Fastigata pin striped and Negrito Manduvi peanuts
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2024 7:28 pm
In my micro climate here in Coastal Northern California, it's nearly impossible to grow peanuts here because the weather just doesn't get enough units of heat during the grow season. During the fall, We will regularly get a few days every year that reach a high of 100+ farenheit (38C+) but then after about the early to mid afternoon, the cool breeze from the ocean will kick in and it'll go down to the mid to low 70's (around 21C or so). It's such a unique microclimate! It's not quite coastal, but not quite inland, maybe a hybrid of the two! That means it's also really windy here, we're in a very powerful wind tunnel.
Our lack of heat units also means we can't grow Okra outdoors: I tried the previous season and after 5 months in the ground, the plants were just barely bigger than seedling sized! They NEVER grew before the frost arrived in October. Unless you get the right variety, we can barely grow eggplants/bell peppers but we can get away with growing corn, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and many other summer crops. 10 minutes down the road, growers have no issues growing all of the heat loving summer veggies outdoors, their temperature is between 6-15F warmer than at my house!
So what do you do when you live in a climate that's too cold for peanuts but you want to grow them really bad and you have the will to try it out? Jimmy rig a hoop house! Let me tell you though, it's a huge learning curve to get the temperatures right in these little "mini-greenhouses": one day, you might have the sides opened up too much, and the next day when it's warmer, the sides won't be opened enough! It has to be fiddled with on a daily basis, it's a lot of work so not something you'd want to do unless you get a kick out of it!
I've tried growing peanuts before about 1 degree latitude south of my current latitude where it actually gets much warmer, and while I did succeed and getting peanuts, the plants barely grew to any decent size and the yield was very low. We also had pill bugs which destroyed the pin striped peanut flowers, so those didn't produce anything, I only had success with the Negrito Manduvi variety.
Fast forward 5 years later, I still have some of the original seed packets in cold storage, and they surprisingly still have near 100% germination! They are in their shell, that's probably helping a lot, along with keeping them very dry and cool the whole time. Being in California, it's nearly impossible to acquire a wide variety of peanuts to grow because of the State's very strict rules about bringing them in: CA is a huge agricultural state and can't afford to be introducing pests, pathogens, and diseases. Consequently, almost no seed company is willing to ship them here! I had acquired these seeds in person from a seed vendor and didn't realize at the time that it would probably be one of the few opportunity I'd get to try these varieties out!
They were germinated indoors under lights with a heat Matt and grew super fast/strong! After being hardened off outdoors, I planted them directly into the ground and surprisingly, despite tearing the roots up pretty bad, there was no wilting, they are quite tolerant of root disturbance at the seedling stage!
That said, It was very difficult to fine tune the exact right temperature for them: one day, the leaves would all be folded, and I had no idea why! Don't they like warm temperatures? turns out, they weren't yet established and the temperatures were too high for them, but just on that one day! I lifted up the side of the hoop house and the next day, the leaves were still folded. What the heck?!!! Turns out, it was too cold for them, so I lowered the sides that day and the leaves opened up. Bingo! This was a game of reading the plant and figuring out how to "rig" the sides of the hoop house on any given day. Folded leaves during the day=plant is mad, open leaves during the day=plant is happy! Keep in mind, the plant closes their leaves during the night and this is probably normal.
Anyways, about 2 weeks after planting them into the ground, I'm finally starting to see new growth emerging from the plants, so it seems as though this is working! I'm pretty confident that as long as I don't cook them, this grow setup will work!
here's a picture of Negrito Manduvi. The plants are relatively small but I'm sure they can get much bigger in warmer climates. They're actually quite vigorous, all things considered. I planted these very close to each other assuming it will be hard to size them up here even with a hoop house over them, I also wanted as much diversity as possible from the packet so I can do a seed increase and have more to plant in the future:
Here is the Fastigata pin stripped peanut (everything in the photo except the two rows to the right). These are quite vigorous and can form much larger plants, but I still packed them in there in the hopes of maintaining diversity. It wouldn't be too disappointing if these crossed with Negrito Manduvi:
A close up of one of the plants. The older leaves look a little bit "mad" but if you look at the new leaves emerging from the growth point, it appears they're acclimating well and maybe will have much better growth now that they're established:
I'll update this thread as the plants grow so stay tuned.....
