Hello,

What can be planted in rice paddy other than rice? A question I find myself asking staring into the paddy field.

What crops\trees are resistant to long periods of water logged soils. Or maybe I should dig deeper and start raising fish?

thoughts??

thanks

rich

Hello,

What can be planted in rice paddy other than rice? A question I find myself asking staring into the paddy field.

What crops\trees are resistant to long periods of water logged soils. Or maybe I should dig deeper and start raising fish?

thoughts??

thanks

rich

During the dry season (now) we grow tomatoes, marrows and egg plants, etc. in the paddy. We then plough late May/June for the rice sowing, then plough/sow intermediate crops after the rice harvest (one harvest/year). The plants do not need to be resistant to water logged soils at the times of year we plant and provide a year-round income.

Hello,

What can be planted in rice paddy other than rice? A question I find myself asking staring into the paddy field.

What crops\trees are resistant to long periods of water logged soils. Or maybe I should dig deeper and start raising fish?

thoughts??

thanks

rich

Are you talking of second crops (off season) or alternative uses for ex-paddy.?

A lot depends on the area ,the topography etc. Does the paddy flood naturally during the wet season?

If the land is very low lying eg (river flats) you have a problem. whereas if it has some elevation then removing the bund walls and providing some drainage may do the trick.

A few more specifics of the actual paddy would enable suggestions from the forum.

On the way to our hilside farm there must be 25+ paddies, a small river runs around the perimeter of these, once the rice harvest is done and dusted they are left till the next season, but one of the farmers plants sweetcorn,maize whatever you like to call it, in 2 paddies, plants 1 then plants the other a month later, you can almost watch it grow, husks up to 8/10 inches, he sometimes uses his kubuta powered spiral pump to keep the soil wet ect, so these are not natural wet paddies, I would guess he gets 5 harvests in the dry season, and must make money doing it, else he wouldnt bother!!

We tried "dry sweetcorn" on our farm once, 100 husks, 60bht, none where longer than 4inches,

Just an idea for an empty paddyfield, if you can irrigate, Good luck, Lickey..