Rice takes a lot of water in any climate!!

Thanks. I wonder why I didn't get the email you both commented? getting ready today to plant.

If some duck shows up and eats my future little tub of it...

Rice is grown in Texas and LA.

Rice is grown in the Sacramento delta!

Stanofh: I got a laugh about the ducks. Now I want to try growing rice... but haven't a clue.

Arkansas is #1 in US production, California is #2 and grows the 2nd largest worldwide export of sushi rice, after Japan

Just out of curiosity, are you growing it just for fun? It kind of reminds me of my efforts at strawberries or almonds. Several years of a lot of effort and a lot of space for maybe 10 edible strawberries/almonds. spread over weeks. It's a lot easier to just buy them!

Carla in Sac

Just for fun. Every Time this part of the year,the wife says our local fields of green grass and hay remind her of home and the rice fields.

I once had an evergreen rice from UC Berkeley..it was also a dwarf cultivar. Lost to the ages. I never got to try it in summer. Died from winter cold I think.

That last rice mention? If I had kept the pot inside over winter. But,life gets in the way of best decisions and that was near 20 years ago.

Today is a good day to try again..wink.

I worked breeding hybrid rice for 6 years in Texas. I am surprised that anyone would want to try to grow it, as it is a relatively inexpensive food. Also, after you grow it, it would need to be 'milled'. When riced is 'milled', the seed coat is ground away. If rice is milled for a shorter time, you get 'brown rice', which has a trace of the seed coat on it. If you mill it longer, you get 'white rice'. When rice is milled, around 30% or more of the whole unmilled rice is broken in the milling process. There are machines that are used to sort the broken grains from the whole grains. In the US, these broken grains may be sold to beer companies or to companies that make rice flour, etc. I was surprised to find out that rice may be grown in fields that are not flooded. The main reason that the fields are flooded is to control weeds. Still, aquatic weeds may grow in flooded fields.

A strong argument can be made for home gardeners to grow vegetable gardens. Home-grown tomatoes, melons, watermelons, cucumbers, etc, can be picked at the pinnacle of ripeness and are therefore of higher quality than you would typically find at a grocery store. But I don't think that you would find an improvement in quality in home-grown rice and it would be difficult to justify spending several thousand dollars on the equipment needed to mill and sort the home-grown rice.

Still, you may still want to grow it and see what happens.

Good luck,

John

One good reason for growing rice at home would be to avoid the high levels of arsenic in commercially grown (including organic) rice. There are types of rice that grow well in dry, non-flooded, conditions. They are classified as upland rices, and I've read they need as much water as corn. Fedco seeds sell two upland rice varieties, and I've see them for sale at some other websites also.

I wonder what farmers did with rice before there were milling machines? Does anyone know...

Here is some information about growing and processing harvested rice at home

https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/growing-rice-how-to

I live on the edge of the rice-producing areas of Arkansas and Mississippi and my mother-in-law lives in the middle of it in Eastern Arkansas. it’s an interesting crop to me but other than as a novelty, I’m not sure I would ever try to grow it myself. It’s a lot like wheat in that it takes so much space to produce a usable quantity. Of course, growing it as a novelty or just for fun has some value also.

out of curiosity, I did some calculations on yield. In 2018, California produced 8,620pounds per acre or about 0.2 pounds per square foot. So, to get a pound you would need about 5 square feet- not as much space as I was thinking, but that’s just 1 bag of rice or 1-2 meals. Interesting.also, it seems that California has edged out Arkansas for the top-producing spot.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/190832/top-us-states-for-rice-yield-per-harvested-acre/

We have lots of rice fields surrounding Sacramento. They are flooded in winter for a triple purpose -- they serve as overflow for flood control of the Sacramento River, the flooding controls weeds for the rice, and it serves as a resting and foraging area for the Pacific flyway bird migration.
I love the color of green of newly sprouted rice fields with white cranes flying through them, it's so beautiful!
Carla in Sac

I heard they help replenish groundwater also. At least,that's how the subsidized farmers tell it!

I've grown rice in NYC.

The person I got Carolina gold seed from suggested a wading pool with coffee can in center. You can grow as lowland always flooded or upland more dependant on rain and watering.

I put in old Styrofoam cooler with overflow hole since there was a lot of rain that year.

It's a fast growing grass and with a long enough season or heat it flowered and produced rice for me. Second year delays saw decreased production but I still got some rice.

I'm looking for a shorter season seed this time.

To de-hull I used a Japanese suribachi I had which is a morter and pestle that has ridges in the bottom. The edges split the hulls with little effort.