Fertilization and nutrient management trials in peanut

Georgia peanut growers and peanut growers across the southeast continue to have questions about the best way to provide calcium to the pegging zone of peanut. "Which gypsum fertilizers are the best?", "can I put out lime at bloomtime? Or gypsum at planting? Can I split apply my gypsum like I do with nitrogen on cotton? "Are there any calcium materials I can put through the pivot?". What about a quart of calcium foliar? Results from field research at three locations (2 irrigated and one dryland) in 2013 will help answer many of these questions.. However, the 20134 growing season was very unusual in the fact that the Georgia and the southeast received much higher than average rainfall. This made some of the traditional recommendations such as always apply gypsum at bloomtime not always hold up. Lime at planting and gypsum late rin the season to replace calcium leached out of the pegging zone seemed to perform well in this unusual year. Still over all, gypsum at bloomtime was a very good treatment. Some other new findings in 2013 included 1) Liquid calcium such as calcium chloride applied through the pivot irrigation during peak pod fill did not appear to perform as well as in the past, again maybe due to too much rainfall, 2) foliar calcium at 1 quart per acre was confirmed to be too little and not tranlocatable and virtually no better than the untreated check, 3) Gypsoil gypsum used in past studies does not seem to be commercially available so was dropped from the studies in 2013 and replaced by another 'smokestack" gypsum, this one from Crystal River, Florida (it appears to be as effective as other smokestack gypsums tested), and 4) the cultivar Georgia Greener was compared to Georgia 06G at the dryland site since it is supposed to perform well under dryland conditions plus is a more medium size runner peanut compared to the large-seeded Georgia 06G. This led to some interesting differences in calcium in the nut and other results at the dryland site. However, again, it was a very wet growing season and the dryland site was not water limited as it usually would be.