Late April
Soak the brown rice I usually eat in water. Change the water every day, and after about three days, the rice will have germinated well. Select the germinated ones. I selected about 30 grains. Plant them with the buds facing up.
For soil, I used vegetable culture soil. I planted 19 seeds. Cover with soil from above. Fill the bucket with water up to the level of the soil. 6 days later
Green sprouts are coming out. 10 days later
Sprouts are coming out! 11 sprouts, so about half of them. Eleven of them are growing well. 16 days later
I planted them as soon as they sprouted, but they didn't sprout very well. I quickly realized how difficult it is to grow brown rice. It's not protected by rice husks, so it rots. I left it outside on a rainy day and it got submerged! 23 days later
Only this seedling is growing well. 30 days later
Drying out the soil in the garden for rice planting. 31 days later
Put the filtered soil into a 10-liter bucket. I used a rough colander to strain the soil. I found that the soil didn't penetrate very well when I added water after it had reached the top, so I added water at this point. Add water a few times and mix until it becomes mud. It's almost mud now. After repeating this process four times, the soil was heaped up to 7cm from the top. Finally, it's time to plant the rice in the buckets! After about a month, they have grown to this size! The roots are packed. I'm going to plant four of them in a bundle. I hope they'll grow well! They say to set the water depth to 1cm at first. Only three buckets are shown here, but I planted them in four buckets in total. 36 days later (5 days after planting)
Algae has sprung up. They say this is a good environment. I wrote the memory up to 5 cm on the disposable chopsticks. I will make the water depth 3cm. 44 days later (13 days after rice planting)
After a few cloudy days, the algae disappeared, and instead, there was an outbreak of mosquito larvas. I started to keep medaka (Japanese medaka) as an anti-mosquito larvas measure. At that time, the water depth was only 5 cm, so I put a net over the top of the medaka to prevent them from jumping. 60 days later (29 days after rice planting)
One month has passed since planting, and the grass has grown to a height of 45 to 55 cm. The water is drained to allow for drying.
*This is the process of letting the water drain out for a few days to dry out the soil. I rescued the medaka and moved it to the tank. The growth of them is quite uneven. 67 days later (36 days after planting)
It was the rainy season, and it rained every day this year, so I let them dry out for a week. When there is a gap at the edge of the bucket, it seems to be done. Change here! After this, it's called intermittent irrigation, and the water depth is repeated several times from 2cm to 0cm to 2cm. I filled the water up to 2cm. 73 days later (42 days after rice planting)
The leaves have withered a little. I wonder if I did too much drying in the middle. Worried. Fertilize with 5g of 8:8:8 chemical fertilizer. 79 days later (48 days after planting)
The leaves are getting bigger. 86 days later (55 days after planting)
But the leaves are breaking off. The roots have started to grow. I attached a round cage to prevent the plant from falling.
The grass is now just 100 cm tall. 93 days later (62 days after planting)
At this time, the withering of the leaves has progressed and symptoms of disease have started to appear. Only half of the leaves turned white or some of them broke off. Rice blast disease? The tips of the leaves were withering away. The rice plants in the nearby rice paddies were producing ears. Please don't let wither here! At this time, the grass was over 110 cm tall. How much will they grow! Finally, the ears have emerged!!! To my surprise, the seedlings in the pots that I left without replanting also sprouted! 109 days later (78 days after planting)
The grass is 120 cm tall! A lot of ears are coming out! The white part is the flower. If you look closely, you can see some brownish parts. Some of them are eaten by insects. Ohhh 114 days later (83 days after planting)
Now the white ear...
Will I be able to harvest them properly? Looking at the white ear stalks, I can see that the lower part has been nibbled by grasshoppers. I put up an insect net. A total of 18 stems turned into white ears.
(0 stems, 7 stems, 7 stems, 4 stems) 129 days later (98 days after planting)
When I took off the net, there were grasshoppers, so the days passed by. The ears are drooping! The color is changing. 136 days later (105 days after planting)
The color of the ears is turning brown. It's been exactly one month since the first ears appeared. I will drain the water. 145 days later (114 days after planting)
Nine days after draining the water... This is the GOLDEN color! Harvesting! When I took the soil out of the bucket, I found that the roots had spread all over! That's a lot! Bundling the rice and tying it with string. Dry in the sun. 154 days later (123 days after planting)
Nine days after drying in the sun...
The drying process is finished. Take only the unhulled part of the rice. 32 stalks, 26 stalks, 30 stalks, 19 stalks.
These are the harvest numbers. Using chopsticks to thresh the rice. It was better to do it in the bag, so it wouldn't fly around. After doing all the work, I got about 185 grams. This is the unhulled rice. The rice is scattered all over the place. Now it's time to grind the rice. I use a soft baseball to grind the rice. After a while, the rice hulls and brown rice are separated, so I blow on the hulls to make them fly out of the bowl. Sometimes the brown rice flies away with the husk. After repeating this process for a while, they finally become brown rice. The total weight of the rice is now about 128 grams. Now it's done! Brown rice is ready!! Comparison with brown rice sold commercially.
(Left: Homemade, Right: Commercial) I'll put them to good use in my vegetable garden.
(Brown rice, rice husks, straw) The last step is to polish the rice.
Use a pestle and keep pounding from above. This process seems to take about 24 hours, and the rice millers can only be used with a minimum of 1 kg of rice, so I give up. Finally, it was time to cook the rice, but even though it was new rice and the amount is a little short of 1 cup, I added 1 cup of water! The rice turned out to be a little watery. I'll eat! The rice smells delicious, and it's very sticky. The rice is exceptionally delicious because I made it myself. PS: The medaka spawned eggs in the tank, and now there are 40 kids! Thank you for watching.
