Having worked in the cotton industry for longer than I want to remember and having talked to so many experts over time, I’ve been able to pick up some of the basics. You know the Cotton 101. As I thought about what unique things I can put out here that may help others better understand ag, cotton was obviously one. While I have posted on the crop off and on since I started blogging, I decided to start an organized series of blog posts a couple of years ago and I still find myself adding to them!

I keep a running list of some of the Cotton 101 posts on this page because cotton is such a major part of who I am within my agriculture adventure. Some of the posts are shown below but feel free to check out posts with the Cotton 101 tag too and if you want to meet people who grow my favorite fiber check out the Farmer Friday Series or learn about cotton fiber creators!

If you have questions about cotton, feel free to leave comments!

Cotton is a warm weather plant and doesn’t like wet feet at all.  That simple sentences guides a lot of planting thoughts for the crop. Like all crops, at planting you want to be sure you have the depth set correctly for the soil type, etc.

Raised Beds for Planting – Depending on the soil types and typical moisture availability, some people will “bed up.” By creating raised beds a farmer can help channel water where they want it. My first cotton farm visit was to Mr. Ray Young’s in Wisner, La. (I blogged about how awesome that visit was for work.)  I was there in the winter and the fields were perfectly in rows for the stale seedbed planting to come. He helped pioneer this version of conservation tillage as the beds would help him keep the seed in moisture but not too wet. Read more of this post

Cotton Bolls — What makes this one so small?

Cotton 101: Things Farmers Think Through in Selecting Cotton Varieties

Okay, big disclaimer here. I’m not a cotton expert nor a cotton farmer. I don’t mean to in anyway suggest which variety a given farmer should plant, but I thought some of the folks who don’t plant cotton varieties may be interested in some of the considerations cotton farmers have in selecting varieties to plant on their farm. So this is the sort of thing I’ve heard from farmers or experts. (Please weigh in if you are an expert!) Read more of this post

Cotton 101: Early Season Weather Problems

As I drove up to St. Louis last Sunday, I noticed some field work being done. Some planters running. My guess is the crop going in the ground was soybeans as we are getting too late for cotton and definitely too late for corn in Arkansas & West Tennessee. I noticed the sandbags that have been holding water back for more than a month seems to no longer have a job as water levels began going down.I spent my week in St. Louis working and can’t get over the reports that were coming in from various parts of the Cotton Belt. To say it hurt my heart may sound like I’m overracting, but the photos really do lead to a physical reaction. It is clear there is the potential for a lot of loss. Of course, things can always turn around too and farmers are the optimistic kind. Read more of this post

One of the folks I met through the National Agri-Marketing Association, Robert Ratliff, recently help me connect the dots.

Robert grew up on a cotton farm and had posted the photo to the left on his Facebook page.  The caption on it pointed to a different machine that he used to pick cotton old school. He explained he “remembers ‘Second Picking’ of the cotton crop in November 1970 when he operated a John Deere, Model 22L, one-row cotton picker. Read more of this post

So the reality is, I was so excited to finally get Alicia into a cotton field at harvest, that I was giddy. You can hear it at the beginning of this video. (Yes, I resoundingly admit to being an agnerd.) Read more of this post

This is a guest post by my niece Alicia who’s currently working on her masters in education at the University of Memphis (she’s the fourth generation of women in my family to go there!).  I’ve been lucky enough to have her living with me — we both seem to be enjoying it! I so appreciate her willingness to share what she learned her first time out on a working farm on this scale.

I recently had my first experience on a real farm that wasn’t there for tourists.  Janice has worked in cotton since before I can remember and I have always been told how important it and other natural fibers are to our lives.  I went with her to a friend’s farm to see how cotton was picked.  Being from a small town in the South, I am used to fields of crops and farm equipment, however, cotton is not grown near my hometown in North Carolina.  It was quite different from what I am used to seeing.  This was the first time I’ve been in a cotton field and been able to look at the bolls up close. Read more of this post

Top Cotton Blogs You Should be Following

Pickers roll and depending on the equipment, there are a couple of different things that happen. As Alicia mentioned the other day, there is equipment called a boll buggy that may be involved, or a module builder or the picker can have an on-board moduling system.

