Three New Crops: Part One

I’ve mentioned in the past that I try to grow something that is new, at least to me, in the garden each year. 2017 was something of a banner year in that respect because I actually planted two new foods in the garden as well as reaped a harvest that was a loooooong time coming.

It’s been a while so I don’t even remember how I got the urge to try growing rice. As a food I’m rather indifferent to it and regard it more as a starchy way to soak up gravy from curries. In any case, I came across Duborskian while paging through a catalog and became intrigued. It is a cultivar that originated in Russia. As an upland variety, it doesn’t require flooded paddies to grow.

Having never grown a grain before I looked up what information I could online about planting and spacing. I chose to start the seeds indoors under lights in small cells since we have so much bird and rodent predation of seeds in the garden. I figured giving the plants a head start would avoid that pitfall. Germination was high and I ended up with around 130 plants, if I remember correctly. Spacing suggestions varied so I opted for a fairly close spacing, plopped the seedlings in their holes, and kept them watered as I watched them grow through the summer. They, of course, looked like grass.

Most of the plants survived and eventually formed graceful seed heads as the grains plumped up in late August.

Soon individual stalks started turning brown indicating they were ready to harvest. Growth wasn’t completely even so this happened over a period of time. I suppose in a large field conditions might be managed for more even growth so it could all be harvested at once. Because I just had a small bed I just snipped off stalks as they looked ready and hung them upside down to finish drying.

Once the whole crop was in and dried it was time to separate the grains from the stems. I beat them inside a plastic storage tub to release most of them and rubbed off any stragglers by hand. There wasn’t much breeze on the day I decided to do this so I resorted to using a box fan to blow the chaff away from the heavier grains as I dumped them back and forth between two tubs.

I ended up with a modest total of 260 grams of unhulled rice when this stage was finished.

The next stage was when the project started to suck. The brown hulls adhered tightly to the grains so I needed a way to get them off without crushing them. There are some contraptions online that people have built that look like they work well, but I couldn’t see making something like that for my small crop. I resorted to hulling small quantities at a time by rubbing them between different combinations of surfaces. I started this process in October and, because it was so much not fun, I just finished it this April.

For the first round I wrapped a rubber jar opener around a block of wood and rubbed small quantities—actually a pinch at a time—on the surface of a clay brick. Most of the hulls would come off and I would take them outside and winnow by dumping from bowl to bowl if there was a breeze or by blowing on them if there wasn’t. I was in and out of the house a lot.

Next, I dumped the rice on a tray a bit at a time and sorted through it by hand, removing the grains still wrapped snugly in their hulls for reprocessing. Then I resumed the rubbing.

I lost count of how many times I did this.

As you can see in this image, some of the grains are still a little greenish and there are some dark ones, too.

Last week, I finally said “screw it” and ran the last grains over a grippy plastic cutting board with the bare surface of the brick. It didn’t break all that many grains and worked a little faster. At the end I was left with a large pinch of recalcitrant grains I tossed out for the birds and chipmunks to enjoy. I now have 145 grams of cleaned rice to enjoy after I cooked a small test batch. It tastes like rice. Nothing remarkable. I won’t be growing it again.