Rose Lauer, age 8, of Twin Falls, Ida., for her question:
DO PEANUTS GROW UNDERGROUND?
Peanuts grow underground in a most unusual way.
Peanut plants will grow to about two and a half feet tall and from three to four feet wide. The plant then bears many small, yellow, pealike flowers where the leaves are attached to the stems. The peanut, by the way, is a kind of pea, not a nut.
The plants are annuals and they blossom continuously for two to three months. Flower buds open at sunrise. Fertilization takes place during the morning and the flowers usually wither and die about noon.
Then, within a few days, stalklike stems of the pods, called pegs, start to grow. They grow slowly at first, but gradually grow more rapidly.
The pegs grow downward and push into the soil to a depth of one to three inches. The grown pegs may be about seven inches long.
The tips of the pegs contain the developing seeds. They swell and mature into peanut pods. Most pods contain two seeds, but some may contain only one or as many as five seeds.
Peanut plants do best in light, well drained, sandy soil. They need lots of sunshine, warm temperatures, moderate rainfall and a frost free growing season of four to five months.
Leading peanut growing states, in order, include Georgia, Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida. Worldwide, the United States is third in production with India and China in the first two places.
Peanut seeds must be planted two to three inches deep at intervals of three to six inches, in rows 24 to 36 inches apart. Then, farmers must harvest the crop at exactly the right time.
If the peanut harvest is too early, many pods will not have ripened. If they harvest them too late, the pegs may snap, and many pods will be left in the soil.
Most peanut pods ripen 120 to 150 days after the seeds are planted.
At harvest time, farmers use digging plows to slice through the main root of each plant below soil level. The plants, with pods attached, are lifted from the soil and left to dry in the sun.
The pods are sometimes collected when they are half dry and dried artificially. Machines called combines remove the pods from the dried plants. The pods are then cleaned and graded before they are shelled.
Large, unshelled peanuts are cleaned, polished and whitened before they are marketed. Manufacturers treat them to remove the skins and produce a whiter color. Then they are usually roasted to a rich, brownish color.
Some peanuts are salted and roasted in their shells. They are soaked in salt water under pressure and then dried and roasted.