How Is Rice Grown? A Detailed Explanation of the Whole Rice Planting Process

How is rice grown? Rice is the finished product made from paddy grain after processes such as cleaning, hulling, milling, and finished-product sorting.

Rice cultivation techniques

To cultivate rice, you need to master seven stages: land preparation, seedling raising, weeding and pest removal, fertilizing, irrigation and drainage, drying, and screening. Nowadays machines are mostly used instead of manpower; for seedling raising, you can choose rice seedlings from a seedling center, large-scale growers choose to transplant seedlings with a rice transplanter, while paddies of irregular shape are transplanted by hand. Weeding, fertilizing, and irrigation and drainage are carried out according to the day-to-day growth changes of the rice seedlings, and on the day of harvest, drying and finally screening are needed.

1. Land preparation

Before planting rice, the soil of the paddy field must first be turned over to make it soft and loose. This process is divided into three periods: coarse plowing, fine plowing, and leveling. In the past, animal power and plows were used, mainly water buffaloes to prepare the land and plow the field, but today machines are mostly used for land preparation.

2. Seedling raising

Farmers first raise seedlings in a certain field, which is often called a seedling bed. After sowing the rice seeds, farmers mostly scatter a layer of rice husk ash on the soil; in modern times, dedicated seedling centers mostly use seedling boxes to grow the rice seedlings. Good rice seedlings are the key to successful rice farming. When the seedlings grow to about eight centimeters tall, transplanting can begin.

3. Transplanting

The seedlings are carefully inserted into the paddy field at orderly intervals. The traditional transplanting method uses seedling ropes, seedling markers, or a transplanting wheel to make marks in the paddy field. When transplanting by hand, a seedling separator is worn on the thumb of the left hand to help the farmer separate the seedlings and insert them into the soil. The weather at transplanting time is very important, as heavy rain will damage the seedlings. Nowadays, rice transplanters are often used for transplanting, but in paddy fields with large undulations in the land and non-square shapes, manual transplanting is still needed. The seedlings generally run in a north-south direction. There is also the more convenient method of seedling throwing.