With 30 seeds and 180 days of patience, you too can also eat rice from a bucket.

You don’t necessarily need your own plot of farmland, or tons of agricultural expertise, to try growing your own food. Just about anyone can grow a pot of baby carrots, and in Japan, even many elementary school students are given the summer homework assignment of growing a tomato plant at their houses, which is a wonderful way to get a hands-on experience of how food arrives on their plates. Tomatoes make a great crop for their summer homework, as they grow quickly and don’t need a garden; they can be grown in a small pot on a balcony, which is perfect for more urban environments.

Now, a new contender for do-it-yourself agriculture that you can do even in an urban apartment may be emerging, as it turns out that rice also makes for a perfect plant to grow at home. Instead of digging up your flooring to create a living room rice paddy, a recently released guidebook shows exactly how you can grow rice in a bucket right from your very own balcony.

When people tend to picture the cultivation of rice, it usually entails a sea of green plants below a beautiful blue sky, rather than a cramped apartment balcony in the middle of Tokyo.

▼ Would you rather eat food grown here?

▼ Or here?

However, the author of this latest book, Junko Nakamura, says that growing rice on balconies can, and should, be done to allow people to reflect on the effort it entails to grow Japan’s staple food.

▼ From a Single Grain of Rice to a Rice Ball and Shimenawa: Growing Bucket Rice by Junko Nakamura (1,430 yen [US$10])

All you need is a bucket, soil, and water to create your very own miniature rice paddy right outside your house. With just 30 rice seeds you can harvest around 70 grams (about 2.47 ounces) of rice, which is about enough for one small rice ball. If you want to make something a little more substantial in size, two buckets might be a better idea.

▼ Let them germinate

▼ Plant them

▼ Transfer them to their buckets and then wait…

Since rice takes about 180 days until you can enjoy the fruits of your labor, some people might wonder if all of that effort is worth it, if all you’ll get out of it is a single rice ball.

▼ A comparison of the “bucket rice” process (upper) to the traditional rice cultivating process (lower) from March to December

However, the real value lies in the intangible results: a deeper appreciation of the many steps required to get a bowl of rice onto the dinner table. Unlike vegetables, rice demands long-term care and, after it is fully grown, sufficient processing. Not only is it necessary to keep the soil sufficiently submerged in water, but after the rice is ready to harvest, there is still threshing and polishing to carry out before you can even think about eating it.

▼ The book has cute pictures explaining each step.

With a rice ball in hand, you might think the whole process is over, but that’s not actually the case. Traditionally, Japanese people have repurposed leftover rice stalks into everyday items, leaving nothing to waste. These items could be bags, traditional footwear, or brooms, but Junko Nakamura suggests that your harvested rice stalks be made into shimenawa, the twisted ropes often seen at Shinto shrines or hung over doors at New Year’s to ward off evil spirits, and provides illustrations in how to do so. Not only do you get a satisfying meal, grown by your hands, but even a little handmade New Year’s decoration.

If you’re looking for a new hobby, or want to enrich a child’s food education, bucket rice may be just the thing. It’s a slow-paced activity that cultivates more than just the food in a bowl, but also patience, cultural and agricultural awareness, and an appreciation for every single grain.

Related: Amazon, PR Times
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Pakutaso (1, 2)
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