Nut · Fabaceae
When to plant peanuts
Not a nut at all but a legume that flowers above ground and then buries its own developing pods. Needs 120 warm frost-free days and light, loose soil to do it.
Start seed indoors
4 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Plant out
2 weeks after
Counted from your last spring frost.
Sow direct
2 weeks after
Counted from your last spring frost.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make peanuts plantable anywhere.
- Start seed indoors 4 weeks before the last frost.
- Plant out 2 weeks after the last frost.
- Sow direct 2 weeks after the last frost.
- Expect 120–150 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
Getting the timing right
Sow direct two weeks after the last frost once the soil is genuinely warm, or start indoors and plant out - peanuts resent root disturbance, so use deep pots. Once the flowers fade, the stalks bend down and push into the soil; anything that stops them reaching loose ground stops the crop.
Frost tolerance
Frost-tender at both ends of the season. The plant is killed at 0C, and because the pods develop underground over a long period, an early autumn frost catches a crop that is not yet finished.
Classified as tender, with damage expected below 0°C (32°F)32°F (0°C).