Growing Peanuts at Home

Peanuts are a great addition to a home garden since they require minimal care and provide bountiful yields. If you’re looking to try something new in your garden this year, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at the potential of peanuts.

Home-grown peanuts offer lots of possibilities in the kitchen. Talk about peanut gallery! They can be roasted in their shells, ground into peanut butter or boiled for a traditional down-home Southern snack.

Carwile's Virginia, an heirloom peanut variety introduced by Southern Exposure. The plants have great drought resistance.

When you are selecting peanut seeds for planting, it’s helpful to keep in mind that there are four main types of peanuts. Virginia peanuts have the largest seeds, and are usually roasted in the shell and have a more gourmet quality. Runner peanuts typically have a uniform size and are the preferred choice for grinding into peanut butter. Spanish peanuts have the smallest seeds, and are used for mixed nut snacks. They also have the highest oil content. Valencia peanuts are known for being the sweetest and for having attractive, bright red skin.

If you purchase a peanut seed package from us, you’ll notice that we ship peanuts still in their shells to ensure seed protection and preservation. Before you plant your peanuts, they will need to be shelled. Be careful not to damage the seeds while cracking them open.

In the garden…

Peanuts generally need a long growing season and relatively sandy soil, although Tennessee Red Valencia peanut can grow in clay soil. However, if you add enough organic matter by hilling or planting in raised beds, most peanut plants will be able to grow in clay soil.

Selecting peanut seeds for planting is easy once you figure out what works best with your garden conditions. Growing peanuts requires 130-140 frost-free days from the time they are sown until harvest time. If your growing season falls just short of this time window, it’s possible to start growing your peanuts indoors or in a greenhouse until the danger of frost passes and then transplant them outside.

A peanut plant in flower. From here on the plant needs steady water.

Plant peanuts one to two inches deep and about six inches apart. Next, add a thick layer of compost and a layer of mulch.

Be aware–peanuts need shallow weeding. You could damage them by digging too deeply into the ground where they are are developing. When the plant begins to flower, pegs will drop  into the ground under the flower and produce peanuts. Hand-weeding is the only option after the peanut pegs.

Also, after your plants start flowering, it’s important not to let them dry out or they won’t produce as many of the mouth-watering legumes you’ve been waiting for.

Once frost is in the forecast or the plant stems begin to turn yellow, it’s time to harvest. Try not to harvest while the soil is wet, and don’t wait too long to harvest your peanuts–they’ll  start sprouting in the ground if left unattended! Dig around the perimeter of where the plant’s leaves have sprawled. Lift the plant out of the ground and flip it, so that the leaves are on the ground. If rain is in the forecast, bring your plants into a shed or garage.

Dried peanuts (left); freshly harvested peanut plants (right).

A couple days later, it will be time to pull the peanuts off the plant. Most of them will be in a clump at the center of the roots, but some will also be attached to the lower branches.  A well-grown peanut plant can yield 50 -100 peanuts–more than enough for your next ball game outing! Spread the peanuts out to dry for a month where critters won’t be able to get to them, then store them in a closed container. Peanuts left in their shells can stay fresh for years.

In the kitchen…

Home-grown peanuts are fun and simple to use in your kitchen and offer some great snack options. You can roast them, grind them into a fresh peanut butter or boil the raw, green peanuts.

Roasting peanuts is easy as pie…or, shall I say, peanut brittle! Simply spreading your peanuts on a cookie sheet and bake them at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure they roast evenly. You can add a sprinkle of salt over them if you wish. Yum!

Roasted peanuts
Home-grown peanuts turn into home-made peanut butter!

To make peanut butter, mix two cups of roasted peanuts with two teaspoons of vegetable or peanut oil. “Chop” this mixture in your food processor for three or four minutes.

Feel free to add honey to taste, or toss in some of lightly chopped peanuts for a chunky texture.