Cotton used to be put into wagons. Someone would get in the wagon/trailer and jump up and down to compress it. The trailers would be taken to the gin and once emptied, it could be refilled. Farmers had multiple trailers but almost nobody could afford enough to keep harvesting non-stop. Read more of this post

Farmers have several choices on how to compact their crop (full size modules, smaller modules or round modules). All of them are made so cotton, once picked, can be temporarily stored and transported to the gin.

Those modules are tagged in the field to identify what farm & field it came from. You frequently see them tagged with a special kind of spray paint but there are also physical paper tags placed on the module that begin identifying that cotton. Read more of this post

Cotton gins. They haven’t changed the basic function since they were invented but I do know they have changed dramatically in size & speed. At the end of the day, all of them involve separating the seed from the lint. The vast majority of gin use a system of saws (think about the type used in a circular saw) pulling lint away from seed and through to a cleaning system. There are some gins that use a system of rollers rather than saws. Read more of this post

With grain crops like corn, soybeans and rice, the seed product is the primary commodity you sell. While that’s an everyday realization to farmers, sometimes consumers like myself have to pause to think about that. Yes, the beans we are eating are seeds as are the kernels of corn we are munching on. Well, cotton definitely differs.

Cottonseed are one of the parts of the cotton boll harvested in the picker and once the gin separates the seed from the lint there are a few options for what to do with it. I’ll walk through a few.  Read more of this post

Okay. Gin Trash. The two words together… gin trash… the number of jokes that you can come up with based on those two simple words… Its unbelievable! BUT this is a Cotton 101 series so I better get back on track.

But let me start by saying the fact that we call it “gin trash” in no way reflects it has the properties of other trash. It’s very much an eco-friendly product of plant parts. And a number of researchers have looked into the potential uses of gin trash. Read more of this post

The post Cotton 101 — The Basics of Cotton Farming appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

[social_warfare]December always brings a lot of reflection about the year and this year has definitely followed that trend. Maybe even moreso since I had a big birthday and celebrated a month of memories. Here on the blog, I have a tradition of looking back at the past year — some of the things that readers found more interesting, some of the things I should consider doing, etc.  Cotton always stands out for me and I love it when it stands out for you too so here are the top 10 cotton blog posts of 2015!

As I looked at the stats on my site, I was blown away by how many of the posts I’ve written about cotton over the years continue to do well. So although I will write another post about some of the other things that stand out on the blog this year, I wanted to devote this post to cotton content specifically.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Just Read: Top 10 Cotton Blog Posts — learning about the farm side of the fabric of our lives” quote=”Top 10 Cotton Blog Posts — learning about the farm side of the fabric of our lives” theme=”style2″]

So what posts about cotton are getting read? Let’s start with number 10.

10.  Cotton 101: How a Cotton Gin Works

This post in the Cotton 101 series describes How a Cotton Gin Works. It is a process that a lot of us learned about in elementary school as we studied Eli Whitney and other inventors. And although the process is similar today, the speed and technology definitely set it apart!

9. Which states produce the most cotton? Acres, Pounds & More

Do you know what states grow the most cotton? Well, it seems not many people do! People seem to have an interest in which states produce the most cotton. That’s why this post that covers acres, pounds & more looks at the 2014 data from a few perspectives. I will be updating it for 2015 figures once the year-end report is available.

8. What’s the Fabric of our Lives About? Why Advertise Cotton?

One of the most recognizable brands in the US is the seal of cotton — that emblem that not only is on t-shirts, sheets and other cotton goods but holds my business card on my luggage. That seal is part of the program that advertises cotton under the Fabric of our Lives.

7. What’s with that Hayden Panettiere cotton commercial?

Given the interest in advertising cotton, it seems logical that more people would be interested in the cotton commercial that features Nashville star Hayden Panettiere. This post explains what is behind the commercial and lets you see one of the ads.

