I went to the farm with my mother and younger sibling to harvest our groundnut. The harvesting was supposed to take place last week Saturday, but because we were busy, it was delayed until yesterday. By the time we finally went, the groundnut had already spent more time in the soil than it should.
Groundnut harvesting is not an easy job, especially when everything has to be done manually. In more advanced countries, machines are often used to carry out this harvesting process quickly and with less labour. But here, we do not have access to such machines, so we use manual harvesting with our hands.
The process began by following each ridge, one after the other, and carefully uprooting the groundnut plants.
After pulling them out, I placed them on the ground with the seeds facing upward.
This arrangement is important because exposing the seeds directly to sunlight helps them dry faster and prevents them from germinating again. If the seeds are placed facing downward, they may still remain in contact with the soil, moist from the soil and begin to germinate again.
After uprooting and arranging the plants, the next step was to separate the seeds from the leaves and stems.
This stage was more time consuming. It involves pressing the seeds so that they detached from the plant or plucking them one by one.
On a large farm like ours, this process can take hours, and it is difficult to finish everything at once except you are much doing the job. We were three but could not finish everything in one day. We had to continue the next day before we could complete it. At the end, we gathered about two full bags of groundnut from the farm, which was a good harvest.
After removing all the seeds and gathered them in the bags, we took them home and spread them under the sun.
Spreading them under the sun is very important because it allows the seeds to dry well just like I mentioned earlier. It will also prevent moisture from spoiling groundnuts and stops them from any further germination. Sun drying is the first stage to preserve the groundnuts before further processing or storage is done.
During the process of harvesting, I noticed that some of the groundnut had already started germinating in the soil before we uprooted them.
This happened because the harvesting was delayed. Groundnut, like most crops, has a specific maturity period. Once they reaches that stage of maturity, they should be harvested immediately otherwise If it remains too long in the ground, the pods begin to absorb moisture from the soil again and start sprouting. When this happens, the affected seeds will lose their quality and cannot be consumed or stored.
So late harvesting has a negative effect on groundnut yield which can lead to losses because part of the produce becomes unsuitable for consumption or preservation.
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All images used for this post are taken by me!!