How to plant and manage peanuts during flowering to achieve high yields (Key points of peanut flowering management technology)

1. Watering to fight drought

Peanuts are deep-rooted and drought-tolerant crops. Short-term droughts have little effect on yields, but long-term water shortages will seriously affect peanut yields.

Peanuts have different water requirements in different growth stages. The water requirement is less in the seedling stage, gradually increases in the flowering and needle-setting stage, reaches a peak in the podding stage, and then gradually decreases.

The water requirement pattern of peanuts throughout their life is low at both ends and high in the middle. During the flowering, needle-setting and pod-setting stages, peanuts grow and develop most vigorously. This is the period in their life when they require the most water, and it is also the critical period for peanuts to require water.

If the drought continues, it will affect the growth of fruit needles, eventually leading to reduced yields or even no harvest.

This is also the rainy season. In recent years, we have often experienced uneven droughts and floods here. Therefore, we have to decide whether to water to fight drought based on the weather forecast, and we must also pay attention to drainage.

2. Weeding

With the decrease in the efficacy of closed-type herbicides such as sethoxydim, and the damage caused by frequent field work by people coming and going, weeds in the peanut fields began to appear in large numbers, especially broad-leaved weeds such as horseradish, amaranth, prickly lettuce, and amaranth.

Except for those that are not exposed under the mulch film, which need to be manually pulled out, the other weeds can be controlled by spraying herbicides, such as fluazifop-butyl + flupyralid, etc. The spraying effect is better when the soil is moist.

3. Pest and disease control

Aphids and red spiders are more likely to appear in dry weather. After wheat harvest, pests such as cotton bollworm, beet armyworm, flea beetle, as well as diseases such as leaf spot and rust are likely to occur, so you must pay attention to spraying pesticides for prevention and control.

The agents that can be used include pyrethroid pesticides such as imidacloprid, acetamiprid, spirotetramat, and high-efficiency chlorflucythrinate, acaricides such as emamectin benzoate, avermectin, and cypermethrin, and fungicides such as triadimefon, tebuconazole, fenpropimorph, and carbendazim.

4. Nutritional supplement

When cultivating peanuts with mulch covering, fertilizer is basically applied once. It is not easy to apply topdressing later, so we can supplement it on the leaves.

Peanuts require more calcium and potassium fertilizers, especially during the pod development period when the demand for calcium fertilizer reaches a peak, so we must pay attention to the application of calcium and potassium fertilizers, and it is best to apply them early.

When combining spraying with pesticides to control pests and diseases, you can add appropriate amounts of calcium fertilizers such as potassium dihydrogen phosphate and chelated calcium to meet the peanuts' needs for potassium and calcium .

5. Promote growth and prevent falling

The flowering and needle-setting period of peanuts is also their vigorous growth period. Due to the influence of factors such as soil, fertilizer, water, variety, density, etc., peanuts are prone to growing too tall and lodging. Currently, our commonly used method is to spray growth regulators to promote growth and prevent lodging.

Commonly used growth control agents are mainly paclobutrazol, chlormequat, and chlormequat. During the flowering period of peanuts, when the plant height is about 30 cm, you can add a little when spraying to control nutritional growth, promote the transport of photosynthetic products to pods, and increase yield.