuts:
Sand dries out quickly, so you must water often. Peanuts do not like to be standing in water, make sure that you always have good drainage from start to finish.
What to Expect From Peanuts:
Your peanut plant will eventually flower, and the flower areas will send weird shoots down that burrow into the soil. When you see these shoots aiming for the dirt, help them along into the dirt with a little extra mulch on top if you would like. This is the part of the plant that will grow the nuts for you. This is why each plant needs some room around it for the shoots to burrow into.
To Harvest Peanuts:
After about four and one half months of growing time, loosen the dirt all of the way around the outer edges of where your shoots went into the ground. Grab the main plant by its base and pull hard to bring everything up at once. Drape this plant and nuts over a coat hanger for a few days to let it dry.
When you turn cold before your nuts are done growing, you can grab the edge of your wading pool and drag it into a sheltered warm area. Or, build it a plastic tarp greenhouse over the top of the wading pool, by using a few stakes and stapling the plastic to the sides of the pool with a staple gun.
Scouts, Classroom, HomeSchool Idea:
Start one or two peanut plants as explained above. When the plants are ready to be transplanted, give plants each a large normal-wide flower pot to live in. When peanut runners start forming, let the children each have a new Dixie cup of sand to coax their runner into.
Runners will grow nuts as long as they remain attached to the mother plant. They don’t seem to care where they are growing as long as the runner remains attached. Each child will be growing their own cup attached to the Momma Plant. This is a unique and inexpensive way of having the children understand how peanuts are formed. The big plant and baby peanuts both need water. All containers need good drainage.
