Hello farmers and Homesteaders.

Am delighted to bring you a second edition of how to plant rice seed in the farm /field.

This is a series I started this week following the onset of our rice planting season.
You can see the initial post here on how to directly plant rice in the field with the specific amount of spacing, depth and the conditions required for proper germination.

The second method of propagating rice is the transplanting method of which I spoke about extensively here

We are still into the germination phase and today I will be talking about the third and last method of propagating or planting rice.
Which is the spraying method where partly germinated rice sprayed in the field.

Spray technique/method

Like the name I call this, rice is not planted into the soil but sprayed across the field.
The field has to be moderately dried and the rice partly terminated at home.

This is how it is done.

We soak the grains of rice to be planted in water for over 24hrs.

Afterwards we drain it and pour in a sack.

This is then covered in a pot and allowed to ferment an germinate.

You can see the seedlings well germinated here

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On getting to the field, we spray/,spread the partly germinated seedlings by hand across the field.
But there are some conditions attached to this.

• You may need to add a harmless colorant to the seedlings to conceal it until it is well germinated unless you are ready to have birds feed on your seedlings.

Wood ash or charcoal powder can be grounded an mixed with the rice to hide the seedlings color.

A more harmful thing we do, is add chemicals to the seedlings before spraying, once a single bird feeds on this and dies, other will flee from the field, but this is harmful to wild life.

• Using a human mould sometimes helps. Just get a big doll or fill some tress with cloth to stand in the middle of the farm. This too night help.

Why is the rice partly germinated.

This is so because we are not planting deep into the soil but spraying in the field, each single grain standing at a spot on its own, it will takes time for rice to germinate if we do not partly germinate it at home. To reduce the time it spends on the field, we germinate it partially and then spray across the field, after spreading in the field we expect it to sprout and send root into the ground in about a weeks time.

Note.

One major important thing you can do prevent birds from eating up your seedling is to spread rice in between short grasses, this is what I mean.

Once you have a field with the grasses in low cut as this.

Spray the farm and on that very day, spread your seedlings like 4hrs after spraying the farm.

Soon as the grass wilders away, your seedlings will have started growing underneath without birds noticing that there were there.
The grass acts like mulching agent to concealer seedlings.

Better still a field where you have killed the grasses as the one above can be used.
The dead leave mulch your seed and also becomes manure once the rains become heavy and the rot away into the soil.

You will have a clean plant with seed terminated as the one here.

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Some germinated rice seeds coming up from dead grass leaves.

The advantage of this spraying method.

Since all the grains are scattered across the field it reduces the accumulation of grasses across rice field unlike the planting one where there is some one feet spacing between each bunch of rice foe grass go grow.

When rice is planted between dead leaves, there are chances that the leaves will rot and become manure for the rice.

Overcrowding tends to occurs with this type of planting but after a month of planting we carry out thinning to reduce the number of grains in the field.

I hope you have learnt a thing from this second method of propagating rice.

You can learn to grow rice grains with me from any part of the world.
These are the 3ways to propagate rice.

As these grows and germinate we shall be watching it closely and learn more from the practical example this will be bringing.

Thank you for stopping by.