Our lack of heat units also means we can't grow Okra outdoors: I tried the previous season and after 5 months in the ground, the plants were just barely bigger than seedling sized! They NEVER grew before the frost arrived in October. Unless you get the right variety, we can barely grow eggplants/bell peppers but we can get away with growing corn, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and many other summer crops. 10 minutes down the road, growers have no issues growing all of the heat loving summer veggies outdoors, their temperature is between 6-15F warmer than at my house!
So what do you do when you live in a climate that's too cold for peanuts but you want to grow them really bad and you have the will to try it out? Jimmy rig a hoop house! Let me tell you though, it's a huge learning curve to get the temperatures right in these little "mini-greenhouses": one day, you might have the sides opened up too much, and the next day when it's warmer, the sides won't be opened enough! It has to be fiddled with on a daily basis, it's a lot of work so not something you'd want to do unless you get a kick out of it!
I've tried growing peanuts before about 1 degree latitude south of my current latitude where it actually gets much warmer, and while I did succeed and getting peanuts, the plants barely grew to any decent size and the yield was very low. We also had pill bugs which destroyed the pin striped peanut flowers, so those didn't produce anything, I only had success with the Negrito Manduvi variety.
Fast forward 5 years later, I still have some of the original seed packets in cold storage, and they surprisingly still have near 100% germination! They are in their shell, that's probably helping a lot, along with keeping them very dry and cool the whole time. Being in California, it's nearly impossible to acquire a wide variety of peanuts to grow because of the State's very strict rules about bringing them in: CA is a huge agricultural state and can't afford to be introducing pests, pathogens, and diseases. Consequently, almost no seed company is willing to ship them here! I had acquired these seeds in person from a seed vendor and didn't realize at the time that it would probably be one of the few opportunity I'd get to try these varieties out!
They were germinated indoors under lights with a heat Matt and grew super fast/strong! After being hardened off outdoors, I planted them directly into the ground and surprisingly, despite tearing the roots up pretty bad, there was no wilting, they are quite tolerant of root disturbance at the seedling stage!
That said, It was very difficult to fine tune the exact right temperature for them: one day, the leaves would all be folded, and I had no idea why! Don't they like warm temperatures? turns out, they weren't yet established and the temperatures were too high for them, but just on that one day! I lifted up the side of the hoop house and the next day, the leaves were still folded. What the heck?!!! Turns out, it was too cold for them, so I lowered the sides that day and the leaves opened up. Bingo! This was a game of reading the plant and figuring out how to "rig" the sides of the hoop house on any given day. Folded leaves during the day=plant is mad, open leaves during the day=plant is happy! Keep in mind, the plant closes their leaves during the night and this is probably normal.
Anyways, about 2 weeks after planting them into the ground, I'm finally starting to see new growth emerging from the plants, so it seems as though this is working! I'm pretty confident that as long as I don't cook them, this grow setup will work!
here's a picture of Negrito Manduvi. The plants are relatively small but I'm sure they can get much bigger in warmer climates. They're actually quite vigorous, all things considered. I planted these very close to each other assuming it will be hard to size them up here even with a hoop house over them, I also wanted as much diversity as possible from the packet so I can do a seed increase and have more to plant in the future:
Here is the Fastigata pin stripped peanut (everything in the photo except the two rows to the right). These are quite vigorous and can form much larger plants, but I still packed them in there in the hopes of maintaining diversity. It wouldn't be too disappointing if these crossed with Negrito Manduvi:
A close up of one of the plants. The older leaves look a little bit "mad" but if you look at the new leaves emerging from the growth point, it appears they're acclimating well and maybe will have much better growth now that they're established:
I'll update this thread as the plants grow so stay tuned.....