The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [23]
** Rice is sown 4 1/2 to 9 pounds per quarter acre. Toward the end of April Mr. Fukuoka checks the germination of the fall-sown seed and broadcasts more pellets as needed. Also see note above.
Farming with Straw
Spreading straw might be considered rather unimportant, but it is fundamental to my method of growing rice and winter grain. It is connected with everything, with fertility, with germination, with weeds, with keeping away sparrows, with water management. In actual practice and in theory, the use of straw in farming is a crucial issue. This is something that I cannot seem to get people to understand.
Spreading the Straw Uncut
The Okayama Testing Center is now trying direct seeding rice-growing in 80 percent of its experimental fields. When I suggested that they scatter the straw uncut, they apparently thought this could not be right, and ran the experiments after chopping it up with a mechanical shredder. When I went to visit the testing a few years ago, I found that the fields had been divided into those using shredded straw, uncut straw, and no straw at all. This is exactly what I did for a long time and since the uncut works best, it is uncut straw that I use.
Mr. Fujii, a teacher at Yasuki Agricultural High School in Shimane Prefecture, wanted to try direct seeding and came to visit my farm. I suggested that he spread uncut straw over his field. He returned the next year and reported that the test had failed. After listening carefully to his account, I found that he had laid the straw down straight and neat like a Japanese backyard garden mulch. If you do it like that, the seeds will not germinate well at all. With the straw of rye and barley, too, if it is spread too neatly the rice sprouts will have a hard time getting through. It is best to toss the straw around every which way, just as though the stalks had fallen naturally.
Rice straw works well as a mulch for winter grain, and the straw of winter grain works best for the rice. I want this to be well understood. There are several diseases of rice which will infect the crop if fresh rice straw is applied to the field. These diseases of rice will not infect the winter grain, however, and if the rice straw is spread in the fall, it will be completely decomposed by the time the rice sprouts up the following spring. Fresh rice straw is safe for other grains, as is buckwheat straw, and the straw of other grain species may be used for rice and buckwheat. In general, fresh straw of winter grains, such as wheat, rye, and barley, should not be used as mulch for other winter grains, as disease damage may result.
All of the straw and the hulls which remain after threshing the previous harvest should be returned to the field.
Straw Enriches the Earth
Scattering straw maintains soil structure and enriches the earth so that prepared fertilizer becomes unnecessary. This, of course, is connected with non-cultivation. My fields may be the only ones in Japan which have not been plowed for over twenty years, and the quality of the soil improves with each season. I would estimate that the surface layer, rich in humus, has become enriched to a depth of more than four inches during these years. This is largely the result of returning to the soil everything grown in the field but the grain itself.
No Need to Prepare Compost
There is no need to prepare compost. I will not say that you do not need compost—only that there is no need to work hard making it. If straw is left lying on the surface of the field in the spring or fall and is covered with a thin layer of chicken manure or duck droppings, in six months it will completely decompose.
To make compost by the usual method, the farmer works like crazy in the hot sun, chopping up the straw, adding water and lime, turning the pile, and hauling it out to the field. He puts