Cotton pickers are some of the coolest machines out there. I mean, memes keep coming back that compare the lights and action of cotton harvest with a mainstage concert!

I love watching cotton getting picked! And getting a ride along is always a fun way to go…. sometimes farmers have even trusted me behind the wheel, but I’m really best suited for the buddy seat.

Basic Functions of Cotton Pickers

The basic premise of a cotton picker is to pull cotton off of plants leaving as much of the plant matter in the field as possible to reduce the possibility of contaminants making it to the gin or the textile mill. But the way they do it is an amazingly complex system of actions.

Here’s a drawing I made to show some of the primary elements of the machine.

Spindles Pull Cotton From the Plant

Cotton pickers have spindles that rotate on cylinders that rotate as well. The roughened metal of the spindle pulls the cotton from the plant. There are cotton pickers and then there are cotton strippers… they both harvest cotton, but cotton pickers are a bit different in that they can harvest cleaner fiber because of the spindles whereas strippers strip everything off the mainstem.

You can see in this photo how the spindles are lined up between the two gray guides.

Rows of spindles around the cylinder, keep lots of movement, trying to leave the branches of the plant and even the bracts in tact. The bracts are the parts of the plant that keep the fiber attached until picked.

Compacting Cotton for Transport to the Gin

There are a few ways this is done now:

• Cotton is still collected in trailers without compacting in some countries but this is rare in the U.S.
• Separate machinery from the picker that is used at the field’s edge. This was common in the recent past but has become much less common in the U.S. You can see this in an old post about how moduling comes after cotton harvest.
• On-board moduling / bales that happens as the cotton picker continues to pick more fiber. I shared a photo essay on the John Deere picker that creates modules in the field back in 2010.

And this tweet and the image in it…. that’s what got me to blog today! Love seeing a diagram of what happens in the basket with the on-board moduling system!

Funciona de uma colheitadeira de algodão pic.twitter.com/DwtJUwYIsn

— Agricultura (@agricultura4you) July 9, 2022

The post Cotton Pickers: How Do They Work appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I’m not sure when I first became familiar with Garrison Keillor’s work, but it seems like I’ve always known him. In some ways, I think my watching The Waltons as a kid somehow merged with his Prairie Home Companion. I mean, the feeling of nostalgia and simplicity was probably the tie. And the image of the Waltons listening to radio & his big following without video. Anyway, a friend sent me the email he’d gotten thanks to his subscribing to Garrison Keillor’s website & I dove right in.

It is kind of heartwarming & funny how he starts the post talking about how his wife is always pushing him to do better for the planet. Most of us are striving to leave the planet we call home better than we found it and yet, most of us also know someone who is far more committed to the idea than us. We have a range of things that come with that social license… sometimes we subscribe full, others we have a different view and still others we ignore. I’ve known more than a few people who dated, married or somehow became connected to someone who wanted them to give up meat based on the environmental footprint as they understand it. But I also know a lot of people who have very different reads on that. And when Keillor lets us all get a shared laugh at the reality most of us have an omnivorous diet, even if that means sneaking meat, I was ready to move on.

And then I realized why the friend thought of me. Keillor writes about her comments on cotton with a sense of exasperation cause he, like me has a deep love of cotton:

But the other day she told me that cotton is a bad fabric, that to grow the cotton to make three pairs of jeans uses more water than a person will drink in a lifetime. And dreadful chemicals are employed in the making of denim. “What am I supposed to wear? Silk?” I said. She told me that silk is more sustainable. So is linen.

But cotton?? I love cotton. Jeans are my uniform. I walk down the street in old faded jeans and a black T-shirt and I am 25 again, a young attitudinous writer.

Unexpectedly on a dark day, light shines through from GarrisonKeillor.com

I would love to personally invite the Keillor couple to go deeper than the ideas that cotton as a fabric is “bad” or that chemicals are “dreadful.” I hope he used literary license. Lots of people have read about the water footprint of cotton and yet few have had the chance to dig into the topic with some depth. I’d like to help Garrison and his significant other (is her name Jenny?) get to know cotton on a deeper level.

I love that Jenny’s advice is to stick with natural fibers — I am certainly a fan! I have some great linen clothes for summer and my hatred of cold weather means I truly love wool in winter. And while some folks will point out polyester uses less water, I think Jenny and I will agree that the footprint of synthetics with a dependence on petroleum takes us down a whole other path. And I am one of those folks who wears jeans several times before putting them in the laundry.

