IMO COLLECTION SETUP
HARD-COOKED RICE
IMO is collected using “hard-cooked” white rice. Calrose rice is the ideal type of rice to use. It is a fat, medium grain rice that has a size and shape that perfectly balances moisture retention and air pockets.
White rice serves as an excellent medium for collecting a diverse array of microbes. It is composed of simple starches—chains of sugar molecules that provide a universal source of energy. These sugars, derived from plant photosynthesis, are a preferred fuel for nearly all living cells.
When working with microbiology, it is essential to use a culture medium tailored to encourage the growth of desired microbes while discouraging others, something I became very familiar with when I worked as a field microbiologist. Here, we want to encourage everything. This is why we use simple white rice.
The simple starches in white rice act as a universal medium for collecting all microbes because they provide accessible nutrients (sugar) to virtually all soil life forms, and virtually every cell. By using this basic food source, we ensure that every member of the soil ecosystem that can come in contact with the rice has the potential to grow.
Interestingly, we collect the IMO on white rice, the part of the grain that contains only the simple starches, the sugars, and we amplify it on rice bran, the part of the rice with all the nutrients, proteins, lipids, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Pay attention to the patterns.
WHICH RICE TO USE
We are collecting a full ecosystem of soil biology. In order to do this, we need to consider the medium, which ideally is medium grain, white, Calrose rice. We also need to consider the Vital Forces, the Three Chi, which are airflow, moisture, and heat.
The structure of the medium grain white rice is perfect for balancing moisture and air pockets. Long grain rice will work, but not as well. Why? The grains are slim and therefore create fewer air pockets than Calrose rice, which is not only shorter, but fatter. Calrose has a better shape.
What about brown rice? White rice has been stripped of the bran and the germ, the nutrient-rich parts of the grain. Brown rice has not and will therefore contain proteins, lipids (oils), vitamins, etc, which may inhibit the ability of some microbes to start growing on the rice.
We want to use the universal food of simple starches and sugars alone to ensure everyone can come along for the ride.
If we use beans, or other grains or seeds, they can have, among other things, proteins called lectins, which bind to carbohydrates (starches and sugars) and can inhibit the collection of certain microbes.
Using other grains and seeds such as beans will collect some microbes, perhaps most, but it will not be the complete, diverse, and balanced ecosystem we can get from white rice, which is the goal.
We want only simple starches and sugars in order to collect a full spectrum of microbes from the soil.
If we use other materials with similar nutrients as white rice, containing only simple starches and sugars, say a starch flour, it would not allow any airflow at all and would therefore be usable. The structure is also important. Pay attention to the patterns.
Rice is cheap and available almost everywhere on the planet. It is one of the biggest commodity crops in the world. There are very few reasons why substituting rice would need to be considered.
COOKING THE RICE
The rice for collecting IMO is cooked as “hard-cooked rice.” Uncooked medium grain rice has a good amount of airspace, but without any water content, nothing would be expected to grow.
Water is the universal life activator. We have life on Earth because we have a water planet. Therefore, we cook the rice to ensure the proper amount of moisture for the microbes to be able to grow.
Actually, after cooking, the rice grains swell, increasing the airspace between the grains. This would not be true for over-cooked rice, which would be mushy and have less airspace between grains.
If we cook rice in the way we like to eat it, there would be too much moisture for collection purposes. So, we cook rice as what we refer to as “hard-cooked” rice. This means we use approximately half the water we use to cook rice for dinner.
Do not wash the rice before cooking. Keep all the starches for the soil microbes.
The way I cook rice for dinner is with one part rice to two parts water. When I make rice for IMO collection I use one part rice to one part water. This ratio will vary for you according to your specific cooking methods and environmental conditions, but it is a good estimate to start.
We have found through experimentation that the very best method to cook rice for collecting IMO is using an automatic rice cooker with the ratio of one part water to one part rice.
This is an ideal method because the rice cooker works on a pressure plate and shuts off heat when the proper amount of water has been absorbed or vented off and allows time for the complete and even absorption of water, making a rice medium with perfect moisture consistency throughout, with no dry or wet spots.
Cooking rice without a rice cooker involves variables such as heat source intensity, heat retention of the pot, how much steam vents out, humidity, barometric pressure, and air temperature. It may take you a bit of experimentation to learn what level of moisture to use for your cooking method and environmental conditions.
Additionally, you may need to alter the amount of water you add if your environmental conditions change.
You will find that the temperature and humidity, in other words, the weather, will also affect the collection in the field. If you are in a dry climate, you will probably need rice that is a little bit more moist. In a humid climate, you may find you tend to need rice that is drier.
