DuckSouth.com

anybody planted wild rice just broadcasting it into water,what were the results

I would be interested in this as well. I've got a place that stays wet up until really late into the summer, and I would like to be able to do something besides Jap millet. Please share any information you come across.

I've had ag rice flown into shallow water. Let it sit 24 hrs then drain it. You gotta get the water off so it can peg into the soil. I don't think it will sprout in the water but I could be wrong.

Rice can come up through the water. The practice of flying rice into a continous flooded field is/was used alot when farmers were battling red rice problems. A rice seed can come up thru the soil OR it can come up thru the water, but it can not do both. So if a person was to plant rice in the soil with a drill or broadcasting it and covering it with a harrow, it would be very important for them to get the water off the field if rice was germinatng and trying to emerge. On the opposite side of that, a person could broadcast rice seed into shallow flooded field (less than 3 inches or so) and the rice could sprout, peg down, and grow out of the water. Sunlight reaching the seedling in the water would be important. One could use this system as a weed control tool. Now a combination of the two above systems has been used more than the continous flood method. This is what Rob speaks of. It used to be a common practice for farmers to fly rice seed into a flooded field, wait 24 hrs and allow seed to soak full of water, and then pull the water off of the field fairly quickly allowing seed to germinate and peg down. Fertelizer and herbicides would be applied during the drying time and a shallow flood would be brought back onto the small seedlings very slowly. This particular way of growing rice allowed for fertilizer to be applied on dry ground and also to off-set some stress rice seedling would have coming up through the water. By far it is better to have a prepared seedbed, drill rice seed, and to use the technolgy we have available to us today to grow better rice.......but for duck hole purposes, these old systems still fit. I flew rice into a brake that I could not get all of the water out of. It came up good on the mud flats and in shallow water but was thin in deeper water areas (over 4 in deep) and shaded spots. I planted app. 10 acres of that brake and probably ended up with about 6.5 acres of decent rice. No fertilizer, just the cost of the seed and the plane.

Great info, Jon! I really liked growing duck rice but it turned into blackbird rice in October and November and the ducks didn't have much come December and January.

Honestly...it did not cost me anything for the plane . Pilot already had the spreader on and said he would do it. Earlier in the season I had applied ALOT of fertilizer and burndown chemicals to crop fields by air, so I am sure it was just a courtesy thing.

On something so small it would be hard to get an ag pilot to crank up and do it. But if he would do it, it won't cost much depending on how much you do. We do fertilizer work for around $135 a ton to give you an idea. And they're right for duck food it will do fine but it is better to drop the water out and fertilize it and then put water back on it