Growing rice in Indiana?

Yeah, I know I'm crazy, or at least a little goofy. But seriously, I have been giving this some though lately and I'm darn sure going to try it anyhow!

I recently was given several accessions of rice, including many of glutinous rice and have been thinking of the many ways that I could grow this generally wet loving crop in our climate, a few ideas have come to mind, most would be fairly practical but would not allow the space for any real "harvest" of anything other than seed for replanting, however each experiment could be scaled up and the trick for us would be to grow enough so that we can have a couple of bowls of rice per week here in our home from our own stock.

Most of my ideas revolve around filling a container without any drainage holes such as a bucket, a two gallon bottle with the top cut off, or even a childrens' swimming pull 3/4 full of growing medium, likely garden soil, composted manure, and vermicompost, then filling the container with water and inundating the soil until the water is about 3/4" above the soil line (for this we will use water catchment off of the guttering on the house), at this point you could plant your seed. Once the seed germinates and begins to grow and gets it's head above water you would add water once more, give the seed heads time to develop, stop watering and then harvest. The seed heads could be dried in the greenhouses, later the seed would be threshed from the stalk and then baked at low heat (under 200 degrees farenheight) for under an hour, at which point you should be able to roll the seeds in your hand or place them between some moving screens to create the friction needed to free the seeds. Afterwords you would simply winnow out the chaff and have the essential rice grain for personal use for the coming years!

Now, I'm not sure how large I'm going to make this project this year, but I've got enough freaking containers around here I should be able to get a decent sized experimental plot planted for the year. I'll report back later!

Homegrown Goodness Messageboard News: Major anouncement from Tim Peters of Peters Seed Research

On January 1'st we will be announcing a major project involving Tim Peters of Peters Seed Research and his much lauded perennial grain projects. Tim has spent years on perinnializing grains of various types for use in sustainable agricultural practices and which could lead to many new revolutions and revelations in the future of feeding the world! Stay tuned to The Homegrown Goodness Message Board for more information!

Here is an article by the Seed Ambassadors about Tim, be sure to check it out!

The Kusa Seed Society

Thanks for the heads up to CanadaMike over at The Homegrown Goodness Message Board. I recently posted about my interest in open pollinated grains and the experiments that we would be attempting in the growing of these precious nutritional crops. Mike recently informed me of the existence of this seed society and their seed offers. It seems like a terrific organization though I have not had much time to check out the site for myself lately, I'll be making some time later this week and be ordering for sure.

Check them out here:

http://www.ancientcerealgrains.org

Hip-Gnosis Seed Devlopment Grain Trials for 2009

One of the many areas that I think most market farmers and home gardeners miss out on is in growing grains. Often I think that people believe that grains can and should only be grown in giant acreage of mono-crop fields, but this is most certainly not the case, but the question becomes in all reality, how much space is required to produce a sufficient amount of grain for a small family, an individual, or even for possible sales at a farmers market. As with all crops it is risk versus reward. The trick is to find the easiest crops and varieties to bring to fruit with the least amount of worry in an organic system while also balancing the weight of yield and nutrition.

I know there are others already working on these crops, but as witnessed by the general lack of conversation of such crops on the Homegrown Goodness Message board, they are few and far between. Sure, everybody grows some kind of corn in their home or market garden, but how many grow Wheat, Spelt, Oats, Millet, Amaranth, and Quinoa.

If we want to be truly self sufficient we should be seriously considering these crops and the nutrition that they can and should provide us. Some of them in and of themselves are a complete source of nutrition. Value added grains if you will, those with complete sets of needed food values, such as Quinoa, which are also seldom seen as cash crops by the Chemical Companies who own the Seed Companies and as such represent little risk for GMO contamination or patent gene drift, should be a particularly good crop to further domesticate in the further Northern and Southern latitudes of our globe. These are the grains that shall help provide nutrition in states where malnutrition are the norm, including here in the US. In a time of economic instability around the globe these are the grains that should be in all of our gardens.

Further we can not overlook the importance of grains like wheat, how nice would it be to bake your own bread from your own wheat stock? How about hulless oats, easy to thresh, high nutrition quality, a multitude of uses. For those of us maintaining farm animals let us not pass up the importance of feeding locally, particularly from our own stock of grains, avoiding any and all contamination by synthetic pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizers. Millet should make a great addition to a poultry or game foul mix of your own.

What about rice? Can we grow rice in Indiana? If so what is a good variety, what culture should be used to bring it to fruit?

In 2009 I plan to work with a number of these important grains. As I said above, the question is what is the bare minimum amount of space to be devoted in a bio-intensive farming setting to mixed grain production in order to feed a family of three, livestock, and also allow some amount for sale and some seed for replanting. I have not in the past been nearly vigilant enough about writing down the results of my experiments and seed breeding, however this blog has brought me into the sphere of realizing my work is no longer only important to myself but to others as well, by realizing such a thing, I have inspired a new way of thinking, wherein I will better document my future experiments by utilizing the individual space I have here and on the message board for such projects and their documentation.