This year our garden has been full of experiments: wheat, spelt, oats, luffa sponge gourds, flax, amaranth, rice. Rice? But doesn't that require a flooded plain? There are actually a few varieties of rice that do not require flooding! And since we're on a quest to find grains that are easy to grow in a backyard garden, we knew we had to try growing rice.
Rice that doesn't require flooding is called Upland rice. We planted the "Blue Bonnet" variety. (Baker Creek Seeds no longer carries this variety, but they do have another upland rice.)
We planted in May. The crop didn't have any pests, other than birds who stole the grains on the stalks until we covered the plants with netting.
This weekend we harvested the rice. From a 6 foot by 4 foot plot, we yielded 4 pounds of rice. It was easy to harvest and thresh (I CANNOT say the same for wheat, which was hell on earth to thresh and winnow).
We still have to hull the rice after it dries out for a few weeks. But we are happy with the results of our harvest and plan to grow rice again!
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