Mastering the appropriate harvest time of peanuts is greatly related to improving their yield and quality. When harvesting peanuts, it is important to choose and keep good seeds to ensure a high yield of peanuts in the coming year. The suitable harvest period and planting techniques for peanuts are introduced as follows:
1、 Timely harvest. Due to the fact that peanuts are crops that bloom above ground and bear fruit underground, it is generally difficult to see from the outside whether the pods have fully matured. At the same time, peanuts bloom and pod continuously, so the maturity of the pods is also inconsistent. Harvesting too early or too late can affect yield and quality. Therefore, it is particularly important to determine the suitable harvest period for peanuts, which can generally be viewed from the following three aspects.
1. Look at the fertility period. The growth period of a typical peanut variety is around 125 days.
2. Look at the temperature. If the average temperature during the day and night is below 12 ℃, the peanut has stopped growing and can be harvested.
3. Look at the plants. Under normal circumstances, peanuts enter the late fruiting stage, and most of the nutrients in the plant have been transported to the pods. The plant shows an aging state, with the top stopping growth, the upper leaves turning yellow, and the base and middle leaves shedding. At this time, most of the pods have full kernels and can be harvested.
2、 Seed retention techniques. When selecting and retaining seeds, special attention should be paid to selecting pods from plants that possess the characteristics of the variety, have consistent maturity, neat branching, and concentrated and full fruiting as seeds. The pods produced by plants with the following symptoms cannot be used as seeds:
1. Greedy late maturing plants. This type of plant has poor development in the early stage and excessive growth in the later stage. This type of plant not only bears fruit later, but also has fewer fruits and poor plumpness.
2. Premature weakened plants. The peanut pods are not yet mature, while the aboveground plants decline prematurely. The accumulation of organic matter in the seed kernels is not sufficient. As a seed, the germination rate is not high and it will also lose the characteristics of the variety, weakening year by year, directly affecting its yield.
3. Sick plants. Plants suffering from wilt disease, leaf spot disease, and peanut rust produce pods that not only spread the disease but also mostly empty or withered seeds when used as seeds.