6. Cotton 101: Can you eat cotton or cottonseed?

The role of oilseeds in our diets for cooking, generating oils or meal for other food uses leads some people to ask whether you can eat cotton or cottonseed. This post highlights how cottonseed is used for oils and livestock and the potential for cottonseed being used in human diets.

A Disruptor. Cotton 101

The pattern of several Cotton 101 posts being in the top posts of 2015 is clear. I started the series a long time ago and use it as a place to connect to some of the timeless, more general information about my favorite fiber. This is a page not a post so I really considered pulling it from the list, but hey, my blog, my rules so I decided to put it here as a disruptor! LOL.

5. Cotton Plant 101: What do a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like? VIDEO

Walking around a cotton field isn’t something everyone gets to do. One of my early posts that still gets a lot of traffic (it’s in the top 3 this year!) is a photo post that I later thought could possibly be more engaging to folks if I did it in video form. This post (video and copy) shows  what a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like. I am still impressed with how pretty the flowers and bolls are!

4. How is cotton picked nowadays?

Picking cotton has been immortalized in song by Johnny Cash and lots of others. We study in history books about the back-breaking work that picking cotton was. But in today’s world, not a lot of people have ever seen cotton in the field, much less have they witnessed harvest! Looking at the ways is cotton picked nowadays, there are a few ways it is done, but the US, Australia & Brazil rely on big machinery!

3. Cotton 101: What does a cotton plant or field look like?

This is the photo-oriented post I mentioned previously that shares what a cotton plant or field look likes at various times of year. For someone who has worked with cotton farmers for decades, this was a post that I may never have thought to pull photos together for if it weren’t for a friend on a road trip asking me what he was seeing. I decided to go beyond his question to the question people coud ask anytime of year. It took work to get all the pics together (and now I have done the master montage at left!) but I am amazed at how much of a resource it has become!

2. Cotton 101:  Facts about Cotton — The Crop & Products

Most of us don’t think about the little things we come in contact with day in and day out. Heck we can’t! It is something that will overload our minds! But there are some little things that folks may find interesting about cotton, that may peak their interest for a bit. That what this post about the crop & cotton products offers.

1. Top 10 Cotton States in Area, Production, Yield & Value in 2012

A part of me really is bummed that my  Top 10 Cotton States in Area, Production, Yield & Value in 2012 is my top trafficked blog post. I mean it is several years old and a more recent post is available and I titled it in a way I can make it timeless. Hopefully more people will start finding the post on which states produce the most cotton in acres, pounds & more than this one!)

What should be written in 2016?

Having looked at the top 10 cotton blog posts of 2015, and thinking cotton thoughts, feel free to let me know what you think should be put on the to write list. I have a couple of ideas based on some questions I have gotten through Twitter & email, but I’d love to know what questions you have too!

The post Top 10 Cotton Blog Posts of 2015 appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

When you look at cotton overall, the crop can be improved in a variety of ways. For some, adding irrigation to their crop production would be an improvement while others may find that being able to move from hand labor to mechanical labor is an improvement.

Another way to improve cotton production is to look for new cotton varieties — that would be the types of cotton seed people plant. Right now, if you look at the company I work for, Monsanto, which has a brand of cotton seed called Deltapine, we have plant breeders who focus on that type of improvement as do several other companies like Dow & Bayer. You also have public breeding programs within the university extension programs at places like Texas A&M and Louisiana State.

These plant breeders look at all the cotton varieties that are commercially sold around the US and those that grow natively around the world and think “what can we do to make a better cotton plant?” Then they work with all the varieties to help make pairings that may result in new combinations. Maybe the new combination they are looking for has better lint yield so the farmer harvests more cotton, maybe they want to make a current variety less susceptible to a disease that bugs bring into the field, or maybe they are looking to improve the quality of the cotton harvested so the fiber is longer and stronger which makes a better yarn.

All of these things are looked at scientifically, with detailed ratings systems that are used plant by plant. Any of those things would improve cotton varieties and be done through breeding & variety improvement.

Here is a video my office put together that explains some of the pepper variety development programs we have, the concept is the same for other crops, just different characteristics.

