peanuts

Leaf, Stem, Root

November 25, 2021

The crisp, cool fall mornings are some of the best times of the year to be working at Rural Studio Farm.

Two students take a moment in the field to talk with one another as the dawn casts spectral light across the morning clouds

With the fruits of Summer harvested, the Fall crops of leaves, roots, and stems have become the farm’s focus.

  • Three women students display peanut plants they have just pulled, each thick with peanuts to be dried and picked
  • A student cleans some dirt off of a giant turnip root she has just pulled from the ground
  • A student harvests some red mustard greens
  • Two students pull up some peanut plants, revealing peanuts that were previously underground
  • A student harvests some loose leaf lettuce from the field
  • Two students harvest some baby greens from seedling trays
  • A student crouches over a raised bed in the field and is cutting leaves of spinach

Students and staff can now enjoy fresh green salads from the farm every lunch until the weather becomes hot again.

  • A student is transplanting salanova lettuce seedlings into a raised bed in the greenhouse
  • Two students transplant romaine lettuce into raised beds in the greenhouse
  • Two students prepare to transplant salanova lettuce seedlings into raised beds in the greenhouse
  • A student measures out a distance for transplanting spinach seedlings into a raised bed in the greenhouse
Full heads of salanova lettuce, both red and green, look beautiful in their neat arrangements within raised beds in the greenhouse in the morning light
  • A smiling student bags up some washed lettuce for the kitchen
  • A student bags some newly harvested and washed lettuce in the post harvest space
  • Washed lettuce is laid out to dry while two students continue to wash lettuce in the sink in the background
  • A student places a colander of washed lettuce dry on a mesh table

In addition to a variety of fresh lettuces, the farm is also producing spinach, baby greens, kale, collard greens, beets, hakurei turnips, radishes, peanuts, turnips, scallions, carrots, mustard greens, sugar snap peas, and snow peas.

  • A student transplants some lettuce and spinach seedlings into a raised bed in the greenhouse
  • Two students transplant turnip seedlings into a raised bed in the greenhouse
  • A student harvests some baby greens from seedling trrays
  • A volunteer farm worker plants some pelleted celery seeds into seedling trays
  • Two students fill seedling trays and plant some new seeds
  • Two students happily transplants some turnip seedlings into the greenhouse
Two rows of carrot foliage in the foreground with trellised sugar snap peas in the background

With the next freeze right around the corner, most of the field production is halting for the Winter. To maintain and promote healthy soils, as well as to protect against erosion, the students broadcast a cover crop mix into the beds and winter rye grass into the aisles. It is also a good time to tidy and clean things on the farm so that it looks good while it rests in the cold.

Morrisette house with rows of bright green cover crops planted out in the farm
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Peanuts: come shell or high water

October 28, 2020

Since Rural Studio Farm is a not a commercial farm, we get to grow a wide variety of crops that many other small-scale organic farms might find inefficient to grow, in terms of space and time. Lately, we have been enjoying such a treat: peanuts.

  • A tiny peanut sprout emerges from a soil block
  • Two rows of growing peanut plants

We began peanuts in soil blocks way back in May before transplanting to the field. As they grow, the plants produce little yellow flowers, which then fade and produce a peg, called a peduncle, that pushes several inches underground to produce the tasty little morsels. Typically, they require around four months to mature, but are low maintenance and pest-free, making them a great crop for us to grow during the summer when Eric was without his usual student workers.

  • Students dig up peanut plants and collect any stray peanuts
  • Two students delicately dig up a peanut plant, revealing all the peanuts that have grown underground
  • Freshly harvested, dirt-covered peanuts are clustered around the central stem of a recently dug peanut plant
  • A student holds up a freshly dug peanut plant with many peanuts attached

A few weeks ago, we dug up the plants and left them to dry in the greenhouse for several days.

  • Students pick dried peanuts off the peanut plants
  • Eric holds a ten-gallon tub of dried peanuts en route to the kitchen
  • A closeup of a ten-gallon tub of peanuts
  • Students pick dried peanuts off the peanut plants

Then we separated the peanuts from the plant and took them to kitchen where our cook, Catherine, made some delicious boiled peanuts for our lunches. We got 10 gallons of dried peanuts from about 80 linear feet of plants.

Rural Studio's cook, Cat, boils a large pot of peanuts

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Soil Blocking, or Making Soil Brownies

May 8, 2020

Students always call them soil brownies, and they do look tasty!

Soil blocking, which was developed in Europe and largely popularized in the US by legendary organic farmer, Elliot Coleman, is a practice of starting seedlings in cubes of compressed soil. While Rural Studio Farm still makes use of plastic flats for starting seeds of certain crops, soil blocks eliminate the waste and expense of using plastic containers.

The blocks are made in metal molds from a mixture of soil made here on site at Rural Studio Farm, which makes them more labor-intensive to begin with—and thus might not be suitable for larger scale farms.

However, farm manager Eric has found that, overall, seeds tend to germinate and grow better in blocks, and transplanting soil blocks into the field is faster and easier than having to remove each individual seedling from its tray.

Throughout the past two weeks, tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers that were started in 2-inch soil blocks were upgraded to 4-inch blocks to allow the roots to continue to develop before being transplanted to the field once the soil has warmed up more. The 4-inch mold is made with a 2-inch cavity to accommodate such an upgrade.

  • 2-inch soil blocks containing eggplant seedlings sit in trays
  • A teaching faculty member is making 4-inch soil blocks from a mold
  • Eggplant seedlings sit in 4-inch soil blocks after being upgraded from 2-inch
  • Pepper seedlings recently upgraded into 4-inch soil blocks
  • Various soil blocks and plants sit on a water table

There are other advantages to soil blocks. As the growing roots reach the edge of a block, they stop growing in what is called “air pruning,” as opposed to wrapping themselves about as they would in a conventional pot or cell. Indeed, as the blocks are transplanted directly into the ground, root disturbance is almost entirely eliminated, meaning that more delicate plants that cannot tolerate root disturbance can be started this way.

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