Growing Wild Rice, Zizania Palustris?

Hello Perms,

I am an avid ricer of 20 years, but only just have been dipping my toes into planting manoomin aka wild rice aka Zizania palustris. I would love to talk shop with anyone on here who may be knowledgeable on the manner. I've had some minimal luck planting small areas in local lakes in my area of northern Wisconsin, but I dream of doing this on a bigger scale.

This past September 2020, my wife and I hand dug a small pond roughly 5x15 on our homestead. The primary purpose was for wildlife, but since it was ricing season, I happened to throw a few handfuls of manoomin in at the time. It's now 2 - 2 1/2 feet tall and appears to be doing great. I'm pretty stoked on the potential of planting in larger beds when I get the where with all to get an excavator and go that route.

Exciting project!  I don't have any advice, but am glad to hear about how it works out.

I live in NH, we supposedly have wild stands. I haven’t found any yet, but I plan on doing the same once I do!

I've heard that you need to plant it more or less right after it ripens and can't "save seed" for planting for any length of time. Not sure how accurate that info was. I didn't look into it further as I was told it wouldn't grow in my ecosystem - Vancouver Isl, but I'm having second thoughts as to whether that info was accurate or not, because someone else told me that it's being grown in California.

So please keep us posted and hopefully some of the people who have grown it will speak up! (That's directed a Mike Haasl who recently did a BB relating to it!)

Hey there!  

I've mainly harvested wild rice.  Went to a lake that my ricing buddy and I haven't been to in two years.  We always clean out the last bit from the canoe and chuck it in the lake.  Now this particular lake has rice growing by the landing.  So we planted rice!

I mailed some freshly harvested rice to someone with a damp paper towel in a ziplock and apparently it grew for them.  I haven't tried dried rice (not parched) but I kinda doubt it would grow.