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If you show a rice plant from my field to a farmer he will know immediately that it looks as a rice plant should and that it has the ideal shape. He will know that the seeds were sprouted naturally and not transplanted, that the plant could not have been grown in a lot of water and that chemical fertilizer was not applied. Any farmer can tell these things as a matter of course by looking at the overall form of the plant, the shape of the roots, and the spacing of the joints on the main stem. If you understand the ideal form, it is just a matter of how to grow a plant of that shape under the unique conditions of your own field.

In June water is held in the field to weaken the weeds and clover and allow the rice to sprout through the ground cover.

I do not agree with Professor Matsushima's idea that it is best when the fourth leaf from the tip of the plant is the longest. Sometimes when the second or third leaf is the longest, you get the best results. If growth is held back while the plant is young, the top leaf or the second leaf often becomes longest and a large harvest is still obtained.

Professor Matsushima's theory is derived from experiments using fragile rice plants grown with fertilizer in a nursery bed and later transplanted. My rice, on the other hand, was grown in accordance with the natural life cycle of the rice plant, just as though it were growing wild. I wait patiently for the plant to develop and mature at its own pace.

In recent years I have been trying out an old variety of glutinous rice from the south. Each seed, sown in fall, produces an average of 12 stalks with about 250 grains per head. With this variety I believe I will one day be able to reap a harvest close to the greatest theoretically obtainable from the solar energy reaching the field. In some areas of my fields harvests of 27_ bushels (1,650 pounds) per quarter acre have already been realized with this variety.

Seen with the doubting eye of the technician, my method of growing rice could be said to be a short-term or provisional result. "If the experiment were continued longer, some sort of problem would certainly show up," he might say. But I have been growing rice in this manner for over twenty years. The yields continue to increase and the soil becomes richer every year.

Orchard Trees

I also grow several varieties of citrus on the hillsides near my home. After the war, when I first began farming, I started with 1_ acres of citrus orchard and _ acre of rice fields, but now the citrus orchards alone cover 12_ acres. I came by this land by taking over surrounding hillsides which had been abandoned. I then cleared them by hand.

The pine trees on several of those slopes had been clear-cut a few years earlier, and all I did was dig holes in a contour line and plant the citrus seedlings. Sprouts had already appeared from the logged stumps and, as time passed, Japanese pampas grass, cogon grass, and bracken began to thrive. The citrus tree seedlings became lost in a tangle of vegetation.

I cut most of the pine sprouts, but allowed some to grow back for a windbreak. Then I cut back the thicket growth and grassy ground cover and planted clover.

After six or seven years the citrus trees finally bore fruit. I dug away the earth behind the trees to form terraces, and the orchard now appears little different from any other.

Of course I maintained the principles of not cultivating, not using chemical fertilizer and not using insecticides or weed killers. One interesting thing was that, at first, while the seedlings were growing beneath the resprouted forest trees, there was no evidence of damaging insects such as the common arrowhead scale. Once the thicket and resprouted trees were cut away, the land became less wild and more like an orchard. Only then did these insects appear.

To allow a fruit tree to follow its natural form from the beginning is best. The tree will bear fruit every year and there is no need to prune. A citrus tree follows the same pattern of growth as a cedar or pine, that is, a