What are the levels of Calcium in that soil? The pH does kind of indicate that maybe the soil is low in Ca but without a number for that it is difficult to know.

I have entered the content of the soil test in its entirety. For purposes of this request for ideas, responders should assume that there is adequate calcium in the soil, as the surrounding mountains are limestone karst and the University does not bother to test for calcium. In any case we cannot afford another test.

It appears that you are not in touch with the world's rice growing authority, International Rice Research Institute based in Manilla. Do a search for the Institute to locate phone numbers/email addresses where you will quickly find answers to your soil test questions plus additional help.

Maupin -
Wood ashes will raise the pH quickly, and they should be locally available and close to free. Just don't overdo it.

Make whatever organic material you can gather - vegetable scraps, animal dung, weeds, etc. - into a compost heap. Layer it onto the paddy area after harvest, and keep adding to it. Don't burn the straw after harvest, compost it too.

Try a variety of popular local vegetables in each paddy area to avoid a total failure ... I'm in Arizona (dry alkaline clay) so I can't make good recommendations, but organic material will buffer the pH for the plants.

During the vegetable growing period, keep layering the organic matter in and on the paddys, and thinly scatter wood ashes.

Nandina-
I will check into the IRRI website, however, we get a very good yield on our organic rice harvest and we already know that rice will grow in almost any pH, so I am dubious that rice research is what we need. It's our dry season vegetables and that yield--poor last year--that is our concern.

Lazygardens-- thanks for the very practical advice. In this climate we can go from new pile to finished compost in 30 days, so we always have a new pile going and a finished pile as well. Regrettably, because of the low lying contour of the land we do not have room for a third pile--especially in rainy season--because the remainder of the land is in production and that not in production is so low lying that you could drown turning the pile.

The irrigation of rice paddy land has the water flowing through the paddy (i.e. in and out) so I don't want to waste the finished compost on it until after harvest. AT our rice grass-finished compost in one month production rate we should have a decent amount by November harvest.

Until then we'll continue to add the 30 gallons of compost tea every 4 days--plenty more where that came from.

We don't burn rice straw, instead we chop it by hand at ground level and compost it, as you suggest.

Wood ash-- what an obvious, heretofore unconsidered, and helpful suggestion! Consider it done. But I think we'll just collect wood until november and burn/add it then, taking care not to overapply. Plenty of bamboo here.

One more try. I understood your question. IRRI is familiar with the growing situations in the Pacific Rim and all soil types. It is very possible that it could be be of assistance to you. Make a contact and find out.

Are you familiar with the "keyhole" method of gardening which was developed in Africa to ward off starvation? Do a search for some interesting reading. Faced with the impossible task of fertilizing large tracts of poor land, the keyhole garden idea was developed and taught to the population through the students in the school system. There are many variations of it and some gardeners in this country growing in very small spaces use it successfully.

I'm hesitant to reply because Buzz Killington will probably bite my head off, too, but here goes...

I'm not sure what's going on with this. You claim you are teaching organic farming but you have no money for organic inputs. Then you say you are using compost. Something is not right in all that. Is all you're doing is teaching them to use compost?

I think your compost tea is a waste of time. The temps are too hot to aerate the tea. Hot water holds no oxygen. You'd do just as well to toss the compost into the incoming water and let it go wherever.

Burning wood simply to make ash seems like a huge waste of carbon. If you are burning wood for fuel, then that's different. You can use those ashes for pH control. I would grind the bamboo into mulch and use it like that.

How many acres do you have access to?
How many acres are in rice paddies?
What crops do you grow in the non-rice season?
Does grass (not just bamboo) grow in the area?
Is there anything green growing in the ditches?
Are there wild or farm animals in the area? If so, what are they?
Was there ever a forest or grassland in the area?
How many people are being supported by the land?
Do they get food from anywhere else?
Are they vegetarians?

That soil test was not particularly good. Make a note for your journal to get a better test next time.

I have been doing some research. Suggest that you search...azolla + rice growing. (Azolla is duckweed fern.)Try it with and without quotes around the query. Lots of reading and information. From what I understand azolla not only increases rice production but also adds fertilizer to the soil for vegetable crops. It may already be in your rice fields naturally which would be a good thing. Also, by searching ...growing vegetables in rice fields...I found a method of building raised berms on which veggies are grown during the rice growing season. Worth a try.

Cool - azolla is a nitrogen fixer!

http://www2.ctahr.hawaii.edu/sustainag/GreenManures/azolla.asp has lots of information

One drawback is that it has to have water (no seeds) so you might need a small pond to keep it between rice crops.

