My Own Private Rice Field Pt.II

It's been almost exactly one month since I first planted my veranda rice field and put up pictures of the little sprouts on this blog. I am really surprised to see how much the rice has grown in only one month. At first I was worried that they wouldn't have enought sunlight being on my veranda, or that I didn't get the right kind of soil for rice. But now that they are growing tall and strong I am actually thinking that everything will be fine.

When I got the rice sprouts from a colleague they were in a bucket with mud from a real rice field. That wasn't nearly enough mud for the planters I bought so I had to get a bag of soil from the store. As an experiment I decided to use the original mud in a separate plastic drink bottle and plant the left over sprouts to see if one or the other would do better. Of course there are lots of variables in this experiment but I am noticing that the original mud and rice in the plastic bottle (see the picture) isn't growing as nicely as the ones I planted in the store bought soil. They are still growing but the color isn't as healthy green as the rice in the bigger planters. Maybe thats because they don't have enough room to spread roots but I wonder if its because the soil is different. Only time will tell.