Your results may vary over the course of a year and from year to year. Since rice cookers work on a pressure plate, all elements are factored in automatically, making it the easiest way to get perfect rice every time.
PREPARE THE LUNCH BOX
After cooking the hard-cooked rice, be sure to let it cool completely before adding it to the lunch box. Otherwise, it will collect condensation while it cools, forming uneven wet and dry spots, which will alter your collection and create undesirable anaerobic hot spots.
Once cooled, add the rice to fill the container two-thirds full, leaving the magical one-third airspace. This is perhaps the leading reason IMO collections fail (along with rice that is too wet or too dry). If you don’t have enough, make more rice and add more once it has cooled.
Mark down how much rice you had to cook in order to fill your collection box in your Field Log so you will remember next time the correct amount to cook.
If you have a box that is four inches high you need to fill it with three inches of rice. (A 10cm high box is filled with 7cm of rice.)
Without enough airspace, the culture cannot breathe properly, and the collection will be too anaerobic. If there is too much airspace, then molds tend to form. While we want some anaerobes and some molds in our collection, too much is not a balanced ecosystem.
The goal is to have a complete ecosystem to install into the planting soil, so do this step correctly. Again, pay attention to the patterns.
THE LID
Once you have added rice, you will need some type of lid. This is why I am partial to lauhala (pandanus) woven baskets, as they are typically sold with a fitting lid.
You will be piling leaves and soil on top of your lid, and it needs to be able to breathe. The lid needs to keep out the soil and leaves, but let air (and microbes) pass through.
Woven
My preferred box is a lauhala (pandanus) woven box with a matching lid. This will both breathe and keep out leaves.
Other types of containers will have to be engineered to have some type of breathable covering. Typically cloth and paper are used. With both cloth and paper coverings, ensure that it is secured tightly. If it sags down and touches the rice your collection will be dark, anaerobic, and unusable.
Cloth and paper will have a tendency to sag in the middle. A fitted, stiff screen placed under the cloth can remedy this problem. I have also tied string across the top to prevent the cloth from falling in. This trick worked in a pinch.
Paper
Master Cho prefers boxes made with slats of Japanese cedar. He staples Korean paper to the top. Somehow, this changed in the United States to people using paper towels. The Korean paper Cho used, which is both strong and breathable, is not available in the US. Paper towels are not the same type of paper and are fragile.
The problem with using paper towels is they are weak, subject to tearing, especially with any moisture, and can be easily eaten through by vermin. In my opinion paper towels are a failure waiting to happen.
Additionally, I don’t feel that using disposable materials (with environmental degradation and toxic chemicals on the manufacturing end) fits well with Natural Farming philosophies.
If you choose to use paper towels anyway, be aware of the risks. If it fails, so will your collection.
Cloth
When I don’t have a lauhala basket for collection, I will cover it with a cloth. The best cloth I have found to use with KNF techniques (and in the kitchen in general) is an untreated cotton cloth called osnaburg. It has the perfect weave for breathability, strength, and filtering. It can be easily washed and sterilized with boiling water.
My second choice for a cloth for KNF is an unbleached cotton muslin. This is more treated than osnaburg, but without using chlorine. It comes in various weaves, from extremely loose to extremely tight, so choose a good medium weave for the best results.
With a good, medium weave muslin, water should run through freely, but stop any sediments when filtering. This weave is perfect for allowing the culture in the collection box to breathe but keep out leaves and dirt.
I have found that any tea towel will work fine when that is what you have, although I try to avoid any made of polyester (petroleum-based). Many fabrics come with a lot of attached chemicals, which can inhibit the growth of microbes, which is the problem with polyester (100% chemicals, essentially woven plastic), so be sure to wash fabric thoroughly.
This is more important for filtering in KNF than collecting IMO because the cloth should not be in contact with the collecting rice, although some microbes will be entering the collection box in the air, filtering through the covering.
PROPER COLLECTION SITE
You do not need to know which organisms you are collecting. You do not need to know the ratio of bacteria to fungi. There are no must-have organisms, no magic species. You do not need to go deep into the forest to collect IMO. In fact, that will not be the best collection site for most crops.
Specific Locations
While specific species do not matter, where the soil culture is collected, however, is essential. A collection from a healthy, local site will have every organism needed in perfect, balanced ratios. It also needs to be a location that matches the ecosystem of the crops being grown.
IMO is a culture of a complete soil ecosystem. That means it contains organisms from all kingdoms of life, including ancient single-cell organisms, microscopic animals, and viruses, making the soil ecosystem extremely diverse and incomprehensibly complicated.
