When plants are about one inch high, thin stand to about 8 inches apart. Control grass and weeds. In cultivating, never throw dirt on the peanut plant. This is essential to the formation of the peanut kernels. With maturity, these blooms wilt and a stem or peg forms.
Gravity pulls the peg downward into the soil where the peanut pod forms.
The outer shell reaches full size well before the individual peanuts mature. Each plant produces between 25 and 50 peanuts. Mature plants may be as large as 36 inches in diameter and about 18 inches tall. The peanut plant has a fruiting period of about two months. The object is to harvest when the greatest number of pods are matured.