My passion for the natural fiber has led me to spend hundreds of hours with farmers asking them about how the crop is grown. It would also be a chance for me to learn too. I don’t have all the answers on the topic of cotton by any means, but after decades of talking to people who grow the crop, others who design fabrics, and who look at dyes and finishes and more I have found it has been improving leaps and bounds over the past few decades. And, we’d have a great time doing a small tour of some points of interest in the conversation about cotton and we could learn a lot.

A Potential Travel Itinerary

We could start with a farm visit. If Jenny & Garrison are ready to go, I hope to spend tomorrow/Friday in the Missouri Bootheel showing a friend what cotton plants look like. We’ll have a chance to ask a farmer about how he utilizes water on the farm. We plan to see Darren and he has some irrigation but also has some dryland cotton. What’s amazing is how precise irrigation is and how farmers understand the soils they have, things that they can do to help the soil capture rainfall and retain it for use later. They pay close attention to flow rates of water and more. Those are improvements that have been happening throughout the decades I’ve been learning from farmers. PS — Darren sent a photo to make sure I keep focus on my visit.

But I should mention we may not be able to go because he may be rained out. And rain on cotton at harvest can cause some tough issues in terms of soil health, crop quality and yield. And while it isn’t exactly Lake Wobegon, there’s a YouTuber in Minnesota who grew & made his own tshirt!

We could learn about fiber use after the farm. How’s Cary, North Carolina? or maybe Lubbock, Texas? When cotton moves from the farm, it goes through ginning & warehousing before you get into carding, spinning, etc. Eventually you get to the finishing and dying. It’s awesome to see this up close and personal. understand how it is done because each company is in improvement mode too. I like seeing this in the labs at Cotton Inc. or Texas Tech first, but then seeing it done at scale with denim or towels… that’s amazing.

One of the things I have been impressed by, is how many scientists are looking at ways to make all of these processes better environmentally. One of the innovations that really blew me away on a visit was the way the worn look can now be achieved with lasers (yes LASERS!) instead of chemicals.

And if they want to come to St. Louis with me, I can introduce them to a researcher at the Danforth Center I met a few years ago as I had the chance to see what plant breeding is doing to see if indigo can make a resurgence!

Lots to Talk About

In my experience, this diving deeper offers so much to all of us. And while I have studied up some on why people have the impression that cotton is so water intensive, I am always amazed at how much more there is to be learned. And quite frankly I learn more by talking with people who have different questions or presuppositions than I do!

I have the feeling that Jenny and I agree that the constant purchasing of clothes for right now rather than thinking about the perfect t-shirts that you will wear long-term (Have mercy I love a good black v-neck! Have had some well made ones for close to 10 years!) Also like dresses that can be worn across seasons and dressed up or down to easily help reduce our personal footprint. And those things keep the commercial bug at bay.

The post Dreaming of a Cotton Trip with Garrison Keillor & His Wife appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I love harvest time and while we have a while before we will be picking cotton in Missouri, a time-lapse video of cotton boll opening from the Texas Gulf Coast sure is getting a lot of people excited about what is to come!

Over the years, we have shared about cotton plant physiology quite a bit — creamy white flowers turning pink and into a boll that does the Jiffy Pop dance to open. Well, this year, Justin Roberts (@horned_ranch on Twitter who is a crop consultant in Sinton, TX) caught a boll opening on video. He has rocked the Twitterverse for sure! Just check it out.

Justin says it took a few days for the boll to go from initial cracking to fully open. It also takes some good sunshine and heat units.

Justin has worked in cotton quite a while — he reminded me we had worked on some projects in Georgia years ago. He has a depth of knowledge in cotton genetics and physiology that makes him naturally curious (he’s say nerdy) about things like this so he set up his camera and let it go for a while. I’m always a fan of this sort of thing but time-lapse video of cotton? Sign me up! I love that you can see the strong sun of mid-day and the shadows of morning and evening come and go.

We laughed about how the breezes coming off the Gulf of Mexico make this branch dance more than you’d necessarily expect. But with 10 years in Texas, he’s grown used to the breezes and wind. I suggested he could set up a stake or brace and duct tape the plant to it (no, I never expected him to agree).

It’s interesting to realize that way geography hits when Justin points out the proximity to the Gulf means there is really no measurable irrigation — wells there pump saltwater!

The post Time-Lapse Video of Cotton Boll Opening appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

In June, I helped organize a meeting for the office and that’s when I got the chance to meet Darren Brown, a cotton farmer in the Missouri Bootheel (that small part of Missouri near the Mississippi River, Arkansas and Tennessee). Love that he was willing to stick with me through cotton harvest!

