Greetings!

Welcome to another edition of my rice farming blog. In this blog, I am glad to tell you guys another job we farmers always do in every rice farming season - removing grasses, broadleaves, and sedges. We do not usually remove broadleaves by hand if they're a lot of them, we use herbicides instead.

In this case, I removed a type of broadleaves commonly known as "Wedgewort" (see gif image below). I removed them manually because there are only a few of them less more or less thirty I think.

This type of broadleaf can grow very quickly, especially on the part of the rice field that does not have water for days. Their stem is very soft and crunchy when they are still about three to five inches in height. But did you know that they are edible? Yes, you read it right, the leaves are very much edible and eaten like sweet potato leaves (boiled). My cousins love to eat and partner it with rice.

By the way guys, I did not take a lot of photos for this blog, I recorded a video instead so that you guys will see and feel how we do our job on a rice farm (see the two videos below).

The timing of removing Wedgewort is not very specific but they should be removed or eradicated as soon as possible so that they will not interfere with the growth of rice crops. Leaving them out will cause yield losses. In my case, I just removed them by hand because there are only a few of them and I deliberately left them to grow because there are only a few of them. But if noticed on the video (when I closed up at the bottom) you can see other grasses side by side with the Wedgewort, I will be using herbicide to eradicate them so that they will no further interfere with the growth of the rice crops.

After I did the job, I plan to apply herbicide the next morning but heavy rain ensued in the afternoon, so, I scheduled it for another day when the soil is almost dry.

Below is a photo of some of the Wedgeworth that I removed. I did the job in just under twenty minutes because there are only a few of them.

Bye!