Thanks Larry

Writing about cotton genetics was a really good way for me to reflect on conversations I had with one of the cotton breeders I worked with at Deltapine what seems like forever ago. Larry Burdett had an incredible passion for the topic, he was an avid reader and loved the history of the crop, going so far as planting really old varieties of seed just to see it for himself — his nursery was the only place I’ve ever seen Sea Island cotton.

Sadly we are mourning his passing right now. But at least I feel I am smarter about cotton thanks to all my conversations in Arizona fields with him. This photo of him is from a morning in the field where he helped me understand his rating system for leaf smoothness / hairiness. You can see, he’s pulled a leaf off of the plant and is looking at the underside of the leaf. leaf hairs are interesting because they can present problems of contamination at times. How smooth or hairy a leaf is also has implications for how much some bugs will like the plant! Such seemingly little things make a big difference in cotton!

(Part of this answer was drafted in response to the question What is cotton variety improvement (in simpleton explanation)? being asked on Quora. Like everything on my blog, I wrote this out of personal interest, not any business reason for my employer.) 

The post Cotton 101: What is cotton variety improvement? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

(Editor’s note:  This post will be updated annually in mid January with the most recent year’s production numbers.)

When you are really close to something, you sometimes forget that other people will find things you know somewhat automatically of interest. That’s the case with a couple of posts I’ve written over the past couple of years talking about the leading states. People seem to love to know where the most cotton is grown in the U.S. and today (Monday, January 12, 2015) was the day of the year that the USDA sheds more light about the past season! So…. guess how I’m spending my evening!

The USDA Crop Production 2014 Summary gives a lot of information and it will be poured over by lots of economists, media and more. This is my initial take on things related to my favorite fiber.

The Overview of 2014 Cotton

The Annual Production report always opens with quick overviews of each of several key crops. Cotton is one of the most important crops in the U.S. so it is always included in the summary. As I read it, I have to giggle how some of it seems to be a bit boring.

All cotton production is estimated at 16.1 million 480-pound bales, up 1 percent from last month and up 25 percent from 2013. The United States yield is estimated at 795 pounds per acre, up 22 pounds from the December forecast but down 26 pounds from last year. Harvested area, at 9.71 million acres, is down 2 percent from last month but up 29 percent from last year.

If I was to have written the same overview, it would have a lot more “color.” Aw heck, let me go ahead and write one with the same information!

Wow! 2014 was a better year in cotton than we expected! Farmers produced more than 16 million bales of the natural fiber which is a little more than we expected last month and is up 25 percent from last year. When you look at the average yield, how much each farm produced on average, it was almost 800 pounds per acre. Again, we had low-balled it in December — by 22 pounds! Despite that gain, it is still down 26 pounds per acre. The acres harvested were up almost a third from 2013, clocking in at 9.71 million acres of cotton.

How many acres of cotton are grown in each state?

Cotton is definitely a Southern crop and the list of states growing my beloved fiber are mostly places where people who like warm weather feel most at home. Yes, cotton AND Janice love the sun & heat! There is one state that has amazingly large acres devoted to the fluffy fiber! Everything’s bigger in Texas and that is certainly the case when you look at the thousands of acres planted. Texans planted more than 6.2 million acres of cotton in 2014! Georgia was a distant 1.3 million!

1. Texas:  6,217
2. Georgia:  1,380
3. North Carolina:  465
4. Mississippi:  425
5. Alabama:  350
6. Arkansas:  335
7. South Carolina:  280
8. Tennessee:  275
9. Missouri:  250
10. Oklahoma:  240
11. California:  212
12. Louisiana:  170
13. Arizona:  165
14. Florida:  107
15. Virginia:  87
16. New Mexico:  48
17. Kansas:  31

How much cotton is grown per acre?

It is interesting to me that cotton production varies so widely when it comes to how many pounds or bales are grown per acre! I You can see that California and Arizona have much higher production numbers per acre than Texas and Oklahoma in the chart below. Of course, the costs of production differ widely too!

Remember as you look at these numbers in pounds per acre than a bale of cotton weighs approximately 480 pounds… so while Texas and Oklahoma are only a little bit over a bale on average, California and Arizona were in the three bales to the acre zone! I sorted based on yield per acre.

