Rice cultivation technology has been developed rapidly in recent years, but its comparison with traditional artificial transplantation is still scarce, which leads to an argument whether the light cultural technique can produce high yields. This study was carried out to evaluate the effects of three planting patterns (direct seeding (DS), throwing seeding (TS) and transplantation (TP)) and mechanized deep tillage and shallow tillage with straw returning on the performance of two year early and late rice growth, yields and economic benefits at Yujiang in the northeast of Jiangxi province. The results showed that, compared with TP, DS shortened the rice growth period; both DS and TS reduced the tiller numbers per hill, the aboveground total biomass per hill, the percentage of productive tillers and the grain number per spike, but enhanced leaf area index (LAI) and panicle per unit area. Except TS increased the late rice yields in 2009 year significantly, compared with DS and TP, the yields of the other three seasons were not significantly different in the three cultivation methods. Compared with the traditional deep tillage, the shallow tillage significantly increased the tiller numbers per hill and the aboveground total biomass per hill during the growth stage, but it decreased LAI at the late growth and the percentage of productive tillers which therefore caused the lower production. Compared with straw output, rice straw mechanical returning increase the spike rate and the accumulation of dry matter, thus improved rice yields in the four seasons, and the rice yield significantly increased along with the time. According to comprehensive analysis, the highest yield of the early rice was from the treatment with deep tillage, direct seeding and straw retuning, and that of the late rice from the treatment with deep tillage, throwing seeding and straw retuning simultaneously. While form the economic efficiency point of view, compared with the combination patterns of deep tillage and transplantation, the costs of the combination patterns of shallow tillage and throwing seeding and the patterns of shallow tillage and direct seeding decreased by 16.4% and 22.3% respectively in early rice season and decreased by 14.5% and 18.3% respectively in late rice season.