Growing Peanuts

I always wanted to grow peanuts (Arachis hypogaea).  I gave it a go once when I was in highschool, and we had early (February) frosts that killed them all.  I haven't tried growing peanuts gain since then.

This past summer I decided to give growing peanuts another go.  I am told that you can buy raw peanuts and plant them, but I don't remember the last time I saw raw peanuts for sale so I bought seeds of a variety called 'Virginia Bunch'.  

The seeds were very expensive, and didn't have a lot in the packet.  Unfortunately most were broken when the packet was sent to me.  Still, there were a few good seeds in there, so I planted them and gave it a go.

The plants grew well, looked like any other legume, and had unremarkable small yellow flowers.  The flowers died, as they should, and then the flower stems buried the forming fruits.  Each peanut pod is the fruit of the peanut plant, that has been buried by the plant itself. 

Home grown peanut

The kids and I pulled up the plants after the frosts killed them.  hey hadn't died down completely, but we have had a lot of rain and I was worried that they may rot if I left them in the soil for too long.

The kids and I ate some of the peanuts.  They tasted great.  They tasted like peanut but almost creamy.

I was a bit disappointed by the small size of the crop, but they didn't have a great season and the plants were largely shaded.  I think in a normal summer each plant would have produced more peanuts.

One peanut plant with its peanuts

I would like to grow peanuts again, so have saved some seeds from this lot.  I would love to grow other varieties if possible, so will keep an eye out at health food stores to see if they ever offer raw peanuts for sale.

Comparison Pot Widths and Volumes

I have been trying to work out how much soil a plant pot holds.  This post is to help me remember without writing on a scrap of paper and then losing it.  

I sell seeds and bare rooted plants, and have started to sell some plants in pots at garage sales and things like that.  This increases the costs to me as I have to buy pots as well as soil.  For this reason I need to know how much the pot costs as well as how much the soil costs that they hold, so I can know if this is financially viable.  

While there are shorter pots or taller pots of the same diameter that will change the volume, I have found the following to give me a ballpark idea of how much soil each pot holds:

Plugs (5cmx5cmx5cm) - 0.125L

50mm pot - 0.15L

70mm tall pot - 0.3L

75mm pot - 0.35L

100mm pot - 0.5L (0.46L-0.55L)

140mm pot - 1.55L

150mm pot - 1.7L

200mm pot - 4.3L

 

Aquaponics jar - no tech

We have all seen pictures of plants growing in water beads.  They look great.  We had some water beads that I was going to throw out, so decided to use them for something.

The kids caught some gambusia fish in a local river.  Gambusia are a pest here and cannot legally be returned to the river, so we fed most to the chickens and used a couple in an aquaponics jar experiment with water beads.  I also have some variegated spider plants, they are hardy, survive pretty much anything, and I am sure I have seen them in tiny aquaponics so they should be well suited to this task.

We cut the top off a plastic bottle, and punched a hole in the lid for water exchange.  Filled this with water beads, popped in a spider plant, and expected it to work.  

It looked great at the start.

waterbeads jar aquaponics attempt

It didn't work.  

There was not enough gas exchange with the water and the fish suffered.  I felt really bad for them.  We then put something between the bottle and the jar to leave a little gap for gas exchange.  This was better for a little while, but the fish died several weeks later.  

I still feel really bad about this.  Conditions were not good for the fish, and I think the water beads may have played a part in their death.  The beads themselves are meant to be inert and non-toxic, but maybe the colour used in them is dangerous?

Notice the water beads are all plump and completely fill the container

Everything looked great at the start

I still thought this idea had merit, so we kept it going without any fish.  I figured we could learn from this and it doesn't need fish for proof of concept.  I certainly didn't want any more fish to go through anything like this.

We did learn a lot, it failed again.

The plant flopped over.  It was not properly supported by the beads.  All those amazing pictures you see of plants growing in beautiful water beads probably haven't been growing in it for very long. 

The beads at the top started to lose water and dehydrate.  I am not sure how this is possible, but it is.  Look at the pictures, all the beads at the top are now tiny and dry!  The beads were right up to the top of the container at the start of this, now the level has dropped a lot.