1. California                 1,726
2. Arizona                     1,453
3. Virginia                    1,239
4. Arkansas                  1,193
5. Mississippi              1,183
6. Louisiana                 1,171
7. Missouri                   1,117
8. North Carolina       1,049
9. Florida                        914
10. Alabama                     910
11. South Carolina         898
12. New Mexico              878
13. Georgia                      876
14. Tennessee                 875
15. Kansas                       861
16. Texas                         581
17. Oklahoma                 578

Which states grew more cotton this year? Which grew less?

Looking through the numbers in the overview, I had to wonder, where the extra cotton came from this year. One way to look at that is to check and see which states had higher production per acre this year. I mean, every year some states do better than the year before and every year is seems a few fall on bad luck. So where did farmers grow more pounds of cotton per acre? Well, Virginia farmers definitely noticed the increase pounds in 2014 and the Southwest had a tough time.

1. Virginia:  298
2. Florida:  253
3. North Carolina:  250
4. South Carolina:  207
5. Missouri:  149
6. Alabama:  121
7. Kansas:  104
8. California:  98
9. Arkansas:  60
10. Georgia:  45
11. Tennessee:  22
12. Arizona:  8
13. Oklahoma:  -13
14. Mississippi:  -20
15. New Mexico:  -43
16. Louisiana:  -52
17. Texas:  -65

How many bales of cotton did each state produce?

When you look state to state, the yield per acre and the overall number of acres comes together to provide a look at how many bales of cotton each state produced…. but I have to say the acres grown really seems to catapult Texas to the top! The numbers are thousands of bales so Texas produced more than 6 million bales of cotton in 2014! That’s a lot of blue jeans!

• Alabama:  660 (+70)
• Arizona:  492 (+8.8)
• Arkansas:  820 (+100)
• California:  755 (-188)
• Florida:  200 (+25)
• Georgia:  2,500 (+180)
• Kansas:  52 (+11)
• Louisiana:  410 (+84)
• Mississippi:  1,035 (+316)
• Missouri:  570 (+74)
• New Mexico:  73 (+7)
• North Carolina:  1,005 (+239)
• Oklahoma:  265 (+111)
• South Carolina:  520 (+160)
• Tennessee:  492 (+78)
• Texas:  6,013 (+1,828)
• Virginia:  222 (+71)

More on Cotton

If you are interested in reading more about how cotton farmers produce this awesome fiber that becomes our favorite jeans and hoodies, check out my cotton 101 page where I have highlighted some of the many posts about cotton on the site! And you can always give me ideas for more pieces to write here in the comments section!

The post Which states produce the most cotton? Acres, Pounds & More appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I love hearing people tell their stories about how cotton makes them feel, so much so I have welcomed a series of posts on the topic. It isn’t the factual pieces I write like what a cotton plant looks like as much how warm it makes hearts as well as bodies. There have been several of these that I just love!

Well, last week, as I was getting back in the swing of things after the holidays, I stumbled on a post by a writer I met earlier this year while I was in Austin. Addie Broyles does a great job of writing about a family quilt from generations ago. I had to ask if it was cotton and she said she was certain it was! So here’s a short excerpt of it and a photo from her blog… I’m sure once you read it, you will want to follow the link over to her site! I skipped part of it that you’ll want to catch back up on!

….. Like always, I slept on the couch under the fern, but this time, I had a new source of warmth: my great-great-grandmother Lena’s postage stamp quilt.

Lena and her husband, Gustaf, have given my family more than they ever could have imagined. Maybe they knew the roots they were planting when they left Sweden’s Gotland island, 10 years apart, in the late 1800s, but I doubt she could have guessed that her granddaughter would still be making pies with her rolling pin, much less than her granddaughter’s granddaughter would Instagram it.

She could have never guessed that that quilt she made when she got to Springfield (at least we think), would still be in such good condition that the newest member of the family, 7-month-old Nash, would chew on its corners.

via Sleeping under a quilt that’s older than all of us | The Feminist Kitchen.

