HOW TO GROW PEANUT (GROUND NUT) AT HOME

There is a popular believe and taught that growing peanut ( ground nut) at home is very difficult and impossible, and I say ” it’s very easy!, in fact, growing peanut at home is as easy as doing so in the farm! “. There is no difference growing ground nut/peanut at home or in the farm, the only difference is the quantity of production.

To grow peanut (ground nut) at home, get a good garden that has a loamy soil which is rich in organic matter with a soil pH of at least 6.5, prepare the garden for peanut farming, sow the peanuts and they will germinate and grow, then take care of them.

There are two ways peanut could be grown at home, they are, growing in the garden and growing at home with the help of containers and boxes.

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In this article, we are going to focus on growing peanut or ground nut in the home garden.

Growing peanut at home normally is for small scale production, as there is usually not enough space to grow it in a commercial quantity at home. So if you are to grow ground nut at home, have it in mind that you are doing so for personal/ domestic use.

In this article, we are going to learn about the complete steps and guide to plant and harvest peanut, including Storage and it’s uses or importance.

WHAT IS PEANUT ( GROUND NUT)

Peanut is a kind of nut in the family of legume, which grows in the soil. In so many places, it is known as ground nut, because it grows in the soil.

it’s botanical name is Arachis hypogaea and it’s seed (nut) contains alot of oil which is used as a cooking oil ( ground nut oil).

Peanut is shapeless and have a height of about half an inch to 1 inch on an average and contains small edible nuts inside which is gotten when the shell is broken.

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It is also a warm weather crop which can attain a height of about a foot to 2 feet and it’s life span is around 3 to 4 months.

I hope with my little description and the picture above you have known what a peanut is, now let’s dive into the main topic on how to grow it at home in the home Garden.

VARIETIES OF PEANUTS TO GROW AT HOME

This article will not be complete nor near completion without first of all enlighten you on some of the various Varieties of peanut.
This is to help you know the Varieties and also help you to make a good choice on the particular Variety that fits your environment very well. Some of them are:

Spanish peanuts: This Variety of peanut is normally grown the state of Texas and Oklahoma, their nuts have bright red skins.
This Variety of peanuts is used in candies or sold as salted, shelled peanuts for snacking and are also used in the manufacturing of peanut butter.

Valencia peanuts (Arachis fastigata): is usually found and produced in New Mexico. it is regarded as the most tasty of all the Varieties of peanuts and is therefore very popular for all natural and homemade peanut butters.
Valencia peanuts is also used to make delicious boiled peanuts.

Runner peanuts: These are primarily cultivated in these U.S. states, Georgia, Alabama and Florida, and Georgia is the highest producer of this Variety, producing about 40 percent of the U.S. peanut crop of this Variety.

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This Variety of peanuts are mainly used in the production of peanut butter.

Virginia peanuts: This Variety of peanut are primarily grown in these U.S. states, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. They cultivate the highest of this Variety of peanut and are usually used as snacking peanuts.
Virginia peanuts have also become very popular in gourmet, all-natural peanut butters.

CONDITIONS TO GROW PEANUT AT HOME

Before thinking of growing peanut (ground nut) at home, there are many Conditions which are to be considered and met. They are:

Weather Condition of the home garden: Weather Condition is one of the most important things to consider before starting to sow the peanut seeds. This is due to the fact that peanut, unlike many crops do require a certain weather or climate Condition to grow fine and produce good yields.

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Peanut is a warm weather crop, and so it doesn’t require much rainfall or irrigation, So it is not suprising why those in the hot regions of the world do product it in a commercial quantity, this is due to their weather condition. On an average, peanut requires a weather condition of about 15 to 25°C

Although peanut ( ground nut) could survive frost, but it might limit it’s yield, but it does not tolerate damp soil at all!.

So when siting the garden in your home to plant this crop, it is very important that you select the place where there is adequate sunshine which will provide enough needed heat and sunlight which every crop and living things also need to survive.

