Apartments’ Rice Paddies

 

 

Update 2018 – Hydro Rice in natural nutrients began! Test trials underway.

In land-scarce Singapore, it is not impossible to grow rice for fun and where space allowed, for our own consumption.

We thought this is a great gardening project to do with children as well.

Hopefully, with the experience, our urban kids will know how difficult it was to harvest just one cup of rice and cherish every morsel of grain on their plate.

 

 

Ms. SERENA GANESH

 

 

Rice grains started green and will mature till brown on the plant.

 

 

This is a labor of love for Serena Ganesh’s family.

She harvested her grains by hand peeling each husk after other attempts failed.

Local gardeners such as Edmund Gan recommended waiting till the stalks are fully golden brown before grinding the husks on a sieve to separate the grains.

 

 

In the above picture, she hand split and peeled husks from rice

 

Serena’s Tips for Growing rice:

Soak seeds 24 – 36 hours before sowing to very wet medium

Roots appeared 3 – 7 days in a sunny area

Need strong sunlight

Maintain seedlings in the very moist medium until 2nd month

 

 

Other gardeners’ sharing –

 

 

TIP – Soaked grains first before sowing on wet mediums .

 

 

TIP – Reduce water level once seeds sprouted but maintain moist medium

 

 

BUDI WIDODO

 

He grew rice along the apartment’s corridor, where there were about 6 hours of indirect sunlight.

After the seeds germinated on wet towels, they were transplanted deeper trough until harvest day.

 

 

 

Holes were cut on the side to drain excess water.

Moisture was retained at the base of the container only.

The final rice paddy trough was deep.

 

 

WILLIAM TOH

 

For soil mixture for seeds, he recommended to thoroughly mix potting soil with water until its muddy.

Then add more water till it covered the soil, before planting grains in the mud pool.

 

GERMINATING IN SOIL – MAKE IT WET, COVER TOP

 

 

 

This is how wet the soil needs to be for the germination of rice grains.

 

 

The rice plants are tall.

They need a deeper pot than cookies jar to grow better.

 

 

The key for a good rice harvest is to keep the soil constantly moist and to grow them in warm sunny places.

 

INTERNATIONAL RICE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (IRRI)

 

They recommended the soil composite to have 7:2:1 ratio of potting soil, manure/compost, and rice husks.

Mixed the above thoroughly with water for the young seedlings to thrive.

 

Our simple prototype of riverbed rice paddy with wind aeration.

 

We started schools’ workshops to design prototypes that stimulated rice plants’ natural environments to grow in minimal spaces.

 

 

Most of our “rivers” are greenhouses to prevent mosquitoes from breeding risk.

 

 

We liked to share pictures from Serena Ganesh’s mature rice paddy.

See how big this crop grew ?!

For interested gardeners, do consider a bigger pot than a cookie jar for a more bountiful harvest!

 

TIP – FULL SUN, BIG POT FOR BETTER HARVEST

 

 

 

2018 June 24 – We were surprised to see grains on plants started in PET bottles with only 4 inches of soil.

 

 

TIP – SMALL POT, FEWER GRAINS

 

 

It would take 4 – 5 months from seeds to harvest day.

Last but not least, please remember to check and change the stagnant water in our rice paddy “fields” for mosquitoes breeding.

 

HYDROPONIC RICE – SG STRAWBERRIES’ Journal 

A few batches were started for study, beginning on January 11 through April 2018.

Seeds germination rate is almost 100% within 7 days after soaking for 3 days.

As there was no room in our apartment for big pots and still being able to access strong sunlight, we will try them in hydroponic.

These were how our rice began this journey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hydro seedlings were not successful.

Most were transferred to soil in late March 2018.

The leaves were brown and limp in all the liquid nutrients we tried.

 

 

First grains spotted on June 22, 2018.

 

 

 

 

WHEN TO HARVEST GRAINS?

The grains are best left to dry on the plant.

They should look completely brown (straw color) before we cut the stalk off the plant.

When pressed, the grain is firm and does not break easily.

They do not mature evenly, thus we usually wait till almost all the grains are brown or less green.

These dried grains are also future rice seeds.

 

 

 

From our own grains, we germinated second-generation rice seedlings on October 4th, 2018.

 

 

Seedlings were planted in outdoor pots rather than PET bottles this time.

For a better harvest, they need to be planted in bigger pots or grounded.

This time, the seedlings were planted in 80 Liters pot.

 

 

 

 

In deeper pots, rice seedlings were relatively easy to grow and “fruit” on time.

Instead of 5 months in shallow PET bottles, where the roots had no place to form well, these plants showed grains in less than 4 months.

Thus plant them in deeper pots for abundant and easier harvest.

 

 

2019 – NEW BLACK & WILD VARIETIES 

BLACK PIEDMONT RICE

These seeds were sowed on February 11 and germinated 2 days later on the 13th.

 

 

It would be interesting to see how they progressed and compared them to the grains from our first journal.

 

 

They were planted in a plastic clear bottle “incubator” to observe roots development.

At this stage, we would be keeping the soil very moist while preventing mosquitoes’ breeding by enclosing seedlings in this makeshift greenhouse.

 

 

Transparent containers also allowed us to observe how roots grew in the early stages.

Lessons learned from our first journal were that seedlings planted in shallow pots or with too many seedlings took a longer time to show grains.

We hypothesized that roots with more room will grow faster with a more abundant harvest.

TIP – SMALL CONTAINER, ONE PLANT ONLY

 

 

These incubators could be used as a teaching aid to observe rice seedling’s progress from seeds to grains closely.

 

 

In the right conditions, even in shallow incubators, seedlings can show grains.

Although it would take a longer time ( 3 months instead of 2 inadequate size pots).

There were fewer grains as well.

 

 

For more grains, plants should be transplanted to bigger pots.

These one-month-old seedlings were moved on March 25, 2019.

 

 

Where roots have more room to grow, the length of time from germination to the first showing of grains is only 2 months.

 

 

Plants in deeper pot showed grains on April 15, 2019.

 

 

 

Rice grains turning a dark color.

 

 

 

SG STRAWBERRIES’ Grow Rice journal till June 26, 2018 –

 

 

 

 

Seeds available for sale in SHOP !