- Gary
Welcome to Searching for the Brighter Pod, a podcast about peanuts. I'm your host, Gary Little, and with me is North Carolina Peanut Extension Specialist, Dr. David Jordan. So, David, how are you doing this week?
- David
I'm doing well, Gary. I had my first day of class for our peanut production course here at NC State. So I'm back in the classroom talking about peanuts and get out in the field looking at peanuts.
- Gary
So I'm sure a lot of excited students, isn't it?
- David
Well, you know, excitement is kind of a loose subjective term, but they were there.
- Gary
Okay. So what's happened in the past week?
- David
So Gary, as we look around the state, one thing that hasn't happened last week is we didn't get... measurable rain in most places and pretty dry. I mean, we had had some moisture prior to that, but as you know, this time of year, it can be really hot and it has been dry. So that has been one thing I've noticed in my travels up and down the peanut belt out the eastern part of North Carolina.
- Gary
And what's the status of the crop right now?
- David
Again, a great question. I think the status of the crop, if I were to think about yield potential, I think it's going to be about an average crop. And sometimes I'll go and find a field that looks fantastic. I'm hearing some pretty good yields that people are recording. Very, very limited acres that's been dug and harvested, but some good yields and some others that are very, certainly pretty marginal. quite low depending on where you are. So it's been a variable crop this year and the variation I think goes back to the tremendous variation we've seen in rain across the whole cropping cycle. So that's one thing I've been seeing. I'm in some ways think we're going to be average and if depending on what happens from here on out we could I think we could dip below average. I don't think we're going to get above average at least based on what I've seen.
- Gary
Okay. So it's looking a little lower than average. With that information, what are some things growers should think about?
- David
That's a great question, Gary. I think some things that growers need to think about is, we talked about this with our last podcast, is trying to be as patient as possible. That can be a challenge every September and October. But certainly patience in the digging process, getting our speed in the right area, not rushing. That's also the case with harvest. I do want to mention a little bit about harvesting seed peanuts. So a significant amount of our production every year goes into seed for the following season. And some years our seed quality going into, in this case, 2027. We want to make sure that the harvest in 2026 is good. We've had some dry pockets. Certainly the seeds folks, the companies that buy those seed and make sure they're in good shape, you know, foundation seed, crop improvement are involved in some of those decisions. But we do, there's a couple of things we could do to stack things in our favor from a quality standpoint for... planting next year, planting certified seed. One is, generally speaking, we would want to harvest or dig peanuts on the earlier side. Well, let me back up. We just don't want peanuts to be over-mature if they're going to be seed peanuts. And one reason is if peanuts are over-mature, we could get more physical damage when those are handled. The other thing that can happen is when we dig those peanuts, if they're over mature and they sit out in the field and they dry considerably before we harvest, we can get even more mechanical or physical damage. So seed production is very, very important. It sets the tone for how the next season's crop will start. We do need to certainly be as gentle as we can. And not have over mature peanuts, but also handle them well. Even from the combining part, we want to make sure that we're not causing more physical damage there. Hopefully, our seed production fields have had adequate water for calcium to be taken up to make sure that those kernels have developed as well as they need to. But that's another case where we just need to be careful about how we handle that.
- Gary
Okay. We're recording this on September 22nd. It looks like today, this coming week, we're going to have maybe substantial rain. What do we need to be thinking about?
- David
Yeah, Gary. So, you know, last week was a really hot and dry week. This year, I mean, this week, we've got some cooler temperatures on the way. I think tomorrow they're going to begin cooling down. Nothing to be concerned about in terms of... maturity stopping or slowing down substantially but we definitely are going to more than likely get rain across the peanut belt hopefully that you know we're behind so much on rain i don't think a two inch rain or maybe even a four inch rain is going to keep us out of fields for a long long time unless you happen to be in a place that that got some rain over the weekend and got wet but most of our fields can handle that water. Honestly, for many folks that are planning to dig this coming week or the week we're in, if they get some rain, that can actually improve conditions for digging. That's especially the case for our growers that are in reduced till or conservation tillage. Those soils, in some cases, have gotten really hard, and it's kind of hard to get those diggers in the ground if you have really hard, dry soils. So hopefully the rain will help us there. What would be ideal would be for us to get a couple of inches of rain and then dry out. And then we can move back into harvesting that crop. But we don't control that. But we're hopeful that we don't get too much rain to slow up the digging process, but also to cause problems with peanuts that are already dug and are sitting on the ground.
- Gary
All right. Well, thank you. And thank you for listening. This has been Searching for the Brighter Pod. You can contact us at brighterpod at gmail.com or on the web at go.ncsu.edu slash brighter pod. And we thank you for listening.
