 Good morning. I'm Chris Baldwin research associate with the Department of Crop Soil Environmental Sciences Department at Auburn University. I'm going to talk to you today about pod blast and peanuts from optimum maturity. Here we are approaching the fall of the year. We'll start digging peanuts here in about three weeks. So it's prime time to start thinking about that and how we're going to decide when to dig those peanuts which is always a hard decision and tough decision for for many people there to call on and decide on when's the best time to dig. So here we have a method that is a little bit easier and making that decision gives you a good look at the peanuts and a good average look of those different pods on that plant since they're all the time blooming every day when they're setting those pods. That's what makes it difficult to decide when to dig. So this gives you a good look at those and you can see how we decide on the optimum digging time. One of the first tools there that we'll need for this is a just a low-pressure pressure washer. This is a small one you can see it's 1600 psi. Anywhere in that range of 1200-1300 to about 1600-1700 psi is a good range. You don't need one of those big hard fast ones those huge ones that are on most farms. Just these real small ones will do a really good job and that'll keep you from busting a lot of those peanuts pods up more of the immature ones so that way you can get a good look of those pods. Here you can just a wire mesh basket that we've made there to put those pods in the blast them. You can see here on the left side we have a floor in it subfloor there. This will hold the pods up there off from the bottom by that water to flow through and come out the bottom of it. Just keeps those peanuts in there as we spray them with the pressure washer so that we can knock off that outer layer of those holes to see what color is underneath. Here we have the peanut profile board. This is what we put those on after we blasted them. We took off that outer layer of the hole that's revealed the inside so that we can see that color and that color helps us decide on maturity of the hole there and see how close we are to digging. So that being said what we do is it's much like soil sampling when you're pulling those collection plants there to pick off pods from. Here's the shot of a peanut field here getting close to dig you see it's lapped up well looks pretty uniform across it but as most farmers know soil types are different that also in turn may have different disease spots out there or problem areas in the field so what you want to do is randomly select sites to collect those samples from across the field much like soil sampling you know you can zigzag across there and pull those sites and that way you can get a good average of that field. So in those spots you can look down try to select a spot that's uniform plants free from disease because that disease would deter your sample you won't get an accurate reading there from from those from those disease there being on there just pull up a small bunch of those peanuts from these different locations and examine those pods because even though it might not show disease on top you could be having pod rod or something there underneath or underground white mold so you want to look at those pods make sure they're good and healthy and that way that's going to give you a good sample reading if they have disease on them that's going to deter it because those those pods are in turn dying so that's not going to be an accurate reading there when we put those on the board to look at maturity there. I isolate those plants when you pull up a small bunch of peanuts from each one of those locations you want to isolate those individual plants look at the foliage on them look at the condition of the vines like I said let's look at them make sure they don't have any leaf spot on them make sure they don't have disease on them and that way we know that plant's going to be there for the long haul until we get ready to dig it those plants in good shape and hold those pods until they get mature if it was either with disease or you know at least spot there would have you that that's going to shorten the life of that plant those pods won't make it all the way to full maturity then once you isolate those little plants what we want to do is pick off all the harvestable pods from that plant that would go into the combine basket that way we get a good uniform sample of that complete plant we're picking off everything that the combine would pick off and blow into the basket and then what you want to do is repeat that from those different sites that you pulled those plants up all across that field isolate those plants individually completely pick them off like what you've seen here in the picture put all those pods together until you have about 200 pods and that's what we use for the sample once we have those 200 pods we'll put those in that mesh wire basket and then we'll take that pressure washer and blast off that outer layer of the hole is just as you see here you can tell you don't have to have that wand down there too close if you get it too close to the pods like say you're gonna bust them up it's gonna be too much pressure on those more of those immature pods for sure you know they have a lot of water in them so they're easier to bust those harder more mature pods or are a little bit more solid so it's it's not as easy to bust those but you've got to take any consideration those immature so you can look at the different size props that are on that plant so that's the reason why you don't want to bust even those immature ones as you can see here is as you begin to wash and spray those there with that blaster you can see as it takes off that outer layer how they change colors like said that color compared on to that profile board will tell us that maturity range once we get all those blasted off good then we'll dump those on to the board and begin to separate those out by the colors just as you see here the darker ones to one side going across the board to the lighter color the more immature darker being the most mature I want once we separate out those colors then we begin putting those placing those on that board and those different maturity ranges it's good to shell I'm open that this way you know because not a lot of people can differentiate those colors there on those holes and the percentage of them like you can see how that board works a different percentage of a brown goes in one class a different