Soil: Soil is also an important Condition for the successful growth of peanut plant.

This plant do require a sandy loam or loamy soil with enough soil nutrients or organic matter to be able to grow healthy.

When preparing to start peanut cultivation in you home Garden, it is very necessary to taste the soil content and make sure the soil is has up to 6.5 to 7.5 soil pH.

The soil should not be waterlgged in anyway as waterlgged or damp soil do kill peanut plant faster than any disease.

So the amount of rainfall and irrigation there should be very minimal and in the case of over irrigation or too much rainfall, a good drainage system should be made to control the amount of water that is being stored or packed in the soil.

The Home garden should not be sloppy, infact it should be a level surface land that is devoid of erosion of any kind.

PREPARATION OF GARDEN FOR PEANUT CULTIVATION AT HOME

After you are done with the selection of a good garden in your home that qualifies for all the attributes I stated above, the next step is to prepare it for the ground nut cultivation.

To prepare the garden, you need tools such as Farm Hoe, Cutlass, rake, farm spade/shovel and a wheel barrow.

Use the Cutlass to cut down all the trees in the garden ( if there is any) as good amount of sunlight is needed in the garden.

Uproot all the bushes and grasses in it, after that, use wheelbarrow to pack them out of the garden, to where they will be burned. ( burn them or they may grow back).

After clearing the garden, use the rake to rake the land so that it will be totally clean, devoid of grasses and some hard objects in the ground which might hurt the crops or the farming equipments, such as stones, iron, nylon, broken bottles etc.

After you are through with it, the next step is to fumigate the soil with herbicide and insecticide. This is to delay both the weed and the insects that might hurt the plants at early stage, so that before they might have started developing, the plants must have grown very well and sometimes immune to the harm which they might portray.

After fumigating the soil with both herbicide and insecticide, now get a shovel or a big hoe, use them to make farm beds in the garden.

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The farm beds should be big enough to contain many peanut plants, so it should be on an average, a foot in height and 2, 3 or 4 feet in width, depending on the size of the home garden and the number of peanuts you wan to produce.

After making the farm beds, make tiny holes of an inch or 1 inch on top of them and give them a space of a foot gap or a little bit more.

Apart from growing the peanuts with farm beds, they could also be grown on a level land!. Although the use of farm bed is very much more preferable to this, but this method saves time and energy as you don’t need to do any farm bed.

To grow without the use of farm beds, after clearing the home garden and fumigating the soil, use Cutlass to make small holes of about 1 inch or a little bit more and give them a space of at least 2 feet gap.

PLANTING OF PEANUT (GROUND NUT) AT HOME

After getting the home garden ready for the planting, now get the peanut seeds to plant.

To get good quality seeds, there are many stores, more especially online Stores which could provide you with any type of good quality seed, which peanut is among. ( CHECK AT THE END OF THIS CONTENT FOR MY RECOMMENDED ONLINE SEED STORE)

Order the peanut seeds and when they arrive,dont go straight to the garden and plant them!, although they must have been given the necessary treatments etc, but there is one particular thing you have to do to help them germinate faster and easily.

When they arrive, don’t plant them that day, put them into a bowl and pour good amount of water on them and leave it for some hours or better do this at around 10 pm in the night and leave it till the next morning, then pour away the water, and dry them a little bit, then take them to the home Garden and plant them.

Plant them in those holes you made on an average of 2 or 3 seeds per hole, then cover them with sand.

Normally, if everything goes well, it will take about a week for the peanut seeds to start germinating and sprout out.

After planting, you need to water them for at least 3 or 4 times before they will sprout. Do not over water them, as only small amount of water is needed for this! ( a cooking spoonful of water is okay per plant). The water will help them to germinate and also aid them to grow healthy.

CARE OF PEANUT PLANTS GROWN AT HOME

When you might have sown the peanut seeds and they start germinating, this is when the work is starting, as you need to take care of them and nurture them till they grow and start bearing nuts.

