The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-04-21
Culture Of the Peanut.

1t is not many years since the peanut
plant began to assume proportions as a
staple Southern crop, and even now the
area of its cultivation, though annually
extending, is confined to comparatively
narrow limits. In Virginia it is cult
waited only in portions of five or six
counties on the south side of James
River, the counties of the Isle of Wight
and Surry being the only ones, where it
is grown in every part. Light sandy
lands near the rivers and smaller streams
of eastern Virginia are suited to this
crop; and as lime and mari are easily
procured in all this region, the peanut
eventually became a leading product.
The annual crop of Virginia is now two
million bushels.
One of the first questions a prudent
farmer asks, when thinking of new
crop is, does it draw heavily upon the
soil? At first, fears were entertained
that such would be the case with the
peanut, but decades experience has
shown that the farms of Tidewater Vir-
ginia, where the peanut has been grown
annually for twelve or fifteen years, have
improved in fertility, and that many of
them are worth fifty to one hundred per
cent. more now than in 1870. This i'm
provement is not due to the peanut plant
in itself, but to the fact that the grower
is obliged to manure his land more and
till it better. 1t is plant that requires
the application of both vegetable matter
and mari or lime, when these elements
are not amply present. In this respect
alone the peanut has been of incalculable
benefit; and as it is now found that it
does not greatly exhaust the soil, it is
fast becoming favorite crop and taking
precedence of every other. Many growers
say that the leaves alone which either
fall from the plant before digging or are
then detached, will, for a number of
years, compensate for the elements of
plant food taken away in the peanut
itself; and that if all the vines are re-
turned to the land, either before or after
going to the cattle pen, they will not
only restore the loss, but leave the soil
richer than at first. 1t is found that
woods litter, applied to the land once
in four or five years, and small dress
ings of lime or mari, are the best of all
manures for the peanut Where these
elements are present in liberal quantity,
the yield per acre is from fifty to seventy
five or one hundred bushels of peanuts.
A good deal depends upon the mechani-
cal condition of the land. A light and
dry porous soil is most favorable.
Standing water and cold wet soils are
destructive. Tenacious lands are not
only difficult to work, but wasteful in
the quantity of peanuts that are left in
ground when digging the crop.
The cultivation of the peanut does not
interfere seriously with other staple
crops, as, with improved implements
and rapid work, the times of working
them may be so ordered as to leave in
tervals for attention to other things. In
ordinary seasons, three weddings with
the hoes are amply sufficient, and fire.
quently two are enough. The tendency
now is to cultivate more with the pillow
and cultivator. and less with hoes. AS
the fertilizer, where any is used, is gen
orally applied at planting time, there is
nothing to do in summer but to pillow and
hoe the crop. As soon as the young
peanuts begin to form to much extent,
working ceases and the crop is laid by.
There is then an interval of at least two
months when the planter can turn his
attention 20 other matters about the
tarm.-Amertcan AgricUltariSt.