After finalizing the harvester development plan, Luo Chong did not leave immediately. He stayed at the institute for another two days, introduced Yang Dashan to the institute, and discussed the improvement plan for the Hand-cranked Rice Transplanter with the Farm Machinery Group. In truth, there was not much to improve. They merely replaced all the wooden materials with iron, then arranged experiments so they could finalize the design as soon as possible and officially promote it throughout the Han Tribe next year.
How could they conduct rice-transplanting experiments in winter? That was a problem, but it was not much of a problem here in Xingang Commandery. Luo Chong came up with an idea: they would directly carve out half a mu of Experimental Field inside the newly built Casting Workshop of the Steel Mill.
This was a newly built workshop, but it was identical to the original Casting Workshop. In effect, they had simply extended the original factory building by one section. The floor had not yet been hardened or covered with cement; it was still bare earth. So they could simply reclaim a patch, pour water over it, and conduct the experiment.
The temperature inside the Casting Workshop was very high. At the very least, it was not below freezing. As long as the water did not freeze, they could use it for the experiment.
As for the seedlings needed for the experiment, Luo Chong suggested directly using the leaves of Rice Straw. They tied several blades together with fine thread to imitate a seedling. Half a mu of land could not hold many seedlings anyway, so they organized some women to make them at home. In one day, they had produced the Fake Seedlings.
Of course, Luo Chong was only responsible for coming up with the idea. He