Dschall- In answer to your questions--

Compost is a free input. We make it by hand cutting the rice grass and mixing it with dried rice straw and vegetable kitchen waste. No manure. I was referring to suggestions that involved spending money when I said we had no money for inputs. I apologize if that was unclear.

We have a solar panel, sugar, and an aquarium pump. If we applied the finished compost to our 4 acres it would provide almost zero improvement in pH and be washed out during rainy season. Further, the hottest month of the year here is April and we keep the compost tea in the shade, so I think it is probably aerating sufficiently.

We teach Soil Science, English, and Systems of Democracy in the classroom 6 hours a day, five days a week. This week in Soil Science we taught the nitrogen cycle and how to mix inputs into compost tea differently to get a finished product that is bacterial or fungal, and which plants to which to apply which type of tea.

Scrap wood is plentiful around here, especially bamboo. We do not have a shredder so it is difficult to compost or otherwise grind wood products, however, burning for ash would make the wood more easily applied.

I will answer each of your questions and maybe you can explain their relevance to my initial inquiry.

How many acres do you have access to? 4
How many acres are in rice paddies? a little over 3
What crops do you grow in the non-rice season? Chinese cabbage, bitter gourd, chiles, yard long bean, many asian eggplants-- however, if we cannot raise the pH signifigantly we will probably switch to crops that grow better in low pH.
Does grass (not just bamboo) grow in the area? rice grass
Is there anything green growing in the ditches? No, they are waterways.
Are there wild or farm animals in the area? If so, what are they? Ducks
Was there ever a forest or grassland in the area? Dunno. Maybe 1000 years ago?
How many people are being supported by the land? 20
Do they get food from anywhere else? The goal is to be self sufficient. The low pH of the soil last year provided a smaller than necessary veg harvest and we had to raise $$ to buy food that was our intent to produce. Thus this inquiry for answers.
Are they vegetarians? They eat whatever is put in front of them. If veg is all we have that's all they eat. They eat duck and duck eggs fairly regularly, as well as snakehead fish and snails that we net from the ditches.

That soil test was not particularly good. Make a note for your journal to get a better test next time. --Soil test was free and is the standard test provided by Chiang Mai University. They won't do another free test for 5 years. We were lucky to get that one, as soil testing paid for by the Thai government provided free to Burmese refugees has a complicated political element to it.

When these folks return to Burma, many will not have access to electricity to power a pump, IPM strategies must be developed to address their twin pests of monkeys and parrots, and they will NEVER have access to the results of a soil test. So when I say we are teaching organic farming it is in much the same vein that Hawkeye Pierce would teach surgery to a Korean med student, if you get my drift.

Who is Buzz Killington? I've been working in the jungle too long to keep up with pop culture.

Lazygardens, Nandina-- azolla?? Cool. we have a small pond with water hyacinth which I chop and use in a basket layered with rice straw to germinate mushroom spores. I'll look into azolla. Will the ducks eat it?

Maupin, I have used wood ash for many years and I can recommend it, BUT! there are some vegetables that will keel over and die if you apply it to the soil while they are growing. Like radicchio. There are other veggies that will lap it up, even if scattered straight around the plant, and ask for more, like chard. I assume you have multiple crops in a year. It is best to apply it once a year, when a resistant crop is about to be planted. Or you can apply it and let the land lie fallow until two inches of rain have fallen (over there, that maybe a matter of days).

I found this question so interesting that I phoned a friend who was, until recently working for the International Rice Research Institute and is now back in the States. An interesting conversation in which I learned that IRRI was working very hard to discourage the burning of or adding burned carbon material to the rice fields because it blocks the rice stems and inhibits growth.

Also, IRRI has worked out an agreement with Thailand which affords them money for research, soil testing, etc. My friend assures me that Thailand is a very advanced country horticulturally and this leads me to believe that the person asking questions is out of the loop and not in touch with the right people. Sure hope he got in touch with IRRI.

Maupin -
Azolla is also called "duckweed" ... I guess they will eat it.

Another plant that is reasonably pH-tolerant is okra: edible young pods and leaves, and the dried seeds can be roasted, ground and used for a beverage. It loves heat and humidity, thrives here along with the eggplant.

Hyacinth bean - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyacinth_bean might worl too. It's forage, edible roots, leaves, and blossoms and IF COOKED, edible seeds.

If you wait until after rice harvest and then scatter and till the wood ashes into the dirt, you can raise the pH for a small area reasonably well.

Also, can you cultivate anything on the dikes between paddies during the rainy season?

Here is a link that might be useful: Vegetable pH

LG- I forgot to list okra-- we grow that and it thrives here. The permanent dikes that indicate the property boundary are planted with chiles.

Glib-- Rice is 110 days. Plant mid June, harvest October. Then we have October to June for dry season veggies, 3-4 roatations.