Since I hit the highway to and from my hometowns of Memphis & St. Louis so often, I can’t help but take a look from the highway. Knowing Darren was such a character and was willing to share the good, the bad and the ugly with me as his planting season was wrecked by bad weather when we met, I kept his phone number handy and would check in throughout the season.

The Bootheel crop went from one that was ragged and worrisome to being one of a lot of promise.

As I launched Hundred Percent Cotton, I stopped in the Bootheel on a drive back from Memphis and shot a short video I used on some of the social media sites. The crop looked good but I was waiting to hear from farmers and I wondered how cotton harvest would go. I texted Darren asking about harvest as a friend from Canada had told me she’d never seen cotton in the field and I thought maybe we could get there.

We didn’t make it, but Darren was nice enough to send me some video clips. I had to share.

If that’s not enough of cotton at harvest to make you happy, you may really enjoy these photos from a couple of years ago. Some of my favorite cotton harvest photos of all time were taken in the Bootheel! This one was taken at Charles Parker’s farm!

The post Cotton Harvest in the Missouri Bootheel — Darren Beat the Rain! Video appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

For days, I check on several friends each time I hop on social media. I have been watching to see how they are in dealing with Hurricane Harvey bearing down on them. First concerns are for the people, but I can’t help looking to see how the farms are doing. Hurricanes have ripped through friends’ crops too many times, I’ve seen farmers prepare for hurricanes and deal with the aftermath.

When a friend sent me a message asking me questions about cotton in Harvey, I decided to talk with my dear friends Kelly and Jon Whatley who grow cotton, milo and more in South Texas. They have already faced what we hope is the worst of it in their area, so took a bit of time to help me understand how it is going.

First, I am glad to have seen you posting that you are all fine. Can you tell me what the storm was like in its height where you are? What’s it like today?

Very noisy. Landfall was at night, so we couldn’t see what was flying around or how bad it looked. We are in the middle of a field with no protection, but that also means no neighbor’ debris flying around either. Saturday morning, we woke up to water standing in the yard and lots of limbs down, tree and plant debris. We had power Friday night until around 8:00 PM. Luckily we have a generator that runs off a tractor’s PTO shaft so we have had electricity.

What you have heard from friends and family along the coast? What’s it like for them?

Yes. Some total devastation other very little damage. One friend (Hannah Miller) lost contact with her family near Rockport in the height of the storm but ended up locating them after some scary hours of not knowing. Her family’s home and farms are terribly damaged but her family is safe. Friends in Aransas Pass and Rockport will be assessing the damage and working to clean up/repair for a long time.

(Editor’s note — I was watching Hannah’s updates closely. She evacuated but some family stayed behind. She’s since returned to the area with supplies to help.)

Any estimates on how long it will take to get power back and other services, etc?

Some people are getting power back now. Officials are saying it could be up to 10 days for some areas. Our house is the very end of our line. I am afraid we may be the very last to get electricity back. Most water districts are on a boil notice if they even have water. Electricity for the pumps to fill the water towers still hasn’t been restored. We have never lost water.

I had watched cotton harvest with such excitement. If you backed up the clock to two weeks ago, what would you have told me about the 2017 crop? (Here’s photo from July — how cute are they?!?!)

I would have told you we were looking at a fantastic crop with historical cotton high yields. It was the best cotton crop of our 24 crops. Spirits were high in the South Texas farming community.

Where are you now? Modules in the field? Some of the crop ginned?

All of our crops are totally harvested. There was cotton sitting on every spot on all the gin yards in the Coastal Bend. 50% of our cotton had been ginned. Rest at gin yard or fields. The ginners try to store the unginned modules on pads or higher ground, but when it comes to a hurricane, all bets are off. The tarps help protect the cotton some, but many tarps blew off. The round bales/modules are better protected since they cover more cotton surface.

Here are some of the photos Kelly’s taken (remember she’s on my list of top farm Instagrammers for a reason). I’ll try to explain what we are looking at. This first one is a shot of modules (some round and some rectangular, some call the round ones round bales) waiting to go to the gin. 

You can see some of them are sitting in standing water.

What about other crops? Neighbors up the coast?

Other crops harvested here. Up the coast, early news is devastation for unharvested crops. Reports of gins closer to the coast heavily damaged with modules blown away.

I’ve heard conflicting information on crop insurance, can you tell us what you have found out?

Crop insurance covers historical value, not value in the field. This was a banner crop and the insurance levels does not meet banner yield levels. There are huge deductibles, and we are not to the point to know details yet. Crop insurance is not very helpful at this late stage. We don’t know how it will all shake out since we’ve never been in this situation.

