Companion plants for Duborskian rice ?

I've finally. Finally ! Found the time to sow it. I have sown some Duborskian rice (no paddy, no flooding needed).

Last year, growing wheat was not a big success; but the plot had just been weeded, and absolutely nothing else was done.

Now, I have this new spot with a ton of rich material. But when the rice will start sprouting, I think it'll need some companion plant, or something similar; ground cover maybe ? The seed pack say that a lot of mulching is recommended.

Should I plant something there too ? Clover ? Another grain (I have quite a few available) ? Nothing at all ?

Thanks.

We planted Duborskian without companions, just a little weeding and regular watering.  If you are planning to harvest, then any companion should lay low to the ground. Our biggest challenge was hulling the rice.  No hauling it to the rice mill in a carabao cart in Wisconsin.

I've grown duborskian rice in a "paddy" that didn't hold water, the plants that tended to grow with it were stinging nettle (not my favorite in this setting), plantain, wood sorrel, dandelion, and whatever grasses we had pulled up to trench out the "paddy."  Oh, and cottonwood trees.  I would recommend trying a low growing clover.  That sounds Fukuoka-ish. The plantain wasn't a problem once the rice was up.  The nettles and grasses did their best to shade out the rice, and on a particularly lazy year I only got a harvest on the southern edges of the block.

Rice polycultures are pretty well documented.  If you haven't read "One-Straw Revolution," now is probably a good time to do it!  If you end up deciding to try a flooded paddy then the book "The Power of Duck" is another one I would recommend.  

And I'll second that hulling is a pain.  Not impossible, just a pain.  We tried converting a Corona corn cracker (found at a thrift shop for $10) with some soft rubber.  It worked okay-ish.  Sorting through the grains to run the remainder through again was the bane of the job.  

We've since tried building the rice huller designed by Brill Engineering.  The answer that came with that one is that their recommended wheels are no longer offered where they linked them, so the guess and checking left us scratching our heads, also the shape of buckwheats (having tabled rice for a few years now, to revisit another day) doesn't work so nicely in a rice huller!  We do suspect that rice would work better.

...Thinking about Fukuoka's rice methods, clover and barley straw mulch are kinda his things for a dry rice culture!  

I'm now thinking about trying rice again in an aquaponic setting.  Thanks for the impetus!

If your plot is damp enough for rice then take small handfuls of azolla that you are growing for animal feed, compost, etc and plant it in small depressions between the rice plants. It will be a more visible indicator of the need to water your rice.

My experience with dry land or upland rice is that is a reference to not being flooded. Not that the soil can be actually dry at all ever without damaging yield.

Another good bet is Streambank Clover which I got from the Willamette Valley. It is a high moisture tolerant low growing type. It will not indicate too low soil moisture though as it's native environment has summer drought.

I believe Duborskian was sourced by Anpetu when he lived on the east coast with a miso making cooperative. I believe Duborskian is an accidental renaming of Dubovosky. Dubovosky itself has many diverse spellings and transliterations. When grown, they look very much more similar in my conditions than either looks like any other variety.

We're growing another upland rice this season called Loto. We ended up having cucumber vines running through it and they seem to get along well. I imagine squash vines, maybe winter sqaush, could also work. The only thing I was nervous about was squash beetles, but they really didn't bother anything.

New video of the rice huller with a new source for a urethane roller is now up.
Don Brill