Rice Straw Mulch

[aussieruss]

Can some one advise me why farmers don't use rice straw on crops as mulch to keep weeds down and help retain moisture and add organic matter to the beds and help soil retention regards Russell

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[TPI]

Yeh, they're too lazy to plow the straw back in, it might interfere with the chemicals that they're poisoning the ground with! I wouldn't mind too much if they burnt the stuff for the potash! It doesn't even make good cattle or buff feed as it's so low in nutriment that the bovines actually starve the more they eat it!

[Jotham79]

They use a bunch of it around here, but not on all crops. It is used heavily on garlic and onions. Also on corriander, tobacco, tomatoes and some other vegetables.

Jotham

[oldestswinger]

We use it on just about everything we grow. As do a fair number of others around here.

[IsaanAussie]

Hi Russ,

The straw is used to feed local cattle and buffalos during the rice season when there is little pasture. To store it during the wet it is built into stacks in the open and some now bale it and store under cover.

As a mulch it is great but decomposes very quickly. As a soil builder it is spectacular as it is full of fungus and bacteria native to the area. Ours often has straw mushroom spores in it that produce at this time of year. I use it baled to form raised garden beds. As soon as they get wet they start to decompose adding to the humus and the biology. The soil/compost mix in the beds and the bordering straw are then combined and you have some great "real" soil after less than one wet season.

You can soak a bale in an EM solution and then place it on the ground covered with plastic and you have bokashi in days.

[aussieruss]

Where we are near Korat I never see anyone use to keep weeds down they just spend all day weeding and let the straw rot in a pile in the rice paddy I do see them use on spring onions they do feed to cattle but this is very poor feed I had 30head of cattle but that is why I sold them regards Russell

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[IsaanAussie]

Where we are near Korat I never see anyone use to keep weeds down they just spend all day weeding and let the straw rot in a pile in the rice paddy I do see them use on spring onions they do feed to cattle but this is very poor feed I had 30head of cattle but that is why I sold them regards Russell

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If you have ever tried to grub out some of the weeds here you will know the reason why. Some of those really tenancious suckers have roots as long as your arm and they will push through almost any mulch. On short growing season crops it is OK but past a few months the weeds are back.

Around me the Thais dont pull weeds, at best they "cut the grass" or they poison it. I admit to being very tempted to pull out the chemical hoe on some weed patches I would rather not have. One thing that has worked for me is to pump the sediment from the pigs septic tanks onto the weeds. They dont come back quickly then. The seed load in the ground is all but eliminated. Burn you illegitimate sons of weeds, you!

[loong]

Maybe it has something to do with cost and availability. Unfortunately there is not a lot of rice growing going on around here. If I was able to get 40 tonnes delivered at 500 Bt per tonne, then I can assure you that I would use it as mulch. Don't think that is possible though.

[IsaanAussie]

Maybe it has something to do with cost and availability. Unfortunately there is not a lot of rice growing going on around here. If I was able to get 40 tonnes delivered at 500 Bt per tonne, then I can assure you that I would use it as mulch. Don't think that is possible though.

If you ever get that deal, then cut me in too. We have our straw baled after threshing. It costs 15 baht per bale and I suppose they weigh 15 kgs each. So lets say there would be 60 bales per tonne, 900 baht just to bale it.

[loong]

Maybe it has something to do with cost and availability. Unfortunately there is not a lot of rice growing going on around here. If I was able to get 40 tonnes delivered at 500 Bt per tonne, then I can assure you that I would use it as mulch. Don't think that is possible though.

If you ever get that deal, then cut me in too. We have our straw baled after threshing. It costs 15 baht per bale and I suppose they weigh 15 kgs each. So lets say there would be 60 bales per tonne, 900 baht just to bale it.

I think that probably answers the OP's question. I guess that unless one has an ample supply of free or nearly free straw nearby, it would most likely be uneconomical to buy in to use as mulch.

From what I have read, rice straw mulch is excellent as mulch for a long term crop, using 4Kg per metre, If one of your bales weighs 15Kg, that would be about 430 bales for 1 rai.

What is the going price if buying these bales of straw?