To take care of the peanut plants, there are many ways to go about it, and some important among the ways to care for the peanut plants at home are:

Fertilizing/Manure: The application of Fertilizer or manure is one of the most important care to give to peanut or ground nut plants being grown at home.

This is important and unavoidable as it is highly needed by the plants to gain more nutrients which they will need to survive and sustain themselves on the long run and also to give a good quality yields.

There are many types of Fertilizer which are good for this plant, and so should be used! Fertilizers such as 10:10:10 can also be a good Fertilizer to apply to the peanut garden.

Organic manure is also very good, in fact, I do use organic manure on many of my crops and they do very great and produce great taste, that’s why am always suggesting the use of organic manure in many of my blog posts, because it is good! (although am not against the use of Fertilizers, they are good also! and I do use them too)

Manures such as animal dungs, kitchen wastes or rubbish from kitchen and green compost are great for this plant, more especially animal dungs such as pig, cow, fowl, goat and sheep dung etc are excellent!

To apply organic manure on the peanut home garden, it is very advisable to start the process at the early stage, before the seeds are sown.

After clearing the home Garden, before the farm beds are made, take huge amount of organic manure, especially animal dungs and spray them on the entire garden and leave them there to be absorbed by the soil so that they could nourish the soil.

Even after making the farm beds, spray some on top of the beds also, leave them there for rain to break them down for the soil to absorb or irrigation/water could be used to break them down by spraying water on them. After they must have been absolutely and we’ll absorbed by the soil, then proceed to sow the seeds.

Believe me, if you follow this step, there won’t be any need to apply Fertilizer or manure again till the plants are in their mid stage ( at least 2 months old) then they could be applied with Fertilizer or manure again which will be the final!

If you do this, i guarantee you that you will not only produce healthy peanut plants, but also good quality peanuts! because this is what works for me and it should work for you too!.

Watering/Irrigation: Irrigation is also another important care needed by the peanut plants.

Although peanut is a warm weather plant, that does not mean it doesn’t need any water at all to survive, it is a pure lie! it does! in fact peanut plant needs good amount of water, just like every other crop to survive, despite it’s warm or hot weather nature.

On an average, this plant needs about 450mm to 1000mm of annual rainfall in order to grow well.

One thing peanut plant hates very well is damp or waterlogged soil. It does need water, but dislike it in excess.

So irrigation or watering is very much needed in order to grow peanut at home.

To water peanut plants at home, use watering can or bucket, as the garden can not be very large, or use hose connected to tap to spray water on them.

On an average, peanut ( ground nut) plants should be watered at least 3 or 4 times in a week if there is no rainfall, and if there is, no need to do so as the rain will take care of that! and it should be watered in the cool morning or late evening.

NOTE – It is very important that you know the amount of water you release on them as over watering could lead to waterlogging the soil which is very harmful to the plant.

Weeding: Weed is one of the most disturbing factors in any type of crop farming and the case of peanut is not different.

whithin a few weeks, when the peanut seeds are sown, weeds of many kinds will tend to sprout out from every angle in the garden and if not properly taken care of will harm the young plants in every ramifications. They will either infect the plants with diseases, harbor some pests and even compete with the plants in term of sucking off the soil nutrients which the plants will need to use to grow up and give good quality yields.

When they start coming out, immediate Care is needed by removing them with either a weeding hoe or with a herbicide.

Earlier in this article, I made mention of using herbicides to fumigate the soil even before sowing the peanut seeds. This is a very good strategy to curtail and checkmate the activities of weeds so that they don’t grow up at all in the garden or they will be delayed, by which time the plants might have grown enough, and their threat have reduced.

Mulch: This is a very important care required by peanut plant, but unfortunately, many people tends to ignore it.

Although peanut is a warm weather plant, but it does not mean that it doesn’t require water, so mulch is very necessary when growing peanut in the dry season because it helps the soil to retain a good amount of water and also helps to protect the peanut roots and when decay will turn to manure.

To mulch, get a good number not green leaves, use them to cover the bottom of the plants.

