The Hot Humid Lowlands, soon to be my area of the Farm

You can see the beds are all raised here too, because the lowlands get lots of rain too. The raised beds help the roots to stay up out of the water. And there is trellises to help some plants to stay up off the ground.

The Rice Paddies

Me, Debbie (my predicessor), & Danny (farm manager) Disscussing our Rice Paddies and the planting of 8 different varieties  this year. We will observe the various varieties and see which one does the best in our area. We demonstrate two methods of rice growing, the traditional flooded rice paddy and the SRI method. System of Rice Intensification, in which you do not flood the paddy, simply irrigate it, this method has proven to have substantial increase in rice yeild from the traditional method. The draw back is that there are more weeds and therefore more labor involved in the flooded rice paddy the water keeps the weeds down.

Me bailing out the flooded paddy so it will dry out and the old rice will die so we can plant legumes to fallow the ground for a few months and then plant a new crop of SRI rice.