To make boiled peanuts the good ole Southern way, you’ll need one pound of freshly-dug (green) peanuts still in their shell, four cups of water, and one quarter cup of salt.

Combine the salt, water, and peanuts in a thick-bottomed pot. Bring to a boil and cover.   Simmer the peanuts and saltwater for at least three hours. For added flavor, you could throw in a dash of paprika or your favorite spice blend.

Boiled peanuts

The longer the peanuts boil, the tastier they will be. Be sure to eat your boiled peanuts within a few days–they don’t last as long as roasted or raw peanuts. But you probably won’t need me to remind you to eat up. Your taste buds should do the job just fine!

Southern Exposure’s Seed Catalogs 2011

It seems like this year’s gardening season flew by.  Once again, we’re cleaning off the last bean seeds and running germination tests.  Already everyone at Southern Exposure is getting ready for next year; we are starting to draw garden maps to figure out which plots will be fallow and which ones will grow Abe Lincoln tomatoes and Chinese Five Color peppers.

The cover of our 2011 catalog

We figure that you, too, are ready to start thinking about something besides hard frosts and bare trees.  I am thrilled to announce that our organic and heirloom seed catalogs 2011 will be dropping into mailboxes in the next few weeks!

Request a Copy of Southern Exposure’s Free Seed Catalog

On behalf of the whole crew at Southern Exposure, I hope that you have fun flipping through our catalog full of heirloom vegetable seeds, organic flower seeds, herbs and native plants.  We strive to offer the best seeds possible.  Many of our seeds are organic, or sustainable farmed by dedicated seed growers.

Some of the new varieties in our seed catalog include:

Lipstick Pepper
This pepper is a great option if your growing season is on the short side since the plant starts fruiting three or four weeks before most other pepper plants.  The peppers are chunky and triangular, and ripen from green to red.  They are flavorful and sweet.

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Nootka Rose Garlic
The Nootka Rose garlic variety is an heirloom that originally comes from Washington state. This is a great Silverskin option as it’s long storing and produces large bulbs 15-25 cloves.  The cloves have a rich flavor and medium heat.  Nootka Rose is almost too pretty to eat, with its white outer skin and pink clove wrapper!  A must for garlic braids.

Broken Colors Four O’Clock Flower
The Broken Colors Four O’Clock is an heirloom variety that was recently all but lost.   The plant grows about thirty inches tall and is a prolific producer of small flowers that open and close early in the morning and again in late afternoon.  The speckled petals range in color from dark purple and pale pink to vibrant yellow and snow white.

Easter Egg Radish
The Easter Egg radish is a great way to add some color to your late spring salads since these radishes range in color from a deeply saturated purple to bright pink and white skins and uniform white flesh.  The radishes have a light peppery taste behind their crispy texture.

Frances’s Choice Marigold Flower
A cutting garden must-have.  These marigolds are well suited to grow in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.  The plant produces abundant flowers that have dark red petals with golden edges.  The flowers are great for using in bouquets and vases since the stems average eight inches long.

Kebarika Snap Bean
This heirloom bush bean originated in Kenya.  The dry shell bean plants have excellent tolerance for heat and drought.  Kebarika plants are sturdy and upright, and grow loads of six-inch pods holding about five black and white mottled beans each.  Be sure to pay close attention to these plants as the harvest window is pretty short.

Of course, you’ll also find that our 2011 Catalog & Garden Guide is chock-full of our tried-and-true varieties. To us–and hopefully to you–these veteran seeds are trusted friends.

Enjoy!

Sierra Lettuce (left), Brenda Jordan's Heirloom Celosia (center), and Dragon's Claw Millet (right) are returning varieties in our 2011 catalog.

Celebrations of Sun and Soil

Keeping Up with SESE

Recently, we here at Southern Exposure have had the pleasure of participating in two lovely, sustainability-focused events: our 4th annual Heritage Harvest Festival, held at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello right here in Virginia, and the inaugural Mother Earth News Fair at the Seven Springs Resort southeast of Pittsburgh.

Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello

Our booth at HHF with Monticello in the background

Thomas Jefferson was an avid gardener and agriculturalist and, if alive today, would surely be a passionate advocate of the organic food movement. In honor of this, Monticello and Southern Exposure have been co-hosting the Heritage Harvest Festival (HHF)–a celebration of local food, gardening and sustainable agriculture.

Our wire seed rack on display at HHF

On Saturday, September 11th, 3,000 people flooded Monticello’s West Lawn to attend workshops and hands-on demonstrations as well as to admire Jefferson’s beautifully-restored gardens.

Experts from around the country shared their knowledge with participants at a variety of wonderful lectures. Among these master gardeners were our very own Ira Wallace and Ken Bezilla. Ira educated listeners about heirloom garlic and later, she threw a tea party! At her workshop Herbal “High” Tea, Ira served fancy herbal teas and delicious anise cookies while teaching participants how to grow the herbs needed to make such sweet and savory delights.

At Ken’s lecture, he delved into fall and winter gardening for Zone 6. Besides recommending winter greens and roots that participants could begin growing as well as naming crops such as garlic and onion that could be started for next year, Ken talked about frost preparation for summer crops, row cover, and what to do for your plants when it snows.

Andros putting out tomatoes samples

Over at our Southern Exposure booth, we hosted pepper, melon and tomato tastings that enveloped us in a flurry of activity all day long. The continuous stream of people wanting to try our numerous heirloom tomato varieties kept our ex-line cook Andros chopping tomatoes at lightening speed for hours.

Mother Earth News Fair

The first ever Mother Earth News Fair, held at the Seven Springs Resort in Pennsylvania, was a huge success, with over 9,000 participants and nearly 200 workshops. The fair was a hands-on sustainable lifestyle event that featured an eco-friendly marketplace, organic and local food tastings, and lectures by leading authorities on gardening, green building and renewable energy. We’re glad we got to be there and that we were asked to be a Supporting Partner of the event.

River and Gordon at our Mother Earth News Fair booth
Mmmm, garlic tasting!

An entire table of our booth was dedicated to seed swapping. We happily looked on as friends of Southern Exposure exchanged all sorts of seeds, from passion fruit to wildflowers, amongst each other.

People perusing our booth could also sample squash, tomato, pepper and garlic varieties–all of which we grew in our garden.

And Ira, ever a fountain of useful information, gave four lectures.

Ira's lecture "Growing Great Garlic and Perennial Onions"

When she wasn’t teaching attendees how to grow garlic, perennial onions, herbs and heirloom tomatoes, she was instructing people on how to eat fresh from their gardens all winter long.

If you missed the fun in Pennsylvania, come visit our booth next year! We’ll definitely be back, and with even more Southern Exposure goodness.

If you’ll be on the West Coast in June or September next year, you can also find us at these Mother Earth News Fairs:

June 4-5, 2011 – Seattle Metro Area, Puyallup Fairgrounds, Puyallup, Wash.
Sept. 3-5, 2011 – San Francisco Metro Area, Marin Center, San Rafael, Calif.

Upcoming Events: Where to Find Us This Winter

We’re donating ten percent of our sales from winter events to the Organic Seed Alliance, so come on out and celebrate seeds with us!

Dec 3-5 Carolina Farm Stewardship Association’s 25th Sustainable Agriculture Conference in Winston-Salem, NC
Dec 12 Appalachian Seed Swap in Bristol, TN
Jan 19-22 Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) in Chattanooga, TN
Feb 10 Organic Seed Intensive in Portland, OR
Feb 11-12 Organicology in Portland, OR
Feb 11-12 Virginia Association for Biological Farming (VABF) in Danville, VA
Mar 5-6 Organic Growers School in Asheville, NC
Mar 10-12 Georgia Organics in Savannah, GA