What happens next for the farms in that area?

First we have to dry out & assess the damage. We found some trees that took out fence sections at the ranch, so we will get to fixing those first to keep the cattle contained. We are used to waiting on Mother Nature, and will have to wait for the rain to stop.

How will the farmers in Texas deal with all those wet modules? How will they dispose of them?

Again, the waiting game. Have to let the modules dry out. Then assess if the cotton is ginnable or not. One of the problems with agriculture – nothing is immediate. We have to wait for nature.

The cleanup everywhere else may be over but the gins and farmers will just be getting to the point to make decisions. Even if the cotton is ginnable, the quality is much lower. Cotton is graded on quality, so the grades will take a hit. In turn, the farmer will get less money for his cotton.

More photos to share and understand what they are looking at from being ginnable, maintaining quality, etc. Some of the problems are similar to dealing with rain at harvest time because with all the water and warm temperatures, some of the seed that is still sitting in the module may start to sprout. Jon’s finger is pointing to a root that has emerged from a seed and if you look closely you can see several more. That really is difficult on a gin that is designed dry cotton lint and cotton seed.

This photo shows how incredibly bad the wind has been. The field that you are looking at had been picked. Winds from Harvey beat up the rectangular modules so much, it seems to have twisted the fiber back onto the plants! I couldn’t have imagined….

But this photo is even more illustrative of the point the Whatleys made… the round bales / modules definitely held together in the wind better. You can see that the plants in that section of the field are showing up as dark swaths. Wow.

Thoughts will stay with them for the coming future… Kelly said they may have some drone footage to share soon, but for now, there is more work to do.

The post How is Hurricane Harvey Impacting Texas Cotton Farmers? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

There is nothing else like it for me….. seeing cotton fields at sunset is totally unique. The softness of the colors of the sky and the soft textures of fiber tufting out from the rough and rugged plants is captivating.

And after a decade or so of having that out my office window and on my daily drive, it is something that truly does call me home. Over the years, if you follow this blog, you have seen more than a few photos of cotton bolls and cotton pickers. Since my move to St. Louis five years ago, I have found myself stopping along the roads between here and Memphis on weekend evenings trying to capture the light.

It may surprise you though that it has been years since I took my spot in the buddy seat of a cotton picker. This year, my trip to Texas so close to cotton harvest convinced me I simply couldn’t go any longer without seeing harvest up close so I took a few days off work to my head back into my favorite crop at the most beautiful time of year.

Starting with Missouri bootheel cotton on Thursday and checking out some Mississippi crops Friday and Saturday was just what the doctor ordered!

I’ll give you a look at a few of the I snapped as I started my harvest weekend in this post and will then have several more posts to explain some of the photos and share more photos in the coming weeks!

These striking cotton harvest photos were all taken on Charles Parker’s farm in the Missouri Bootheel.  Appreciate his son-in-law Alan pointing me to the perfect field to capture the sunset!

If you have any questions after looking at these photos, please don’t hesitate to ask! I’ll be writing more!

The post Capturing the Light of Cotton Fields at Sunset — Photo Post appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Not sure how I lost track of this post about two cotton bolls. I started writing it in the fall when my friend Robyn of Robyn’s World first flagged me about a tweet she saw from Tara Ziegmont of Feels Like Home blog. Seems Tara had a small cotton boll from a plant her family grew and wondered what had happened.

Here’s the photo and text Tara shared:

Joe grew cotton in his #backyardgarden this year. Cool crop, though I think we may have left it on the plant too long.

A photo posted by Tara Ziegmont (@feelslikehomeblog) on Oct 25, 2015 at 2:09pm PDT

The conversation on twitter about what happened included a few thoughts about why the lint in the boll looked so hard. Was it left on the plant too long? Was there something else happening? I mentioned heat units and realized I may need more than 140 characters. Months later I’m finally writing them!

Noticing/Diagnosing the Problem

Tara said Joe had cotton in their garden — that’s a unique thing to grow in Pennsylvania! My bet is there aren’t a lot of consultants in the area and I don’t recall seeing any book on how to grow cotton in a garden since it is generally grown in larger fields. That makes troubleshooting harder than it tend to be in other crops where lots of information is available.

When Tara & Joe saw the boll, they wondered about the problems there could have been with harvest timing. When I saw the photo, I had a totally different look at it — I thought about the summer.

