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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

I'm with you.  I just need probably one year to really set it up and
find good seed sources.  Do you have any idea of what kind of minimal
water depth would be?
The reason I ask is because I don't currently have the metal swimming
pool sides, but I have seen them on freecycle-you know people will give
them away in exchange for taking them down.  I don't have that, but I do
have the bottom of a plastic water tank.  It was a 400 gal tank that
split, so I cut it up.  The base is about 4x4 and could hold about a 1
foot of water.
According to John Jeavons, I would need 1.7 oz, lets say 2.0 oz of seed
for 100 square feet.  Obviously, in my little plot, I would only have 16
sf.  That is not much seed.  Yield in US is about 13#/ 100 sf, so in my
little plot, I might get 2 pounds of rice.  It might be a good test plot
until I can acquire materials for a larger plot.
So 1 inch apart, seeds started in flats, then transplanted to 4 inches
apart into paddy(intensively planted), 17 weeks to harvest after that.
Jeavons chart shows Calrose as a good variety.
His chart also says that the average person consumes 17 pounds of rice a
year.  I think I eat more than that!  In fact, I think I eat double
that.  So, to grow 35 pounds of rice, I would need about 300 sf, or 600
sf for the two of us.  A 27 ft diameter swimming pool gives me about 572
sf, which would be plenty of room to grow rice for two people.  Bigger
would be better, but 27 ft pools are easy to find.

Bev


eureka AT hctc.net wrote:
> OK Bev, I think you and I should be the rice growing guinea pigs of
> the list serve. Let's do it with our respective pools. We can
> document it on our blogs. Whaddayasay??
>
> Now I need to find out when to plant, what kind of rice, and where to
> get the grain seed. I suppose a bag of brown rice from the
> supermarket won't do, although I remember Bill saying he planted his
> fava beans right from the health food store bag.
>
> --Sage
>
>
>
> On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:32:49 -0400 EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
> wrote:
> > Yes, I have seen the Budweiser Rice Paddies in both LA and
> > Arkansas. This is not what I envision for here, not even close..I 
> > am thinking of a small paddy in a low lying area, using a swimming
> >  pool(above ground metal sided type) to create a wetland, using a
> > rainwater collection tank(300 ga) to fill the paddy.  Of course,
> > draining is easy. That is of course, for wetland rice, which is
> > what is grown in the US.
> >
> > Dry land rice intrigues me, but I need to find out more about it.
> >
> > B
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