A 1690s Peanut is Reborn
nationalpeanutboard.org
nationalpeanutboard.org
They are nitrogen fixing like most legumes. There are small nodules their roots that harbor nitrogen producing organisms.
A few people in my community garden have grown a few smaller plants. I prefer planting snow peas early to give my summer plants a nitrogen boost.
Peanuts have a long growing season and require 100 to 130 depending on the variety of frost-free days to reach maturity. USDA Zone 7 and above should plan on starting seeds for peanuts indoors 4-5 weeks before the last anticipated frost date. Zones 8 and above can start inside to get a head start, or sow directly into your garden beds after your last frost date.
> Can peanuts grow pretty much anywhere in the U.S.?
desert plants, so most probably not in snow or frost areas
They are much better than strawberries for CA at least, but the winning strategy with water if you are a small farmer is not reducing its consume. This would benefit mainly your competitor companies that can use more water and push you off of the road at mid term. Is similar to the problem of not using a big server after having spent solid money building it. You are not saving money or energy, really, and your part of the cake is just reduced
Either everybody saves water at the same time, or is just big fishes trying to convince the small ones to surrender part of its quote so there are more resources for them
Peanuts are IMO similar. They require warm nights and a long growing season, so any northern or moutainous area will need _some_ extra considerations and can't rely on cold-weather breeds to paper over the problem. You might want a much longer stint indoors than other plants before tossing them in your garden. Like tomatoes, they're not crazy about excess moisture (and where tomatoes just die when they get fungal infections, there's a wide range of conditions where peanuts will still produce but the produce will be toxic). Otherwise they're pretty easy.
If you would like to learn more about various foods on the edge of existence, check it out (no affiliation, just a happy reader).
Fascinating that a plant native to and very widely cultivated in South America made it to the American colonies by way of Africa. Were they not grown by indigenous peoples in the North?
https://www.aboutpeanuts.com/all-about-peanuts/origin-histor...
This particular cultivar was brought from Africa to North America and was considered “extinct” once it was no longer planted in North America. But what about Africa? Is it no longer grown in Africa? Why not?
https://www.aboutpeanuts.com/all-about-peanuts/origin-histor...
My wife and I stumbled upon a local group selling heirloom tomato plants a couple of years ago. We grew a few and soon realized why they became heirlooms. The nicest thing that can be said is that they must be an acquired taste.
But IMO commodity tomatoes are some of the "easiest" things to improve upon. Regular supermarket tomatoes are often flavorless, the farmer's market tomatoes are often better (e.g. in California)
So heirlooms have higher highs and lower lows
IMO commodity tomatoes are consistent, but consistently "meh" ...
Like most things, it’s a different set of priorities and incentives that drive different results.
One clue is, the gene that ripens tomatoes is also the one that causes the skin to split. So the seeds get spread. But not useful for commercial use, as split tomatoes are worthless to sell. So they use varieties that don't express that gene. So they don't ripen much. So they are tasteless, no matter how long on the vine.
Definitely grow your own, if you care about tomatoes at all and have the room@!
A mutation of the SlGLK2 gene results in significantly less sugar in the fruit while slowing down ripening for transport.
Would you like to know how "Not From Concentrate" orange juice is manufactured? It may not be concentrated, but it involves many industrial processes and can be up to a year old when you buy it.
Fake food.
But I can't disagree strongly enough with calling store-bought and/or industrialized food "fake".
It's different. It has different tradeoffs. It's worse in some ways (and better in others), but what it most definitely is not is "fake".
I think I learned about Salmon being artifically pink from Hacker News several years ago
https://qz.com/358811/heres-why-your-farmed-salmon-has-color...
On the bright side, essentially everyone I know seems to like local produce, BEFORE I tell them it's local. Their taste buds are still attuned, and can tell the difference
(in this case the remainder isn't thrown out, but hand shelled).
Obviously that shelling machine is designed to process bigger peanuts. Would it be difficult to re-design it (or make adaptable) to handle smaller ones?
That would seem inevitable if this peanut becomes more popular. Hand shelling 30% of a peanut harvest, in 2024? Come on...
The knee-jerk reaction is to say “no, just make all the parts smaller.”, but at some point the peanut and the shell are the same weight and fragments of shell are the same dimensions as a single peanut. Throw in variation on both sides and it becomes a difficult problem most likely requiring a good optical recognition system.
I personally use avocado oil for anything that peanut oil would be useful for (like high-temp cooking).
I worked on a farm growing rape seed in Germany and once slept on the side of a rape seed field outside Malmo, Sweden on summer solstice night, a very short night.
I've also noticed a movement renaming to canola seed. Yeah, some people need a new name for everything.
That is surprising. How would a GPS error affect crop yield? I know about plant hardiness zones, but that's it.
This study -- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1034/j.1398-9995....
"Quantification of major peanut allergens Ara h 1 and Ara h 2 in the peanut varieties Runner, Spanish, Virginia, and Valencia, bred in different parts of the world"
concluded:
"The results suggest that peanuts of different varieties, and from different parts of the world contain similar proteins, including Ara h 1 and Ara h 2. Consequently, the IgE-binding properties are similar to a great extent. This indicates that differences in the serology of peanut allergy may not originate from differences in the allergen composition of the peanut."
So probably no difference with 1690s either.
Maybe I can get some of these!