Rice Update 2013

Well, I am sure that I am cursing myself to wild boar damage by posting these photos of my BEAUTIFUL ORGANIC RICE! I made the paddy 100 square meters (four times last year) and had nothing but trouble! Leaks and water holding problems- sand washing in from storms, a crab who kept tunneling into the water warming pond and releasing it all into the paddy ice cold! Heavy rains overflowing and washing out the paddy banks! But I learned a lot and I think with about 20cm of aged cow manure spread in there before winter, I might do even better next year.

Koshi Hikari  rice

Koshi Hikari rice closeup

A different angle of the paddy

My helper giving it a thumbs up!

It might look nice if you don't know much about growing rice, but I must admit the yield looks to be very skimpy compared to the neighbor's. Even so, if we escape boar damage, I think it will yield better than last year.

This year I decided to take fewer chances and fenced in the whole paddy by Sept. 3. Whew! Of course, it remains to be seen if it will work. I followed the instructions on the package of netting, One meter high, one meter spread outward on the ground, and staked down.

Elsewhere in the garden, my Sudachi (citrus) is covered in tiny lime-like fruits!
Margaritas anyone?
Sudachiade for the little ones?

Can anyone identify this?
I found this on the back of a pawpaw leaf.... wasps?

Same mud structure from a bit further away.

1089

1089

What is 1089?
33x33?
How many muscles in my back ache?
How many rice plants can fit in 100 square meters at 33cm spacing?
How many times I had to bend over to stick a seedling into the terrible soil of my "paddy"?

I am glad it is done. I figure about 1000 plants will survive to harvest. At least I hope so. The paddy is 4x the size of last year, and has some serious water holding issues. My neighbor told me "Eric, you have to take out all the sand and put in 15cm of black or red topsoil or you'll never get a decent crop."
I tend to agree with him, but I am pretty stubborn (and the thought of finding 15 cubic meters of quality soil is a bit daunting).
Meh, we'll see how it goes. If it doesn't go well, I guess I have a wheat field next year.

Taking Care of Business

Well, about five months ago the wife told me: If you spent half as much time working on the yard as blogging it would look a lot better. Now she was angry about some other things at the time, but there is a kernel of truth. I took a good hard look at the yard. It wasn't pretty. So I took a blogging vacation to clean it up, and let's face it, to passive-agressively react to her comment by cutting back on my third favorite thing, after family and beer.
But then I figure- hey- she never reads this anyway....

A reciprocal roof built in the sandbox with some bamboo (the  plastic livestock and funky  boots are the youngest's)

"Daddy, make a bridge and tunnel for my dump truck!" so I did.... I don't know what to call this type of birdge- any help?

Nectarines in bloom in early April

The expanded paddy. 100 square meters this year!

Will it keep boars out? Only time will tell. (but it worked last year)

Indian Blood Peach blossoms in Mid April.

Strawberries are blooming. I would feel safer if I could see bees....

The Good Side of June

Well, I don't want you to think that only bad things are happening.
There is a lot of beauty in this very cool spring and early summer.

This year's garlic looking great!

Organic roses smell heavenly

Everyone loves daisies

Japanese plums 

Everbearing strawberries pumping out three or four a day

Rice paddy looks better than last year

Cherokee Purple Tomato

Hollyhocks are so beautiful

Goumi fruits starting to ripen

Red Currants

Satsuma setting fruit.

Always look on the bright side of life!

2012 Rice Planting

I know I said I would switch to "Mostly Flowers" but I can't help but grow vegetables!!!! And grains!!!

That being said, the 2012 rice planting has begun.
As I outlined in a previous post, I am using last year's paddy as a warming pond, and made the new paddy over the winter. The new paddy is also 5x5 meters, so I can compare the results easily.

Yesterday I dumped in about half a cubic meter of clay in the flooded paddy and stirred it around with my kuwa (Japanese long bladed hoe). I mixed the top 10cm or so of sand with the clay, and it made a nice texture. Of course, most of the  clay was in suspension in the water. The sand settled first, and the clay made a nice even seal of about 3cm over the whole paddy. Then today I added about 12 wheelbarrows full of composted steer manure and spread that around in the water as well. That came to about about 5cm. Add that to the roughly 15cm of clay and loosened sand, and I have a 20cm depth to work with. A lot  better than last year's 2-3 cm.

The neighbor gave me a flat of organic rice seedlings, and I will plant them just as soon as possible.
And of course, I will have the results tested at city hall for Cesium, but around here, that goes without saying.

Operation Inoshishi: Permaculture Wild Boars

Random Boar Damage- this was a nicely sculpted slope.

While doing some year-end cleaning of the bedroom, I came across Gaia's Garden, by Toby Hemmingway again. I do love that book- it really got me interested in Permaculture when I read it 7 years ago. Anyway, I browsed through it and re-read the passage about the "quail tractor" he made by moving a bird feeder around to where he wanted to plant the next year. The quail would come to the feeder, and scratch and peck under the feeder to get the loose grains. By doing so they also fertilized and ate most of the weed seeds, leaving a nice bare area to plant flowers or some vegetables in.
I have decided that since the wild boars are coming to my garden anyway, I can try and get some use out of them. They come in and root around randomly- Maybe I can pursuade them to work a specific area?

This will be my new paddy next year

Phase 1. I dug six 30cm deep holes (one foot) with a posthole digger- about one meter apart. The area is going to be next year's rice paddy- I need to get all the roots and stuff out of the way, but it is a beast trying to dig them out.

Phase 2. I took the kitchen food scraps out and put them into the holes, and scattered just a little around them.

