The wild rice starts arrived from Oshkosh on June 15th.
I set to planting them on June 16th with high hopes.
By June 25th the record-breaking heat and dry Colorado air had all but wiped out the healthy young sprouts.	All but dead!
So I built a canopy to shade them from the sun.	Showing marked improvement by July 3rd.
This is from one of the seeds I received with my order confirmation. They gave me more free and viable seeds than the first place sold me! And they were dry, dead, and ready to cook.	Another plant coming up from seed - July 3rd.
Shade and a good 10-degree drop in temperatures by July 10th seem to have given the wild rice a fighting chance. Now we'll see how far it progresses this season.	As July progressed, the paddy started producing a good crop of string algae, and the rice started to GROW! July 25th found maturing plants of about 18 inches - not the 5 to 6 feet I read about, but alive and fairly healthy.
July 25th - It's amazing what can happen in 15 days. I may see some wild rice after all, so the experiment appears to have turned around - not a total failure, but actually a success in many ways. Even if I don't see any grain, I've learned a lot about this plant. Next year should be very interesting.	June 24, 2007. The wild rice seeded itself last fall and after sitting in the frozen muck over the winter, sprouted and grew a few inches out of the water before I got the irrigation going. So much for all the literature I've read about the critical importance of maintaining a constant water level, etc. The plants are about 4 ft tall now. They're showing a little stress from the hot wind, so I put up a wind break on the south side today. Now they're just another invasive species I guess!