When will the peanuts be ready??

Around this time of year, this is one of the most popular questions we are asked on the farm. I'm in no way encouraging you to go dig up your nearest peanut field to see if they're ready or not, but I am going to show you how we know when they are ready to be inverted!

If you think it's about time for your peanuts to be ready, you want to check a small section instead of just going at it wide open in case they're not.



First, you need to pull up about a three foot section of peanuts.



Then, you pull the peanuts off the vine.



After the peanuts are pulled off, you take a knife and do a hull scrape. This involves scraping the outer hull of the peanuts to see the color.





The peanuts are then separated into piles by color.



The peanuts with yellow hulls are within a week of being ready, but will still go to market.



The peanuts with dark hulls are mature.

The peanuts with white hulls are immature and usually get blown out the back of the combine.

When you get your piles made, if the mature/almost mature piles are the biggest, then the peanuts are ready to be inverted and harvested!