How to Grow Peanuts & Companion Plants For Deer

Perennial peanuts provide high-quality forage for deer.

Perennial peanuts are an excellent food crop for deer. This plant rarely needs any kind of fertilizer. It produces forage similar in nutritional value to alfalfa, but does not actually grow any peanuts. Once the field is established, it lasts for decades with little attention. Crimson clover is the ideal companion plant for the perennial peanut in a deer food plot, since together they create a hardy, year-round, permanent field. Other grasses will grow with perennial peanuts, but crimson clover is the best choice for a long term, low-maintenance deer plot, complementing the peanuts and providing an excellent source of nutrition for deer.

Things You'll Need

• Perennial peanut rhizomes
• Rhizome planting machine
• Crimson clover seed
• Seed broadcaster
• Tractor with bottom plow, disk, heavy drag and cultipacker
• Herbicide for broadleaf weeds

Instructions

1. Plow the area to be planted with a bottom plow to break up sod and heavy soil. This helps kill any weed seeds in the top few inches of the field.

2. 

   Peanuts provide protein for hungry deer.

   Disk the soil to make it as loose as possible. This will help the perennial peanuts to become established once they are planted.

3. Apply herbicide to kill any broad-leafed weeds in the soil. These compete heavily with the initial planting of peanuts and can result in the loss of the crop if they are not controlled.

4. Firm the soil by using a heavy drag over the entire field. This makes it easier to plant the peanut rhizomes.

5. Drill the peanut rhizomes into the soil using a rhizome planting machine made for this particular purpose. Plant them 1 ½ inches deep in loose, sandy soil and about 1 inch deep in heavy or clay soils. Planting is done in January, February or March.

6. Broadcast or drill in clover seed over the same field in the fall, when the perennial peanut plants go dormant. This is normally done at the time of the first frost. The clover acts as a companion to the perennial peanut and provides forage through the winter, when the peanut plants have ceased growing.

7. Pack the field with the cultipacker. This insures the clover seed gets into the soil and will have a chance to germinate.

Tips & Warnings

• Perennial peanut comes back every year, so once planting is done the field does not need to be replanted. Checking the pH and nutrient content of the soil every year helps to insure that conditions remain optimal for the perennial peanut crop. This plant is not bothered by pests and established plants do not require spraying of any sort, as a general rule.

• The perennial peanut plant is tropical and will only grow in the deep south. If planted elsewhere the crop will fail. Don't use fertilizer with a high nitrogen content on fields with perennial peanuts. This legume produces its own nitrogen, and adding this element to the soil encourages weeds to grow and does not benefit the main crop at all.

References

• Perennial Peanut Hay; The Alfalfa of the South: Perennial Peanut; Brian Sheppard; Feb. 2009