Somehow the plant seems to be shriveling up, maybe due to lack of water.  I'm not sure how this can be possible as the beads in the lower section are below the water level and are constantly submerged in water.  These spider plants are pretty tough, so I expected them to easily thrive in this.

I have tried pouring water over the top of the beads to re-hydrate them...but that only seems to slow the problem rather than fix it.  The top water beads keep drying and shrinking.

Look how much lower the water beads are now, they are drying

Some beads under water, the lid is perforated to let in water, yet the top beads are still drying

The plant is not supported by beads, and is shriveling, as are the water beads

After a while the water beads started to grow algae.  The beads at the top are drying even though the beads lower down are under the water.  The lid of the bottle has holes punched in it to allow the water in.  The plants are certainly not thriving, they flop over as they are not supported by the beads, and they appear to be somewhat stressed by lack of water.  I planted some other spider plants in a small pot of soil, the soil grown plants are probably three times larger.

I'm going to let this run to the bitter end.  There are no fish in there suffering, so there is no real reason to stop.  At this stage is is pretty clear that water beads are no good for growing plants, and water beads should not be used in tiny jar aquaponics.

The beads on top are still shrinking while the ones lower down are submerged

The water beads are starting to get algae growing on them

The water beads are still shrinking, this was full of plump beads at the start

I'm sure I have heard of jar aquaponics working, and I am sure I have heard it working without a pump or any other technology.  After seeing this I don't believe jar aquaponics can work with water beads, but it may work with gravel.  

Overall this experiment has failed.  No part of it has gone well.  While I feel bad for the fish, I have learned from it.  Once this fails completely I should try again using gravel instead of water beads (but no fish).

Black raspberry from seed - first winter

North American black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis) are virtually unheard of in Australia.  So rare that most gardeners in this country are unaware that such a thing even exists.

I have grown a few black raspberry plants from seeds.  Rubus are considered difficult to grow from seed, but I seem to do ok with them.  Being winter means my black raspberry plants are all dormant and I can have a decent look at them.

The difference between each of the seed grown plants in incredible.

Some seedlings are very vigorous, while other seedlings lack vigour.  Some grew to about an inch tall in the season, while others reached about 3 feet tall.  Some grew a single cane, while others grew multiple canes.  

These don't fruit in their first year, so I am yet to taste the fruit from them, it will be interesting to see if any produce more fruit than other plants or better tasting fruit.  

One thing I find fascinating is the thorns (prickles) on my black raspberry seedlings.  One plant has thick curved thorns that grab at my clothes and tear at my skin.  Another has many many prickles that are straighter and thinner and resembles the wild roses that grow as weeds around here.

Black raspberry cane

Black raspberry cane

I have no idea if my black raspberry is monoecious or dioecious, so have to wait until they flower to find out.  I don't have many plants so at this stage cannot trade them as I would hate to end up with only male plants and not be able to taste the fruit!

Unlike red raspberries (Rubus idaeus), the black raspberries root at the tip of a cane if it comes into contact with soil.  This growth habit is similar to blackberries so will need some thought into controlling them and growing them in a productive way.  Apparently hybrids between red raspberry and black raspberry (which tend to produce purple berries) also tend to root at the tip.

So far only one of my plants grew long enough to tip root.  I cut this off and it seems to have a strong root system.  This was by far my most vigorous plant, so even though the rooted tip is tiny I have no question that it will grow into a monster over summer if treated well.  I plan to dig up this little plant and send it to Shane to see how he goes growing them.

Black Raspberries - young canes covered in whitish bloom

These black raspberries are all very thorny, and from my understanding will be floricane (meaning they will only flower on last year's growth).  I dislike thorns on plants, and I much prefer primocane (meaning they can flower on new growth), so if all goes well and they thrive here I may need to do some breeding with these in the future.

One day I would love to try and cross them with my thornless primocane red raspberry, and see if I can produce a thornless purple raspberry, or a primocane purple raspberry.  Or cross them with my yellow fruited raspberry and see what the fruit from that cross is like.  These things take time, and many different things could happen to prevent this from working, so at best that is a few years away.