The post Wrapping Up in History, Family & Cotton appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

In October, I spent several days in Memphis. On one trip, you may remember I got stuck in the mud on a turnrow in a cotton field and I became one of the problems cotton farmers can have when it rains at harvest time! A couple of weeks later, I returned to Memphis and with really nice weather, I decided it was a weekend for me to get back out on a farm. My buddy Bob who had shown one of my city kid niece’s around and he was up to the challenge of taking on another when until he had problems with a picker. So I called Allen’s farm and asked if I could come their way, they were gracious enough to point me to a field where a picker would be rolling.

This October, it was a teenage niece. One who had only a little experience on a cotton farm and it was five years ago!! For those of you who have read my blog since the start (if anyone has stuck with me PLEASE let me know! It feels like it has been forever!) And comparing the photo we took as we headed out, I think you’ll agree that a lot has changed since the two of us went to a cotton field together.

Oh…. and yes, I think it is clear… my niece shares a passion for cotton and agriculture! Granted, she is probably a bit more reserved with her enthusiasm these days, but I loved seeing the excitement of discovery!

Five years later, having organized a bit of a visit, we had a lot more adventure to check out so I’ll be putting together several posts on our day’s adventure! Here are some of the key elements of the day that will be featured in posts are:

• Checking Out a Soybean Field
• Getting Up Close to Cotton
• Picking Cotton & Making Modules
• Riding the Tractor & Moving Round Modules
• Standing on Top of the World
• Visiting the Cotton Gin

The post Two City Girls on the Farm for a Day appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

This weekend, I accidentally called a friend who farms (ok, I butt dialed him) and he called me back.  We enjoyed the serendipity of it all and had a good visit.

As is always the case, weather was a major discussion point. Seems not only was Memphis cooler and wetter than I’d like but he could definitely identify. As would be expected, I said it’s’ different with cotton and he asked why, knowing he doesn’t like wet soybeans sitting in the field either!

Why is rain so bad on cotton at harvest time?

There are several reasons that I think it is especially bad for cotton to sit out in the rain. So many that I decided to take a brief break on the side of the highway as I headed back to St. Louis and shoot a short video. But of course I missed some stuff so I’m going to write out a few things as well as share the video.

Different Cotton Harvest Problems From Rain

Soil Compaction

Let’s face it, when rain is puddling up, you can’t take a big ol’ cotton picker through the field for a variety of reasons. But even when it just seems a bit damp, farmers worry about the soil. One thing farmers have to think about is getting equipment stuck in the field which is a real pain but going on a field when it is wet, also leads to rutting up the field (yes I can remember being not smart enough to rut up a yard). Compaction means the soils get tightly packed which makes it harder for roots to grow, for water to filter through, etc. If you compact the field in the fall, you may well end up doing field work in the spring.

Fiber Quality Losses

Have you ever left your favorite t-shirt wadded up in a ball after going to the gym? Or maybe left a wet towel somewhere? Well, if you have, you probably learned cotton can get mildewy or something when it is wet. Sometimes it leaves spots on the fabric too. Same thing can happen in the field and that means a reduced price because that cotton can’t be used for some of the nicer uses.

Stringout Can Lead to Yield Loss

Rain water can put a weight issue at play making cotton lint strain toward the ground. This issue of “stringout.” is a problem because often wind or rain actually turns that into fallout and then the cotton ends up on the ground instead of in a bale.

Picking & Ginning issues

If cotton lint is wet, it doesn’t play well with big machines! Cotton pickers pull the lint off of plants on spindles, so they twist the fiber a bit to pull it off. If the fiber is wet, it is more likely to get stuck and start jamming up the spindles/picker. The same kind of issues happen with the gin as saw are pulling fiber away. In fact, because of these issues, farmers pay close attention to dew during harvest and prefer to pick once the sun has dried things out.

While those picking and ginning may not sound like a big deal, they really are. Cottonseed is part of the process in the field and the gin and it is an oilseed which means it is flammable! Far too often, those of us in the cotton industry hear of a picker or gin fire. We can also hear about module fires (modules are the big ol heavily compacted ways we store cotton to take it to the gin.