Comparing to Other Cotton Bolls

Tara said they had about half a dozen cotton bolls on the plant but the one in the photo was best. Having tried to grow cotton when I was in New York, I remember that feeling of success from producing a boll. I noticed it was a lot smaller than the bolls I see in cotton fields. You can see the photo she sent alongside one from a harvest time day I had.

So the boll that Tara got is a lot smaller than most cotton plants produce and if you look at it, the hard, woody parts of the boll didn’t open too well and the lint didn’t fluff out. This video from several years ago shows an agronomist comparing bolls during a rainy fall. My amateur diagnosis from afar is the boll on Tara’s plant didn’t have a chance to fully mature.

A Good Start

A long tap-root is something cotton develops, which means planting the crop in containers isn’t the best way to grow them out. Soils for cotton should be light and well-drained like silt loam. While the plants need some moisture to get started, a lot of rain on small cotton plants can cause problems. Also, to make sure plants get a good start and keep growing, they run soil samples looking for key nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

How Cotton Plants Develop

While I’d love to pretend cotton is totally different from all others, it really isn’t. It is a crop that likes heat, we’ll talk about that a bit more later though. Cotton plants can keep putting flowers and bolls on for a long time because cotton is a perennial plant, we just grow it like it is an annual.

It is really important that the plant get the right nutrition, environment, etc when flowers start growing and as they continue to mature (that’s the plants reproductive cycle as this produces seeds). This video will show you the various points in the fruiting process.

What the video doesn’t show is the seed inside the lint. See, seed is what the plant really wants to produce, so it puts energy there and then from that, is where the lint comes. So let’s look at what cotton bolls need to develop well.

Good Pollination

In the video I show the white flower, how the white flower begins to pinken up and how it became a bright pink. I have to wonder if Tara’s plant got really good pollination. Sometimes flowers don’t produce much pollen for one reason or another. Sometimes rain washes pollen away. sometimes it is so hot, the pollen doesn’t dehiss (pop open). The plant needs the pollen to get to the ovary which is at the base of the flower. You can see in the flower at left that the stamen are holding on to that pollen. Later that afternoon it should have dropped to the base of the flower.

Hot, Dry Weather

Cotton is a Southern crop in large part cause it needs lots of heat and sun. In fact, there is a way of calculating heat cotton plants need (DD60s — degree days based on 60 as a minimum).

The extension service provides the how to calculate DD60s as a mathematical equation:

((Max temp + Min temp)/2)-60

Example: A day with a high of 90 and a low of 60 would accumulate 15 DD60’s. You add up daily DD60s to determine the heat unit (DD60) accumulation for a given period of time.

The plants need 130-160 days and 2200-2600 DD60s to produce cotton bolls. You can see where your plant is in the growth and development cycle and those all match up to the photos of what a cotton plant looks like.

The seed and lint inside the boll mature and will work like Jiffy Pop popcorn in that foil package. It puts pressure on the boll walls, which begin to dry down. If you look at the video, cotton bolls go from green to a burgundy when it starts drying down then it cracks open and as it continues to dry, it will continue to open up. If everything goes perfectly, you have a bunch of bolls that look like this.

My Diagnosis

So, with all of that said, I think the photo Tara had shows a few things…. 1) that pollination may not have been complete, leaving the boll somewhat hollow, 2) the fiber in the boll didn’t have a chance to fully mature due to either nutrition or heat deficiencies. After checking with several others, there seems to be a consensus that those may have been the primary factors but of course it’s much easier to diagnose knowing more details!

Hope this Helps!

Not sure this is exactly what may help Tara & Joe figure out what happened to their cotton bolls, but hopefully it will help them this summer if they try again. If there are more questions, feel free to leave a comment so I can pull together a followup if there are enough questions.

The post Cotton Bolls — What makes this one so small? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

October is devoted to raising awareness in breast cancer. We see the NFL and Delta Airlines go pink to raise awareness but what can a cotton farmer do? How can you tell when a cotton farmer is committed to something? Well, the best examples are clear to the eye! October brings harvest time and modules are a great canvas for making a statement. And it seems a lot of them have gone pink this month!

Yes, cotton farmers have been showing their support of breast cancer research. My friend Marjory caught this on a gin yard in Greenwood, Mississippi the first of October.

And then I saw Cannon & Heidi Michael from California (he’s @agleader on Twitter) popping up pink today and I couldn’t put off posting this any longer. Think about how many people can be prompted to think pink when they roll past round modules that big wrapped in pink!

And I have to share one of my favorite t-shirts. I found out about it a couple of years ago around the same time of year as a community was hosting an event to raise money for research & support.

The post Cotton Farmers are Raising Awareness in Breast Cancer 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!

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