Blue Bonnet Rice

Description

Limited stock available - This is an 'upland' or 'dryland' rice variety, it does not need to be flooded and can be grown in regular garden soil. A traditional rice grown by native Mayan people who call it "Blue Bonnet". Collected by Mennonite farmers who have a community near Belmopan, it was given to them by their Mayan neighbors in the town of Armenia, Belize. Very productive plants.

Here are the growing instructions that we have for this seed:

• Warm weather - plant after all chance of frost has passed. 
• Needs a long season, start indoors in seed trays about the same time as you would tomatoes (i.e. 4-6 weeks before planting out). 
• Transplant seedlings when approx. 10-15cm tall.
• Needs rich soil (good nitrogen). Plant 15-20cm apart both ways if planting in a bed, or 8-10cm apart with 45-60cm between if planting in rows. 
• Need to keep weeds down and keep the soil moist (mulch well and regular watering).
• Protect from high winds.

Seeds/Packet: (min. 200 Seeds)

Here is an interesting gardening forum discussion on growing this rice (in the USA).

Our own growing experience: We used a combination of standard 'dryland' growing methods and the SRI (System of Rice Intensification) method to trial this rice in our own gardens in Pretoria (i.e. we transplanted early, at second leaf stage, and spaced single seedlings 25cm apart in a grid pattern). Well composted soil with no additional feeding during the season. We used a 6-8cm layer of hay mulch and dripper irrigation with 1x dripper head per plant - Automatic watering (timer) twice per day for 10 mins each (600ml per day - we could have cut this in half). Transplanted mid September and harvested mid February. Plants grew to 1.2m tall, healthy plants with multiple tillers (side-shoots). Yield = 420g (cleaned but unhulled) rice from 15 plants.