Garden - June 2011

Monday, 20 June 2011

This is the 3rd year i've had a garden and the 2nd year with good soil. I planted more seeds then last year, i didn't space the rows out as much, so we'll see how it goes.

• 3 rows of corn
• peanuts
• sunflowers
• 3 types of tomatoes
• lettuce
• gourds
• squash
• 3 types of pumpkins
• carrots
• peppers

I planted everything when it was 80, then it went down to 40 degrees at night and rained for a week. But i did mix in mulch and pearlite.
Charlie on guard duty. Again this year his job is to kill any animal that try's to eat my corn.

The corn and sunflowers are doing great, squirrels ate the peanuts and most of the potatoes though.

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Peanuts

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

While reading about palm trees i learned about growing date palms. And while reading about date palms i learned about growing peanuts. It looked like a cool idea so i bought a bag of RAW peanuts from Walmart.

For peanuts the soil temperature has to be hot for 100-120 days, depending on the type of peanut. Valencia and Spanish peanuts would have been the best here in Michigan because they only need 100 days. But i couldn't find those.

The only raw peanuts they had still in the shell were Virginia peanuts.
So i soaked them for a day and they really swelled up, probably double their original size. I've heard mixed theories about planting them in the shell or without the shell so i did both.

As usual i put them in zip-lock bags. After 3 days the first ones to sprout were two of the seeds that were in their shell.
Here's the original peanut, without the shell and after soaking in water for a day

And 2 days later
After 10 days....It grows really fast.
And since i'm using a clear bowl i should be able to see the peanuts under the ground.

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