Peanuts – via Hydroponics!
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Heard the latest scare—-salmonella in peanut butter. Previous years the threat was in chicken and eggs. Well…we cook chicken and eggs…fine. Just recently, the threat was in spinach and tomatoes. Easy solution, just cook the spinach and the tomatoes. What is that? You don’t like cooked tomatoes in your fresh lettuce salad? Well, cooked peanut butter on celery sticks does sound raunchy, too. Hold on there. Whoa. We are trotting down the wrong path.
Let’s consider hydroponics for a minute. Lynette Morgan and Douglas Peckenpaugh have written a book called Hydroponic Solutions Volume 1 and we do need a alternative peanut butter plan here. The large Virginia peanuts are recommended to be grown hydroponically. They catch fungi very easily so need to be “dusted or treated with a good fungicide”.
They plant the peanuts in “a pumice and coconut fiber media”. Peanuts planted in “aeroponic units” allow the planter to watch the pegs or, rather, stalks that develop young prenuts on them. Since peanut plants can grow “about 30-40 pods”, hence a 2.6 gallon container that contains a “friable and light media that does not restrict the development process.”
Although some plants grow vastly different hydroponically, peanuts are not one of them. They “need a long, warm growing season – about 140 frost free days” if they are to yield well. When the leaves start to turn yellow, it is time to harvest the nuts. Taking the stalks with the peanuts attached, the peanuts are literally hung up to dry “for about 4 weeks.”
Please comment if you know how to make peanut butter out of peanuts. The best process or recipe will win….haven’t figured that out yet, but they will win ..something!
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Randy from Randys Hydroponics (see the Blogroll) leaves this comment:
Your post about growing peanuts hydroponically was interesting, and I would recommend the grow bags for that application. I think they would work well and are very economical. I would also recommend animal bedding grade pine shavings for the media. It is much cheaper than coir, although I don’t know if it performs better, worse or much worse.