One of my friends wanted to plant a small rice paddy this year, and my Hmong neighbor (co-worker) was nice to give him some rice seedlings to start out. He came down to pick up the rice plants on Wednesday, but it had been raining straight for 4 days so I didn’t have a chance to take picture of the nursery bed, and he didn’t get to see what it looks like either.
This is different from what my parents did in Thailand, my parents had wet-nursery beds and planted seedlings right in the paddy, and when the seedlings were old enough, then they get transplanting into bigger paddies. My neighbor use the sprinkler to water their seedlings.
This nursery bed is behind his house in his garden area, the land in this area is higher than the 3 rice paddies use for planting the rice crops. We had a long winter this year, so the seeding was delayed for several weeks, and this seedlings are too small for transplanting, my co-worker thought that it might be about 2 to 3 weeks before they can start planting.
Below is last year’s photo, they started transplanting the first week of May.
The string beans look very healthy, kind of surprised me because they’ve red dirt. I’ve noticed that dirt up North are not red, but have a dark brown color, and the South have red dirt, and my neighbor’s garden has no sign that they had top soil haul in, but I’m sure they use fertilizer from their hen house.
Talk about space saving, must be real pretty when the vines start to climb up these trellises.
The yellow tips above are not flower, but vegetables, I’m not sure what it’s called in English but my dad would buy some for me every week from the farmer’s market, a better picture below. This might be an Asian thing because he’d buy them from the Hmong vendor.
Whilst I was taking pictures, it threatened to rain, the weather has been a bit crazy lately. Before I left, I managed to snap this picture of Bamboo shoots before I got in my car, then it started to pour whilst the sun was still out…crazy, but it only lasted for less than 5 minutes.
Updated 5/16/2009: I went back yesterday and saw more bamboo shoots.
6 comments
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May 8, 2009 at 2:20 am
Cambree
That is a nice snapshot of spring from your part of the woods.
The yellow flowers look like mustard plants. The seeds are used to make mustard, the stuff we put on hot dogs.
Here in California we have fields and fields of wild mustard. It’s a great sign of springtime for us.
Also Chinese mustard is commonly found at Asian markets, but they are shorter and have bigger leaves.
May 9, 2009 at 2:59 am
Ginger
Hi Cambree, the one in the photo here are too old, my dad also bought them shorter and they’ve bigger leaves, they harvest them when they’re still young, it’s almost out of season now. I’ve seen the fields before, this wild mustard plants but didn’t know what they’re used for.
I’ve so much more to learn about plants, my only problem, I look at the photos more than I actually read about the facts and benefits.
May 8, 2009 at 6:48 am
giiid
I like to learn about rice, as I wrote to you last year. We can´t grow rice here, and most people doesn´t know much how that is done.
May 9, 2009 at 3:05 am
Ginger
Hi giiid, my friend’s paddy is very similar to a fishpond from what he described, he used the black fishpond lining and I will get to visit him in June, and will post the picture for you to see. I might not be able to update it on a regular basis since he lives almost 3 hours from me, but hopefully I can work it out where he would email me the pictures.
May 12, 2009 at 3:13 am
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