Prune: Another way to take care of this plant is through pruning. When the plants must have started maturing, some parts might start wilting, drying and dying off, in this case, it is very great if those parts are removed so that the rest of the plants could look healthy and refresh.

Pests and diseases of peanut plant: Peanut ( ground nut ) plant is one of the plants that are very prone to various kinds of disease. Peanut plant has many diseases and pests which might attack and destroy the whole garden if not properly taken care of. Some of them are:

Some of the pests includes: Wireworms and earwigs bore holes in developing peanut pods throughout the semi‐arid tropics. White grubs and termites also damage the roots.

Others are termites and millipedes,

Some of the diseases are:

Early Leaf Spot: It is caused by Cercospora arachidicola Hori.

Late Leaf Spot: It is the causal agent late leaf spot

Late Leaf Spot.

Rust.

Web Blotch.

Phyllosticta Leaf Spot

Alternaria Leaf Spot

Alternaria Leaf Blight.

Cercospora Leaf Blight

In order to terminate all these diseases and Control the pests, proper care should be given to the plants through the use of some chemicals such as insecticide.

This is one of the reasons I do recommend the fumigation of the soil with insecticide and some other disease prevention chemicals before sowing the seeds.

There are many Fertilizers that could also do the work.

Crop rotation can also serve as a solution to this. By cultivating the crop in another garden, next season, instead of using the same garden will go a long way to curtail the number and level of these diseases and pests.

HOW TO HARVEST PEANUT IN THE HOME GARDEN

Peanut ( ground nut ) is a root crop, so the harvest takes place in the ground, on its roots.

On an average, a peanut plant takes about 3 or 4 months to be matured and due for harvest.

To know when they have matured enough for harvest, their leaves will turn from Green to yellow and some of them will look Wilt and dry. At this stage, they are fully matured and ready to be harvested, and any further delay might result in rot or decay or might even attract bunch of insects.

To harvest them, you need to be very careful in order not to destroy the peanut s in the Ground.

You need either a hoe or a spade to harvest them.

Use the tools to dig around the bottom of the plants. Give a space of about 8 inches to the plant, in order not to cut the peanuts in the ground.

After digging round the plants, use the tools to pull the plant and their roots out or use hands to pull them out carefully.

After getting them out, you will now see the peanut ( ground nut) stuck in the roots, remove them and put them in a bowl.

After harvesting, place them in a tray and keep them under the sun to dry before eating or storing.

STORAGE

After harvesting and drying under the sun, it is very likely that they will not be consumed immediately or sold immediately too, this made Storage very inevitable.

Although there might be a very Limited amount of peanuts that will be grown at home, but storage is still important!.

It is very simple to store peanuts after harvest.

When they are totally dry, they can either be broken and the nuts gotten out or be stored with their shell. In any way you prefer, they are good. Dry container or bag could be used to Store. Place them in the bag or container, and keep them in a dry and warmth room with enough air penetration.

In many places, pyramids are elected just to store them.

When stored very well, they could last up to a year or more.

USES/IMPORTANCE OF GROWING PEANUT (GROUND NUT) AT HOME

Growing ground nut at home has many advantages than when grown in the farm out side the home, some of the importance of growing Ground nut at home are:

Growing it at home gives you the opportunity to be in close contact with your plants, as you will always see them on daily basis which will make you to give much more care to them than when grown out side the home.

It is easier to carry out some certain tasks in the garden than when grown outside the home. Things like watering, etc.

It saves transportation money which might have been used to get to the farm.

Although the number might be small, but it allows for easy access to the plants. This means you could quickly harvest and use them any time you want because they are closer to you.

Peanut is used to produce many foods such as butter, cooking oil, baking etc.

It is a very costly product, both at the domestic and the international level, and thus could enrich the farmer and improve the economy.

MY RECOMMENDED SEEDS STORE

Conclusion

When you follow every thing I have taught here, you will be able to grow your own peanut ( Ground nut) at home successfully.

Contact me via my email for any business or question, details below.

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