Chapter 698 - Spare No Effor
Official Wu wasn't one of those people who only knew how to study. Prior to passing the court examinations, he had been with his family's tenant farmers and personally helped his family manage their rice paddies. On the year he turned forty, he gave himself a goal. If he was unable to pass the exams again, then he would completely renounce his studies and spend the rest of his life experimenting with the rice paddy fields to get higher yields. After becoming a court official, he was also very interested in agricultural management and often traveled to farming villages, living and eating with these people, and becoming more experienced in the ways of farming. Because of that, the experimental paddies in Jinling had been put under his jurisdiction and he had also been promoted two levels.
When he saw the methods that Xiaocao gave him, he was struck silly. He even struck the table in amazement when he reached the main point. Many things that had puzzled him in the past were now completely clear to him after he read the great imperial envoy's writings on the topic. It was no wonder that the emperor had placed so much importance on a mere woman. She really was more knowledgeable and talented than others! The emperor truly was a wise and capable ruler!
If Yu Xiaocao had known that Official Wu saw her in this way, she would have felt quite embarrassed. The things she had written down were all stuff she had put together piecemeal from the stuff she had learned in her past life about farming. She was only a little dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants! How could she possibly be that impressive?
Other than going out to try some delicacies from time to time, Xiaocao spent most of her time after she arrived at Jinling on the 'hybrid rice paddies'. In her previous life, the hybrid rice paddies were able to produce a thousand and five hundred catties of rice per mu. Even the rice paddies watered with mystic stone water in this era could only get up to six hundred catties per mu.
It was said that hybrid rice paddies were the result of Yuan Longping's, the father of hybrid rice, research and he had discovered a type of hybrid rice one day in a field somewhere. Yu Xiaocao decided that, in order to deceive others on the true process, she also needed to find a naturally occurring hybrid rice paddy somewhere. Following that, then they could begin research on it.
Following Xiaocao's proposal, the emperor had already sent down an imperial order to have Jiangnan begin to try to grow two seasons of rice in one year. Because Jinling had experimental paddies, some of them were planted on the early side. Official Wu was originally afraid that the temperatures at the start of spring would be too cold and affect the seedlings' growth progress. However, he didn't expect that the rice seeds brought over from the capital grew very well despite the lower temperatures. The ordinary rice seeds, on the other hand, only had so-so germination and survival rates.
After Official Wu finished transcribing a copy of the great imperial envoy's 'Rice Growth Strategy Guide', he immediately began his work in the fields and didn't even bother returning home to visit. His entire mind was preoccupied on getting the fields up and running. He had to admit the rice seedlings grown by the methods provided by the great imperial envoy truly did better than the ones planted with traditional methods. When he felt the panicles of these rice plants, he could tell that they were at least a factor larger than the regular ones and were also more plump. The rice paddies grown with the new methods also had a shorter growth cycle, so it was likely that they'd be able to harvest them in the sixth month.
As it got closer to harvest time, Yu Xiaocao came by more frequently to the experimental rice paddies. In the past, she would go over every three to five days to supervise the work there. Now she came by every other day to inspect things. There were many plants in the experimental fields, so she couldn't possibly look every single one over. However, she had her cheat item on hand and it'd be a waste for her to not use it.