Instead of looking at the details, which are incomprehensibly complicated, look at the Natural Patterns. This is simple. It only requires observation.
Patterns
Soil ecosystems differ based on their location, climate, local conditions like soil type and weather, as well as the plants and animals in the area. In other words, soil ecology follows patterns. We use these patterns to decide where to collect and leave all the complicated, unknowable details to Nature.
In deciding where to collect an IMO culture, we look at these PATTERNS:
Local
Ecological Succession
Specific for Crops Grown
Sites with “sugar in the roots”
Areas that fit the above criteria but are slightly barren
The proper collection site also depends on several factors, such as season, and crops being grown.
Learn how to match the patterns of soil biology in your collection site to the plants you will be growing. Lettuce is not growing in the deep forest. It will grow better in an open meadow. Berry bushes are not going to be growing in the deep forest either, but they will thrive at the edges of the forests and the meadows.
Match the collection location to the growing conditions of the crops. This is how you balance biology. This is how to get the perfect bacterial-fungal ratio.
Learning landscape patterns will get you the best collections for maximizing effectiveness. Many people in the Western world try to manipulate their collections after the fact, by using certain substrate mixes, or adding this and that to the process.
Rather than manipulation, focus on patterns. Collect the proper culture from the proper location, and you will have the proper IMO for your purposes. Anything else is guesswork. No one has to guess. Nature shows us the patterns to follow.
We want to collect an intact and stable ecosystem, perfect for the crops we are growing. IMO is a collection of millions of species and billions of organisms working and functioning together in perfect harmony.
Manipulation comes from an incomplete understanding and it disrupts the harmony. It takes energy and time for the system to come back to harmony. I suggest trusting Nature. This is, after all, Natural Farming.
For more information on learning the best place to collect IMO for you, see the book “Where to Collect IMO" It’s a short, easy-to-understand guide for recognizing the patterns you need to know to collect the perfect IMO for you and your food system. Having the proper IMO culture is a shortcut to a highly effective and productive food production system.
PROTECTION
Besides protecting the rice inside the collection box, you also need to consider how you will protect the entire box during collection. All manner of animals, from tiny bugs to big mammals, will want to get at your collection, especially after it starts collecting microbes and smelling sweet.
How involved your protection needs to be depends on what types of critters you need to protect your collection from. Some people build a solid wire cage to go over their collections. Some find they need little protection at all.
Also, you need to consider protecting the collection from rain, not just critters. It is best not to collect in rainy weather, but sometimes rain comes unexpectedly. Many people fasten a tarp over the area above the box. This is done in a way to protect from rain without cutting off air flow and circulation.
I found that on my land a very heavy-duty laundry basket was enough protection from animals and also protected from rain. The upturned bottom was solid and blocked rain, while the sides were vented for airflow.
Mongoose were my most likely invader, and the basket I used was heavy and thick enough that they could not get in easily. Rats and mice were less of a problem because of my cats. Dogs could have been another problem, but my property was fenced from dogs, and my dogs kept out the wild pigs. For me, the heavy basket was perfect.
You will not be able to protect your collection from the entry of small bugs. That is okay, as they will track in microbes and the collection won’t be out long enough for them to eat much.
If you find bugs in the rice when you collect, they can be removed by hand without concern. You may have issues with an ant infestation and may need to find a way to protect against that, especially if they are fire ants, including finding another collection site.
STORAGE
The last thing to consider when getting ready to collect IMO is having a storage container ready once the collection is ready. A glass mason jar is a good choice, or used glass food jars. Unglazed ceramic is also a good choice. Plastic containers are not recommended.
As soon as you collect your IMO, you will want to put it into a state of dormancy so that the biology does not evolve and change. It should immediately be mixed with sugar. The culture of microbes you collect on rice is referred to as IMO-1, the first stage of IMO. When you add the sugar to stabilize the culture, it is referred to as IMO-2, the second stage of IMO.
The proper sugar to use is a dry, raw sugar. Brown sugar (white sugar sprayed with molasses) will pull in moisture from the air, and the added water will activate biology, not put it into dormancy.
The key factor is dry sugar. Don’t use any sugar that clumps. It should remain dry and pourable. If the only dry sugar you can use is white sugar, use that. Your microbial culture is going into dormancy at this stage and doesn’t need the trace amounts of minerals and nutrients in the brown rice. Focus on dormancy with dry sugar.
SUMMARY OF MATERIALS FOR COLLECTING IMO
Collection Box (“lunch box”)
“Hard-cooked” rice
Proper collection site
Materials to protect the box from vermin and rain during collection,
such as a cage and a tarp
Storage jar and dry, raw sugar to preserve culture immediately after collection
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