Some locals hang up the rice to dry for a while, so I did the same.
Farmers using a threshing machine. Traditionally paddy fields remained flooded even at harvest, but in modern methods the fields are dried out to allow mechanical harvesting. My set up remained wet.
Separating the grains from the stalks on the rice from my aquarium.
Brown rice.
Boiled for 20 minutes in salted water.
Not much to show for keeping the aquarium going for 8 months, but home grown rice it is!
"Itadakimasu!" as they say in these parts.
Thanks to everyone who has followed this journal and a big thanks to the kind people who run UKAPS for allowing this entry to appear alongside the pristine planted aquarium in journals and not banishing me to ponds, gardeners world, or farming today...
The nearby paddy fields are in winter mode and the plants in my aquarium have mostly died back as average water temperatures are now back below 10C, like they were at the end of March when this project began.
I had wanted to try growing rice in an aquarium for a long time and am pleased to have given it a go. Next year I will try something else in this aquarium and hope you will follow it. Bye from Japan until next spring.