Neighborly Rice Advice

The 2012 Paddy Plan

My neighbor, whose family has been growing rice in the area for (I think) seven generations, gave me some advice.

1. Use the paddy I grew in this year as a holding and warming pond next year. This means I will have to line it with either plastic or clay, and make another paddy next to it. But hopefully the water will be much warmer and the plants much stronger. I think I will use clay to line it, and darken the red clay with some rice hull charcoal.

2. Remove some of the soil and buy some real paddy soil. This is not a real option, since I am so cheap. However, there is a place up the mountain where a cattle farmer regularly scrapes off the dung and top layer of soil in his barnyard and dumps it in a ravine. I claim that as mine. The new paddy will be a bit deeper than the previous one, lined with clay, and filled with this composted manure and soil. My neighbor recommends 30cm of this. But he also said that I could just gradually increase the depth 2-3 cm each year until I get a respectable harvest. So I am aiming at 5cm for 2012. Much better than the 0cm I had this season...