Issues with Cottonseed

Another area of issues that people may not think about… the cottonseed seed coat (that hard outside that protects the embryo) can weaken with moisture. That not only means the seed gets soft, but the embyro may actually decide to come out early. What that means is basically, a new cotton plant tries to start growing right there in the boll! And even if that doesn’t happen, the softer seed coat can get nicked by the saws at the gin causing some real issues — I mean you don’t want little chips of cottonseed coat in your nice cotton sheets!

Getting Stuck

You may find it funny, but can you imagine getting a cotton picker stuck in the mud? The piece of equipment is expensive (hundreds of thousands of dollars) and time is of the essence in the fall. You don’t want to play around and get stuck. I know I wouldn’t! That would make me feel so stupid!

If you are interested in cotton, there are a lot of posts in the timeless cotton 101 series or simply in the cotton category. There are even a couple of posts about rain being a problem in 2012 and other seasons.

The post What cotton harvest problems can farmers have when it rains? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I have to say, it has been too long since I stepped into a cotton field, so when people send me photos online reminding me where we are in the cotton season, I get pretty excited. Seemed like a good time to do a quick status check on the crop since a couple of people have sent me photos from the field!

Last week, my friend Rebecca Subbiah of Chow and Chatter tweeted:

@TruffleMedia @JPlovesCOTTON guess the blossom pic.twitter.com/Aswt9IZx0i

— RebeccaSubbiah RDN ? (@chowandchatter) September 15, 2014

Of course I immediately knew that was a cotton plant but I didn’t reply quickly. When John said it was definitely not a pumpkin, Rebecca tweeted another clue and a smile. And I have to say it made it an easy guess for everyone.

With the second photo I had to ask Rebecca whether the fiber and the blooms were on the same plant. See a lot of time in the fall, plants will have bolls opening on the bottom of the plant. Those are the first bolls to form and they are near the ground so they tend to get all the nutrients and water they need first to fill out. The plant keeps putting on blooms since cotton is a perennial plant.

Though the blooms are pretty — and the one at top event shows it has self-pollinated and is turning pink! — these are pretty much wasted energy for the plant right now. Farmers will go into their fields in the fall (some have already started picking in some places} and will determine when they should start harvesting knowing days are getting shorter and it is less and less likely that flowers will have time to become bolls.

What’s funny is just the day before, a friend who is a cotton ginner tweeted me a photo saying they were finally up and running. Harvest in South Georgia was getting far enough along that the gin was beginning to separate seed from lint.

If you’d like to know how the cotton crop is doing in a certain state, the USDA-NASS publishes the crop progress report each Monday.  There are statistics for the percentage of cotton has bolls opening (those numbers are strong this week), cotton harvested (it is really early on this one) and the overall condition of the crop.

I need to find time to catch some cotton in the field…. I am long overdue! In the meantime, if you are seeing some cotton, feel free to share the love! I welcome cotton sightings!

Related articles

• C is for Cotton – an A to Z Series about Agriculture
• Cotton Plant 101: What do a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like? VIDEO
• First Visit to a North Carolina Cotton Farm

The post What You Should Know About Cotton in September appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

On of the things that farmers have to worry about is whether or not their crops are going to fully mature. And while I think more than a few people can be watched closely for the same reason, with crops, it is a bit different. In order to harvest a crop, farmers want to be able to take action at peak maturity. If they harvest too early, they will miss harvesting some and if farmers wait too late, they risk reductions in quality and potentially yield. And while each crop differs in how you determine maturity and estimate harvest dates, cotton shows you a few ways to

So how do they do it?

These photos from cotton farmers Kelly & John Whatley in South Texas will show at least part of it. Take a look at Kelly’s Instagram account and you’ll see more recent photos — they are harvesting some fields now!

Well first, farmers pay close attention to the plants. They know what plants look like when they have a lot of growing left to do by looking at how close to the top the white flowers are. As the flowers turn to bolls, there are other things to look for with cotton fields.

With a good load of hard bolls, the changes in coloring on the plant is a sign that the plants are beginning to dry down.

Farmers will pull hard bolls and cut them open to get a good feel for how close the plant is getting to maturity.

