Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1890-05-21
About Peanuts.
Bureau OF Southern News, |
RALEIGH, N, c.

For the NORRIS TRIBUNE.
Here's Honest John with nice fresh
peanuts hot from the rooster. A large
paper of peanuts for five cents.
Who has the next? You? Here you
are" Such were the words we once
heard on the grand stand at county
fair In New York, as Honest John"sold
bushel after bushel of these nuts which
are not nuts, and peas which are not
peas.
"I've four bushels of ground peas; do
you want to buy them?" These words
we heard in store in southern town.
These little incidents indicate in some
degree the extent of the consumption OF
these nuts, and the different names APP
piled to them. While generally recog-
nized by the name of peanuts, they are
also known as earthnuts, groundnuts,
ground peas. and COOLERS. No word
fully and correctly names them. They
have the taste when raw of the pea; but
they do not grow as the pea grows.
l.
but they do not grow like nuts.
The plant is an annual creeping vine.
bearing cluster of fibrous shells, con-
tanning loose di-cotyledonous seeds, at
or just below the surface of the earth.
Hence the names of earthnuts, ground
peas, etc. If nut, it is unlike all other
nuts in being an annual plant, and in
bearing it's fruit below the whole body
of the plant. If pea, 1t is unlike all
other peas, for the last reason just
named, and because its seeds are loose
in hard shell. But whatever they are,
whether nuts or peas, or both or neither,
everybody likes and eats them. "Where
was John yesterday" we enquired of
gentlemen whose son we had missed
from his usual place the day before.
"He was sick yesterday. He went to
the Fair the day before and ate too many
peanuts. He can no more keep from
eating peanuts when he sees, than pig
can help eating corn" We incline to
the opinion that the human taste for
peanuts is about as natural as the pigs
taste for corn But pigs like peanuts
too. One writer of authority on the
paying crops of the South, says of Span
ish peanuts, "They are superior to all
other varieties of peanuts. They will do
we'll on poorer land than any other
variety, and will produce from two to
three tons of forage per acre, and from
forty to sixty bushels of nuts, thirty
pounds to the bushel. The forage is
superior to hay as food for stock, and
especially for cows giving milk. The
mats are worth fully double as much as
corn for fattening pigs or other animals
The nuts sell at the highest price and
will average from one dollar to one dol
lar and fifty cents per bushel. If raised
for stock food, simply NOW the vines
when the nuts are ripe, and turn the pigs
into the field and they will do their own
digging. If the nuts are to be saved,
pillow up the vines and nuts. and with
fork lift the vines from the ground,
shake off the dirt. and place in shocks to
cure, as they will cure better and whittier
than If left on the ground. The nuts
will be ready to pick in about ten days.
Peanuts are about the same trouble to
raise as potatoes, and one man can cult
vate forty acres. The value of the for
age from such field, at ten dollars per
ton would be eight to twelve hundred
dollars; and the nuts from forty acres
would bring from two to three thousand
dollars; averaging twenty-five hundred
dollars net profit from one mans work. "
Peanuts can be raised anywhere that
irish potatoes will grow; provided Jack
Frost does not interfere. But cold
blooded Jack is King for part of the
year in the northern States, and the pea
nut, like many other profitable crops in
the South, shrinks from his whitening
touch. They have been raised by
amateur gardeners in northern New
York; but owing to the risks of cold,
will not be paying crop north of Vir.
ginia.
May 10, 1890. 1T. P.