percentage of a black goes in another class so forth across the board so it's good to shell them open and we have different characteristics inside on those pods on how we determine the maturity ranges there of them there just like you can see here just from this distance of this picture taken here you can see those peanuts to the far right we should open notice how they are copper color that means they're fully mature those peanuts have all the way turn loose in the hole so they have that tan color on the sea coat and they're they're fully mature and so we have them on the three-day category the next class there that you see next to it you can tell that sea coat is still a lighter color on the skin but also you see those dark spots on it and those are the oil spots that are there as a peanut gets close to maturity that oil content increases comes more to the surface right there and that's what darkens up those spots on those nuts and that tells us when we get those real dark oil spots we're generally about seven days away there from maturity that helps us place those on the board because like I said looking at that hole you can just tell it's dark you can't tell anything else that's reason it's good to shell them open and look at the inside look for those oil spots there's a tell-tale sign on the maturity here's another instance right here where you have one nut when it shelled open that's copper the other one is in that like that seven-day category that we just talked about so it's there with those darker oil spots on it but it's still a light sea coat the nut on the left shows us that copper color skin being that it's fully mature so with it fully mature we need a few more days to bring that other one on long we call that three to five-day range right there here for instance you see a one that is immature is not dark there on the outer layer of the hole that was knocked off by the pot blast but then again when you shell it open it's begin turning tan copper color and what's happened here is that peanut is turned loose dry weather has come in increased on this field and it's not having any more soil moisture out there we've sucked all the life out of the vines continue to go without rain and those peanuts have turned loose and that's what you'll get in a situation like that when you begin shelling those open they'll all fall over there in that three-day category and they'll all be that copper color like what you see there and you can see here here's just an example of those other categories like the seven days as we talked about with the darker spots and then you notice in the 10-day category we have the light sea coat but you don't see that all spots near as distinct as you do in the seven-day category so any time you're looking at those well with a darker hole they're going to be in that 10 to 14-day range without having those all spots distinct and you can you can determine where they go place them on that board by looking at those all spots it's just a clear all spot we usually have them 14 to 17 if they start getting that color to them we put them there about 10 days and once they get real dark and distinct we put them on seven days and then as those nuts begin that sea coat turns tan copper color we put them there to three days and then once we get enough peanuts there to break our projection line there on that graph then we know it's time to start digging like in this this situation here he's got two distinct crops he's got one early crop obviously we went through a dry time then we've got a late crop over here the problem is is you got a lot to risk when you're looking there to crop that saw say half and half as we show those peanuts open here all those were copper colored on the inside we didn't have any over here that was in that seven to ten day category and that situation my opinion you just can't afford to wait with those peanuts there in the ground you've got so much risk to lose if it was to come in and start raining now if you do have some moisture in the field but the weather forecast is open yes you could wait and give those another few days there and then fall in there and dig them and get them up by the ground but right here's your main money crop there you got a lot of big solid harvestable pods there and even when you look at this pile here you see a lot of real imatures as you pick through there you also see some damage there like from corn bores and letters and so forth that would create problem with those and that's that pickers gonna separate that out for that light stuff out of the back so that don't go into the basket at all anyway and so really when you look at that pile there there's not as much there which you really think compared to this here so certainly when you've got that higher percentage there this and that copper gold color it's time to go ahead and start and notice how there even not all the way black you can see just some of they're really kind of just brown seems like they would be more over here in this 14 17-day category that's reason it's always important to shell those open so just a few things there to remember always a sample must be as good a good representation of the field to be accurate recommendation for the digging I also look at it a couple times it's hard to really get it exact by just doing one sample out there so the first time you take a sample take it when you think you'd be about 10 days out from digging and then pull another sample whenever your first sample said to dig and that way those two checks will give you a better target on when the proper digging date is to ensure that you get the top dollar for your crop because it's very important when you think about selling the peanuts by the ton they're on the grade point average and you may be looking at four to five dollars a point they're on a price per ton so it really adds up to a lot of money there per acre thank you this morning for your time and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to y'all there about a pop blast and for maturity Chris I had a question where do people get those charts those peanut maturity charts yeah they can contact us here at the Wiregrass Research Station and we can send those out all the REAs have those scattered about the state and then we try to pass those along I think Senjina put those charts out years back and we try to keep some of those printed up here they could probably even ask your Senjina rep that's in their area or contact us there through the extension office and so all right any other questions