When a farmer looks at the cut open boll, there are a few things they are looking for…. one is how wet the lint inside the boll is but it is also important to look at the seed that is developing inside the boll. In fact, the seed is the most important factor in determining maturity!  Without the seed maturing to for the embryo to firm up (otherwise it is a bit like jelly) and developing a good seed coat, you don’t want to harvest. Harvesting an immature crop reduces the quality of the product and makes it harder to use the fiber for clothes, etc.

Of course, once bolls begin popping open, there is no question! That cotton is ready to be harvested but farmers in the US will wait for most of the plant to be ready to harvest so cotton pickers can roll. In countries where people pick the crop, they sometimes pick as bolls open going through the field a few times. 

Related articles

• Farmers are Planning For Cotton Harvest as They Plant Cotton
• Cotton 101 Video: Field Nearing Harvest & Importance of Defoliation
• Cotton Plant 101: What do a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like? VIDEO
• Cotton 101 Video: Impacts of Rain on Cotton During #Harvest12

The post What a Total a Lack of Maturity! … In Cotton Fields appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

A week  ago, I was driving to Memphis for the weekend and the drama of a bright, rich sunset with the rain lured me off my path. I took the chance to get off the interstate, and snapped a few photos in a couple of different places before finding a cotton farm at the perfect point of light. I snapped loads of photos and video on both my iPhone and my DSLR. I had to share a few pics from my phone immediately… this one grabbed me.

While some of my friends agreed that was a beautiful sight to behold, they weren’t as familiar with some of the other thoughts running through my mind as I stood in the light rain snapping photos. Knowing water was pooling up but could drain off that Delta field, but also wondering what the weather would be like for the next several days.

I turned to my cotton expert friends to ask them whether there are good and bad rains. A quick message thread on Facebook made it possible for me to check in with a few growing regions. I’ll put some of the photos I took that evening (no filters or editing!) along side the comments my friends had.

My friend Marjory Walker said her husband Bob (some of you may remember him giving my niece a first look at a cotton farm in Tennessee). She told me:

Bob says a slow and gentle rain over night, about 3/4 to an inch is usually a good rain. But it varies. Three inches in 15 minutes, a hard pounding rain, is usually a bad one.

A few hours south, Shea Whitfield in the Delta weighed in, looking a bit later into the season too: 

I will agree with what Marjory said. Also will add that once the cotton starts putting on fruit (editor’s note:  fruit is blooms, squares and bolls — the parts of the plant that will produce cotton lint later) the cloudy conditions that come along with the rain can be very detrimental by causing the plant to shed fruit. Also if we have been dry for quite a while a rain can jump-start the plant vegetatively and cause it to shed. So to answer your question sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad.

When Shea looked at the panoramic photo above, he added:

Makes me think you need to get the planter back out if it was just planted and it sandy ground. Hard packing rain makes it tough for a little cotton plant to come up.

He couldn’t make out that this field had a good stand of cotton already but the other pictures here make that clear. Even without seeing these pics, challenges for seedlings came to mind.

My friend Barry farms on the High Plains of Texas. He hasn’t been seeing the regular rains the Mid-South has had so he has a bit of a different perspective.

The rains we have had the last couple of weeks looks a lot like this, and the cool wet weather has caused some seedling disease and loss of some fields. On the other hand, without rain, NOTHING grows. After the drought we have been through in west Texas, all rain is welcome.

And further west, in Arizona, Kevin Rogers is used to having to irrigate cotton to get it growing. He said:

If the rain hits after its watered up we are ok as long as it doesn’t pond up. If we get a rain before we get germination and a crust forms on the soil and we can’t keep it wet we will have to replant. Agree with all the comments! We also don’t want a heavy rain when the plant is opening up as we get close to harvest.

There’s another post on the site about how damaging rain is on cotton at harvest.
In the days since, we’ve had more rain and cooler temperatures. That’s not exactly cotton weather. It loves a drink now and then but otherwise cotton plants prefer it hot and drier. I hope we get some perfect cotton growing weather soon!

The post How does a big rain impact a cotton farm early in the season? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.