This year Paeksok Farm in Sinchon County of South Hwanghae Province has applied the rice seedlings raised in its greenhouse into dozens of hectares of fields and thereby increased per-hectare yield by more than one ton as compared with the fields transplanted with seedlings raised at open-air paddy or non-paddy fields.

Unanimous Praise

This farm is visited by many people to learn how to produce rice seedlings in greenhouse.

The workers at the farm say that the seedling cultivation in greenhouse is a highly profitable farming method that satisfies various ends.

“When we introduced the new method, many farmers were unsure of it. They doubted whether the young rice plants raised under greenhouse environment could survive the fields that are exposed to strong winds, saying that they had never heard that rice seedlings can be grown in greenhouses. But now they say this method is quite good,” said Kim Il Ryong, technical instructor of a workteam at the farm.

In the past when they raised rice seedlings outdoors, they could apply additional fertilizer to their leaves over a field of around 1 500 phyong a day. But in the greenhouse the procedure is automatically carried out in less than an hour. Thus, the new method remarkably relieved the farmers of the burden on labour.

Besides, it can save labour and materials for building seedbeds and removing the seedlings from the seedbeds.

More Seedlings Produced at Same Area

The greenhouse is furnished with facilities to automatically measure and display the temperature, humidity, sunlight, carbon dioxide percentages. All working procedures are executed in a scientific and technological way and rice seedlings are intensively raised to make effective use of space.

“Our farm’s greenhouse has rows of racks unlike other types where rice seedlings are raised only on the floor. That’s why it can produce more seedlings in the same area. Each rack has 120 crates which are enough to plant seedlings for over 2.5 hectares of paddy field,” said Kim Yong Ae, a greenhouse worker.

Literally, the greenhouse is packed with young rice plants. Watering and application of nutritive solutions are automatically conducted. And the size of the crate is conveniently the same as that of the rice-transplanting machines.

“The introduction of the new cultivation method of rice seedlings brings much profit to our farm as we can grow healthy rice seedlings in a safe manner, unaffected by natural conditions and can raise vegetables once the cultivation of rice seedlings is over,” said Kim Hyong Sam, manager of the farm.

Ko Chol Hwa