If I ever have some black raspberry plants to spare I will try to list them on my for sale page.  Best case scenario that will be winter next year, but really depends on a lot of different factors so may be later than that or if they don't grow well here it may be never.

Black cockatoos (Zanda funerea)

This was the sight outside my bedroom window the other day.  

Black Cockatoos outside my bedroom window

There were about twenty black cockatoos at the start, but some flew away before I even thought to take a photo, and others are off the screen.  

Black cockatoos really are lovely birds.

Variegated 'snow queen' pothos

I like pothos (Epipremnum aureum), it is an ornamental climbing plant that survives through a lot of hostile conditions.  They are ornamental but they don't produce showy flowers, and they are not edible.  I used to have one growing  near me in office work back before they got rid of all the plants.  I really miss having office plants. 

I have read on monster fish keeping forums how some people use pothos to lower nitrates in fish tanks.  Their results are nothing short of remarkable.  I have also read a NASA experiment (and things written by people who greatly misunderstand that experiment and have misinterpreted its results) about pothos and purifying the air. 

I have seen snow queen pothos for sale online and really can't justify the money to buy one.  A while ago I found a small variegated pothos plant for sale in a shop that really isn't known for selling live plants.  It was a fraction of the prices I have seen online and I think it is 'snow queen' pothos.  It was a little banged up, but I figured it would come good in time.

Pothos plant not long after I got it

Over the next few months my plant declined badly.  It died back, leaves rotted, and died back some more.  

Eventually my little pothos plant was nothing but one sick looking leaf and a nub of a plant that was starting to turn to mush.  

I was worried that I would lose this one and repotted the plant.  It was originally potted in what looked like cocopeat.  I even went so far as to wash what was left of the roots before planting in soil.

Presumably my pothos did not like cocopeat because after repotting into soil it picked up, survived, and has grown slowly since then.  

My plant is healthy and strong now.

Pothos plant - looks fake but is real

I like the variegation in this plant, I particularly like how white the white is and how it has different shades of green.  The white is very white, which I quite like.  Some leaves can be almost entirely white while others can be mostly green.

Snow Queen pothos looks great, but for me is a relatively slow grower.  While it looks amazing I won't be able to use it in aquaponics as I don't think it will grow fast enough to make any difference to the water quality.

I grow this pothos in the bathroom, it gets indirect light

I recently got a cutting from an all green variety of pothos, it has larger leaves and a lot more area to photosynthesize so should be much faster growing.  

It hasn't started growing roots yet, but it should grow them in time.  All green plants tend to be a lot faster growing than variegated plants, so the all green pothos should be better to use in the filter of fish tanks to lower nitrates.  

Green pothos cutting

I hope my pothos cutting goes well, I only have the one so all my eggs are in one basket.  I am keeping it in water for now, once the little root shows any sign of growth I plan to plant this in a pot of soil.  Or maybe I will plant it in a pot of soil next weekend.

One day I would like to also get marble queen pothos, I think they look amazing.  I really can't justify the price of buying one as they are surprisingly expensive here, so will have to keep an eye out and see if anyone is willing to trade a cutting, or maybe I will be lucky enough to find a plant somewhere and be able to take a cutting for free.

Dwarf Snake Bean

I have grown snake beans (Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis) in the past, green and red, but never a dwarf snake bean.  I had considered growing a dwarf variety, but had not bought any seeds.  It is difficult to justify the cost when I didn't need them.  Then someone kindly gave me some seeds of a dwarf snake bean.

These dwarf snake beans produced compact plants up to around a foot tall, each growing numerous long red bean pods.  I didn't get around to taking any photos until the pods were a little old.  

The pods didn't get quite as long as the snake beans I used to grow, but smaller plants were easier to fit into tight spaces, were a lot simpler to manage, and produced a really large crop.

I think the colour of the pods is pretty impressive, the yield was great, the flowers were pretty, and the plants did not take up much space.  

I saved plenty of seed and plan to grow these again.

I like the looks of these

Dwarf snake beans

Dwarf snake beans

Young snake beans are dark purple

Snake bean flowers