Jill Fitzpatrick, age 13, of Niagara Falls,Ontario, Canada, for her question:
Where do peanuts grow?
Peanuts, sad to say, do not grow with the delicious peaches that thrive around Niagara Falls. They need almost five months of hot summer weather, sprinkled with plenty of showers. Once in a while there is a possible peanut growing summer in New England. But most of our crops come from the southern parts of the United States. Peanuts also grow in certain warm, moist parts of China and Central and South America.
Many people think that peanuts grow on, nut trees, but actually the meaty little beans grow in the soil. The peanut plant is a member of the bean or legume family. Peas and other plants of this family sprout tendrils that twine around trellises. The peanut sprouts a sort of tendril called a peduncle. Its many peduncles poke down into the soil and produce peanuts.
The remarkable peanut plant got its start in tropical South America, where about half of the vegetables on our menu originated. We know that it was cultivated by the talented farmers of Peru, long ages before Columbus discovered the New World. Now it is cultivated in many parts of South and Central America. In North America, abundant crops for market grow in Virginia and other southern Atlantic states, in Oklahoma and in several states around the Gulf of Mexico.
Peanut crops need a hot summer that lasts four to five months, bringing frequent showers that add up to 20 inches of rainfall. They need a slightly acid soil, and the surface should have a thick layer of loose, mulch material.
The seeds are the so called nuts that come in pale crisp shells. They are planted soon after the last possible frost, as the ground warms up for summer. If the spring is nice and warm, the plants begin to sprout in about a week. The spreading bushes are very, very thirsty and when showers fail to fall, the crops must be irrigated. As the tender green bushes spread out and grow a foot or so high, loose dirt mixed with straw type material is mounded up around their stems.
The dainty green bushes produce pretty yellow pea blossoms and also shy little flowers that hide under the leaves. These secretive flowers send down the dangling peduncles that poke their tips into the loose soil. There the secret pods of peanuts will develop and mature.
Toward the end of summer, the delicate greenery becomes dry and yellow. The farmer then pokes around in the loose soil to get a sample of the ripening peanuts. If the insides of the shells are veined with pink, it is harvest time. The dried plants are pulled up, along with clusters of peanuts dangling from their peduncles.
For two months or so, the plants must be dried in open sheds. Sometimes the pods are set to cure on wire screens. At last the tasty, nutritious legumes are ready for a final 20 minute toasting in an oven. By late fall, they are ready to be packaged for market or shipped to factories that mash them to make peanut butter and a multitude of other delicious peanut products.