If you've spent any time in the southern United States, you're probably familiar with the standby snack at the back-road gas stations and convenience stores: hot boiled peanuts.

High in protein and in salt, they're the perfect snack food for those with a taste for savory. But they're not widely available here because they're made with freshly picked peanuts, and we don't have many of those. That's a shame, because it is possible to grow peanuts in Minnesota.

Peanuts past

Peanuts originally hail from South America, the same place as some of our most important crops, such as corn, cotton and potatoes.

First planted in this country in the 1700s as a food source, they were later used for oil. But they didn't become popular until modern harvesting methods were introduced in the early 1900s. Soon afterward, roasted peanuts and peanut butter became staples of the American diet.

Growing North

MCT, Star Tribune
Peanut plant

Tom Michaels has been working on peanut cultivation at both the University of Guelph in Ontario and at the University of Minnesota for 15 years. According to Michaels, most peanuts are Virginia or Runner types, which grow well in Georgia, but not so well in Minnesota. These plants take about 160 days to produce peanuts, which is stretching it in our shorter growing season. But there are peanuts that produce a crop in as little as 100 days. The best of these are the Valencia types.

If you're interested in growing peanuts next year, you can buy Valencia seeds online at Hirt's Gardens (www.hirts.com), Local Harvest (www.localharvest.org) or Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (www.southernexposure.com).

Peanut preferences

Peanuts aren't all that fussy. They should be planted from mid-May to early June. And while they prefer sandy soil and full sun, they'll do fine in poorer soil and partial shade. They do need plenty of moisture, so be sure to water once or twice a week when there isn't rain.

Because the peanuts themselves grow underground, it's tough to know when to harvest them. Based on our experience with growing peanuts at the university, Oct. 1 seems to be a good rule of thumb. However, we've harvested them as late as two weeks after the first frost, and most of the peanuts were still fine.

Incredible edibles

After harvesting and washing peanuts, you can fix them several ways. They're OK raw, but their taste improves if you cook them.

If you roast them in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes to an hour, they'll taste a lot like the roasted peanuts you buy at a store. Boiling brings out their flavor best. Here's how:

Add about 3 cups of water and 1/8 to ¼ cup of salt to a crock pot. Set the crock pot on high, then add 1 cup of raw, unshelled peanuts. Cook the peanuts for at least 2 hours or up to 12 hours, depending on how soft you like them. (I prefer peanuts cooked at least 8 hours.) Then shell, eat -- and wonder why we don't grow more peanuts in Minnesota.

Jeff Gillman, an associate professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota, is the author of several gardening books.