Ummm.... slops... Come and get 'em!

The idea is that the boars will smell the delicious scraps, not be able to reach them, and then root around to dig them out of their fairly deep holes. I have no idea if this will work, but if you can't beat them, use them I say.

Which brings us to Phase 3. If they do decide to help out, after I get enough use out of them, I will have my friend trap them. Steal my sweet potatoes, taro, carrots, and fall potatoes- I'll show you! Muhahahahaha!!! (Besides, with the fewer hunters since the nuclear accident, we need to thin out their numbers. The populations more than double each year without thinning....)

Rice Threshing 2011

My Rice- Koshi-Hikari

Well, I did it. And it feels good. A bit embarassing, but still pretty good.

As you know, this year I grew some rice. The kids and built the paddy, planted the rice, watched it grow, and harvested it.
And now it is threshed and de-hulled.
Here is the story in pictures.

I took the rice off the drying racks and carted it up to the house. That way, I could sit in the sun and work threshing the grain from the straw. I tried a number of ways. I beat it with a stick. I walked on it, but the best method by far was to grasp a few stalks in my hands, and run my fingers from the base to the head. The kernels just popped right off. Of course, this method will be too labor intensive if I ever grow rice well enough for a decent harvest. But for my harvest... Meh.

Here we have a mid threshing shot.

And a closeup of after stripping the grains. Lots of empty hulls and small bits of straw. I then spent a few minutes picking up handfuls of the grain and chaff, and rubbing my hands together to separate them.

Then I winnowed the grain by the time honored method of throwing it up in the air and letting the breeze carry away an alarming amount of empty hulls and straw. After gathering it back up, it looked like this.

And so I weighed it. 1500g. of unhulled rice. Hmm.... 25 square meters, 400 plants, 1500g of rice.... Oh, did I forget? I took it to the big machine in town to have it polished up and the hulls removed.

It came back at 1000g. Yes, my yield was 40g/ square meter.

So if 1 acre equals 4047 square meters, I would have grown  161.88 Kg. of rice, or  356.9Lbs...

(in 2001, the US average rice harvest/ acre was 6374 Lbs...)


All the more incentive to do better next year.
But I will enjoy eating this rice!

My Precious.....

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...

Rice Harvest 2011

My helper and his remote controlled tank.

I did it. Finally harvested the rice.
I have never seen such a weedy rice paddy before.
And the results are pretty disappointing. But- I am a firm believer in learning from mistakes. So I am happy.

So, to harvest the rice, I needed a "kama" or hand sickle, a handful of long rice straw to bind the sheaves, six bamboo legs and a thicker crosspiece for the drying rack, and... that was all.

Grasp the stalks in the left, and cut with the right.

So I got into the paddy, which I had dried out some time ago. I put my foot near the rice plant to be cut and using the sickle cut it off about 5cm from the ground. There are about 20 or so stalks in each clump. I did the one next to it, and the next.... until I could no longer easily hold them in my hand. Then I took three or four long rice straws and wrapped them in a band around the bundle near the base. After wrapping it around, I twisted it 3-4 times, and then pushed the twist through the band. Then I did the next one, and so on. I ended up with about 20 bundles.

Real farmers don't have to steady the sheaves with their legs. But it sure makes it easier.

Embarrassing photo of more weeds than ever before seen in a mostly harvested rice paddy.

Next, I built the drying rack. Basically make two tripods and balance a long stick across them. I made mine of bamboo.
And finally I hung the bundles on the rack to dry them.

Drying rack in harvested paddy.

I will be surprised to get enough rice for one family dinner out of this harvest. But I don't mind. It is all experience.

My rice.

Rice Update

My daddy is trying to grow some rice...

The rice is flowering! I am hoping for at least some crop. However, as you can see in the picture, there is a nitrogen deficiency problem. About half of  the crop is yellow-green and a bit stunted. After the typhoon passes by I will add some diluted urine to the problem areas to correct that.

Rice should be a much deeper green...

I can tell that the cold spring water has really affected the growth of the rice, it is at least a week behind the neighbor's rice, which was planted the same day as mine.

Already planning next year's paddy, adding another 25 square meters and sealing the bottom with 2cm of clay! And I will somehow find enough compost to give it a good 2cm across the whole bottom. So let's see.... 50 square meters times .02m... One cubic meter of each should be enough. Of course, will I actually have the time to do such a project? Hmm....

Rice Planting Time

Saturday was the big day. The neighbor had planted his rice the day before, and gave us some of the leftover flats of seedlings he had left. So we started the big day.

Step One: used the brush cutter to slash down all the weeds growing around the paddy. Mostly just for aesthetics, but also to make sure there were no snakes hiding out on the banks.

Step Two: Used my kuwa (a Japanese hoe) to stir up the bottom and loosen the paddy. Also it was to chop up some of the field horsetail that thrives where I built the paddy. After chopping and loosening, I was able to use the rake and take out a lot of the root systems. At least I hope so...

Step Three: We all took our shoes off and got into the paddy. Inside, I stretched a nylon string attached to two stakes across the paddy. This was our planting line. I broke off pieces of the rice seedlings and handed them to the kids, and we started to plant. Every 15cm we planted three or four blade bunches. The paddy soil was mostly sand, so it was hard to push the seedlings in, but we managed.

Bunches of 3-4 rice seedlings at 15cm spacing.

The middle child loves planting

At about the halfway point, the youngest got too bored to continue, so we decided to leave off there for the time being. Later, when I went out to take the goats up to the house, I finished the job.

Finished! You can see the flat of seedlings in the corner on the paddy bank.