Rice for the rest of us

Friday, January 18, 2008

For the last couple of weeks I and some of my fellow FTP contributors have had our noses stuck in seed catalogs.  Many of us will begin our indoor seed starting for certain long season crops pretty soon and it’s a great time of year to fantasize about gardening - especially in light of the snow yesterday!!

Always interested in growing new things, I stumbled upon a kid’s website recent that describes the growing conditions necessary for growing your own rice.  As you might imagine, rice is not exactly native to Pennsylvania.  Rather, rice is native to tropical and subtropical southern Asia and southeastern Africa.  Most of the rice grown today comes from Asia, and it’s growth requires quite a bit of water.

That said, it’s entirely possible to grow your own rice without flooding your backyard!  All it takes is a bucket, a bit of compost and potting soil, some rice seeds, and water.  You can grow the rice indoors - as long as your have temps above 55 degrees, that’s all you need (click for the full instructions).  The rice needs a long growing season - 90-120 days.

I have to assume that a large number of rice plants would need to be planted to get a decent enough yield.  Still, it might make a fun experiment - and think of how proud you’ll be to have rice that you’ve grown yourself without all the pesticides.