The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-01-20
FertiIizing Peanuts.

There is no crop that the southern farm
er makes that will give him more satisfac-
ton, if well fortified with potash, than
the peanut, says the Farmer and Fruit
Grower. 1t is a very valuable crop for
home consumption in the shape of stock
feed and there is always a market for
choice peanuts for candy making and
other commercial purposes. The peanut
requires a warm, sandy soil with a clay
subsoil not very deep Some hold that
we must have limestone soil, but the
best crop of it / ever saw was on soil
without a particle of lime in it's compo-
sition. To make a good crop one has
to begin and prepare for it the year pre-
blowing and sowing 1t to buckwheat
(about two bushels per acre. and just as
the buckwheat is blossoming pillow under
at the same time scattering 400 pounds
kainit per acre. The kainit helps the
green buckwheat to decOmpose in the
soil, and at the same time prevents the
nitrogen in it from teaching. In Novem-
Der, or the beginning of December, the
land is ready to be sown in oats and by
cultivating the land the oats will make
a good winter crop, requiring almost no
fertilizer whatever, except, perhape, a lit
tie top dressing of nitrate of soda and
muriate of potash.
When the oats come off in May or
beginning of June 1 scatter on the stubble
a fertilizer strong in phosphoric acid and
potash (about to 10 per cent. of phos-
phoric acid and II to 10 per cent. of pot
ASH from 500 to 1,200 pounds per acre, ac-
cording to the power of the soil to aSsim-
ilate it. l Immediately plow under the
stubble with this fertilizer on it. and then
l cross cultivate the land with an ordi-
nary five-tooth cultivator as the peanut
thrives best in very loose, mellow soil.
In planting the crop run burrows four
feet apart and drop the seed every eigh-
teen inches in the furrow. After they
have started growing and when only
few inches high, L give them a slight
dressing of nitrate of soda so as to get
a good stand; about a teaspoonful to the
hill, scattered around it (but not too cloSe)
is enough. After the vines begin to joint
and lie over on the ground they should
be partially covered with soil so as to
yield more, as every joint will make
cluster of nuts if treated in this way. The
ground has to be kept free of weeds or
grass and well cultivated until harvest
time. My reasons for sowing buckwheat
on the land and then oats to precede the
peanut are, that the peanut has more en-
emies in the shape of moles, bugs, crick-
cts, ETC., than any seed you put in the
ground, owing to it's sweetness in its nat
ural state, and being soft and easily
eaten, every living thing appears to be
fond of it. The buckwheat and kainit in
the soil Ga combination of the two is GER
tain death to all the bug family, such as
crickets and others, and as green buck
wheat in the soil is certain poison to all
crops except oats, therefore sow a crop
of oats to sweeten the soil for the peanut
following. 1 find the ground mole is also
very shy of soil well saturated with po-
taSh-particularly with kainit-and this is
OI6 TedSOn WHY L ain partial 10 KANT
for grain crops or wherever the seed is
dropped in the soil. An expert can tell
at a glance the sort of fertilizer a crop
of peanuts had by the number of popS or
empty shells, the number of half grown
peas and huls, the size of the hull, the
smoothness of it, the thickness of it, etc,
etc; but potash on this crop gives re-
suits that are very astonishing, partic-
ularly on our sandy soils of the state of
Florida, and l should think that further
north through Georgia and the Virginias
where they have lime in the soil, the re-
suits would be equally satisfactory If
we use phosphoric acid and potash in
judicious quantities according to the
strength of our soil we will always find
them a very good investment.