Creating a Sustainable Sunshine Coast - Nambour to Mooloolah

Pinto Peanut, a South American native, has made itself at home here in Australia as a hardy groundcover providing a nitrogen-rich living mulch for your soil. Spread by runners, Pinto’s gradually builds up to a lush, dark green, carpet-like covering that looks stunning over a large area.

Being a legume and as the name suggests, Pinto Peanut (Arachis Pintoi) is a relative of the Peanut (Arachis hypogaea) but unlike the Peanut, which is an annual, Pinto’s is a perennial and once established takes very little maintenance.

Pinto’s prefers a shady, well-watered spot in the garden to get started, but once it takes off it can easily cope with full sun. It will also happily grow in poor soil and bounce back quickly after rain following a prolonged dry spell.

Due to it’s slightly rampant nature, Pinto’s is definitely not for the vegie patch, it will be too invasive and too much work for you to keep it under control, but it comes into its own under fruit trees, on a slope, as an alternative to lawn or as a beautiful thick carpet of green throughout your food forest.

Its 20cm roots help feed the soil, and the plant is also useful in erosion control, it softens rainfall as it hits the ground, and maintains moisture and soil temperature by providing a thick mat of green leaves over the ground.

It will provide all the benefits of mulch with less maintenance (no transportation needed, no machinery needed to harvest and bale it unlike other mulches...) and the added bonus of edible yellow flowers during spring that taste like peas and attract bees and other useful pollinators.

High rainfall and warm weather will cause an almost overnight growth spurt in your Pinto’s and if left unchecked you can find yourself wading thigh high in your lovely green carpet!

Hand shears (post peak oil) or a brushcutter (pre peak oil) will soon bring it back to a more manageable height and Pinto’s loves to be ‘chopped and dropped’, which stimulates it to release nitrogen, as walking across your Pinto’s will also do. Trimmed Pinto’s can be added to the compost bin, fed to the worm farm or just left to break down where it falls.

At other times, if your Pinto’s is heading off in the wrong direction, you can carefully remove the offending runners and simply replant them where you do want them to grow.

The plant can be grown from seed or cuttings. Seed will need to be inoculated and your seed supplier should be able to help you with this. Being a legume, humus from the compost bin or solid worm castings in a little water can be used as an inoculant.

Runners are an easier option for getting started, but are not as readily available as seeds. You will need to source them from someone who already has Pinto’s growing. (Yandina Community Farm currently have some runners in stock - open Mon, Tues and Sat am).

Pinto Peanut is a great addition to any garden, and especially useful in the Permaculture garden. It provides nitrogen, protects your precious soil as a living mulch, attracts beneficial insects and, in the heat of summer, it is cool, lush and dark green and lovely just to roll around in – all in all a highly recommended plant.