[canopy]

In my area rice straw is mostly heaped and set ablaze. There are no baling machines here so I made a hand baler so I can go out to random fields and bale straw for free if I can get to it before they light it. I find rice straw valuable for organic farming, composting, and building walls.

[LMarvel]

I am looking to buy rice straw delivered to Bangkok, for a humanitarian project. Is there anyone willing to deliver here. I am also looking for coconut coir. We are teaching and developing an organic garden as a large demo garden.

[email protected]

Edited March 12, 2013 by LMarvel

[IsaanAussie]

In my area rice straw is mostly heaped and set ablaze. There are no baling machines here so I made a hand baler so I can go out to random fields and bale straw for free if I can get to it before they light it. I find rice straw valuable for organic farming, composting, and building walls.

baler.jpg

How did I miss this? Got the plans? I got the ply!

[ozzydom]

Baled rice hay goes for 27 baht per bale in the Roiet area .thats about 1800 baht per tonne.

[canopy]

Do you use sketchup? If so I have the baler drawing that you can pull all the (metric) dimensions from. I don't know if we can post skp files here however.

[IsaanAussie]

Do you use sketchup? If so I have the baler drawing that you can pull all the (metric) dimensions from. I don't know if we can post skp files here however.

Sketchup, that the stuff you put on sausages? The photo is great and rest I can figure out with a ruler and a bale. Thanks. Give it a shot, might surprise us both... Perhaps you could output the file as a pdf?

Edited March 13, 2013 by IsaanAussie

[kickstart]

Rice straw here in Lopuri is 25 bart cash, 27 bart credit,it all gets baled, and most of it comes in from other Provinces, the onion and garlic growers use it as a mulch.

As a PS increase the feed value of rice straw ,100 kg of staw ,100 kg of water, 4kg of urae fertilizer.

Mix water /urea, I used a watering can, pour on staw cover stack for 21 days, feed to cattle increacing feed rate a bit at a time, it helps brake down the celluose in straw makes it more digestible, pushes up the ME value and protein, I think to about 5-6 percent, still a bad feed as has been said ,but better than plain straw esp. dueing the dry season.

Regs

K

[IsaanAussie]

Rice straw here in Lopuri is 25 bart cash, 27 bart credit,it all gets baled, and most of it comes in from other Provinces, the onion and garlic growers use it as a mulch.

As a PS increase the feed value of rice straw ,100 kg of staw ,100 kg of water, 4kg of urae fertilizer.

Mix water /urea, I used a watering can, pour on staw cover stack for 21 days, feed to cattle increacing feed rate a bit at a time, it helps brake down the celluose in straw makes it more digestible, pushes up the ME value and protein, I think to about 5-6 percent, still a bad feed as has been said ,but better than plain straw esp. dueing the dry season.

Regs

K

KS,

Try checking out the use of EM as well. The urea adds nitrogen the straw carbon, the additional microbes will mineralise both more than just the biology in the bale, Your can also add a little molasses to add more sugar and boost the microbe population even further. The EM will add the digestion and the molasses will improve flavour. I would suggest you run at about 1:200 for both EM and molasses to water.

Edited March 14, 2013 by IsaanAussie

[Khonwan]

My cattle did great on rice straw watered with a mix of urea, molasses and water. I recall being told by the ag uni here that it raises the protein content to 8%, similar to maize. I've posted on this subject a couple of times some years ago but can't find my post detailing the urea percentage, and I'm not totally confident that I can recall the exact mix (which I always did myself) but I'm pretty sure that I limited urea to 1.5% of the solution and that 2% was the maximum safe limit. Mines were the only fat cattle in my area during the dry season since others fed untreated rice straw only.

[IsaanAussie]

The EM should reduce the methane output considerably as well. I know of recipes that use chicken manure instead of urea.

Anyway they say the sugars are first to decompose with the carbon in fibreous form after that and the lignin stuff last. Same principle as ensiling really.

[samuijimmy]

Interesting, just about everyone was using rice straw on their crops in Songkhla....

Here are some chillies with straw around them.

Several people (kids too) where collecting up straw before it was burned!

There was a lot of baled straw around too!