Although most people think of cotton in it’s final mature state, it’s important to remember that cotton has to grow from seed throughout the season to get to that point. And it’s amazing how often I’ve had folks ask me about something they’ve seen in a field as they were driving by, like this recent tweet from Sam Wildman:

@JPlovesCOTTON so I'm driving though Georgia today wondering if its cotton season & what a cotton field (cont) http://tl.gd/9fngdm

— Sam Wildman (@TheSamWildman) March 25, 2011

So, I thought I’d put together some photos here, that will help me reply to hopefully lots of interest in southern fields! So let’s look at cotton plants and fields different times of year.

Planting Cotton (US typically begins mid-March & goes through May)

Cotton seed for planting is sold in both bags of 40-60 pounds — since seed size varies, the bag weights vary by variety. And its also sold in bulk boxes which farmers say provides them a way to get planters filled more quickly & efficiently to keep tractors moving. As I mentioned in a post on planting considerations, some farmers plant on beds  and others plant on flat ground. Similarly some use small planters and others use enormous planters on the back of the tractor.

Early-Season Cotton

Cotton always looks so vulnerable to me when its a seedling. The plants move much like sunflowers in those earliest days as cotton loves sun and heat (sort of like me that way!) The plants are usually dropped with a few inches of space between though some are dropped in twos or threes depending on the planting equipment which makes the plants seem even more spread out early on. Whereas corn and soybeans can appear to be at a 90 degree angle to the soil, cotton’s leaves look more parallel with the soil.

Mid-Season Cotton

The plants bush up with fruiting and reproductive branches quickly assuming there is good heat and sunshine. The leaves of most upland varieties are broad and remain largely parallel to the soil to provide a lot of photosythetic energy. When I’m driving along a highway, reminding myself about the different leaf shape and angle is what distinguished the two crops for me as many soybeans are planted on similar row patterns in the south and one you near canopy it can be hard to see the difference in planting population.

Cotton During Fruiting

I think cotton blooms are beautiful and my friend, California farmer Cannon Michael thinks Pima flowers are so pretty, they were the first flowers he gave a girlfriend who later became his wife. The plant produces blooms that are a creamy yellow bud that will open mid-day and self-pollinate (meaning no bees, wind, etc is needed) that afternoon. By the following mornings, the pinkish hue begins to develop and the bloom changes color indicating pollination has occurred. The bloom dries up and a small bloom forming at the bloom’s base pushes the dry petals off the plant. That boll gets really hard and grows using a lot of the energy photosynthesis provides.

Harvest Time Plants and Fields (US typically begins in September & goes through December)

As days begin to shorten and heat units are reduced, the amount of energy in the cotton plant also goes down. Leaves begin to change color and drop off and bolls begin to crack and continue opening to show the mature fiber insider. That’s when the fun of harvest gets started!

After Cotton Harvest, There’s Still Work to Do

Cotton harvest equipment leaves the crop in the field til module trucks come to transport the seed cotton to the gin for processing. Farmers also want to cut all the stalks down near the ground & shred them to minimize over-wintering by insect pests. For many areas that prefer to plant on a raised bed, farmers will do this field work in the fall, allowing the soil to store moisture and “mellow” over the rainy season. In some areas, farmers may plant a winter crop of wheat which may be harvested before another crop is put in the ground.

Hope that helps you get the picture!

Pulling the photos together from a few years of living in the Cotton Belt was a lot of fun and I hope it helps you get a picture of what our rural roadsides look like through the year. I’m sure some of the descriptions were brief and I may have left questions. Would be glad to use your ideas for future Cotton 101 posts as I plan to build the series over the coming season. Ask whatever comes to mind in the comments and I’ll see what I can do on answers! There are a few Cotton 101 posts on this page and you should feel free to check out the latest posts with the Cotton 101 tag too and hear from people who love cotton (either as a farm or fiber product) check out the Cotton Guest post category!

The post Cotton 101: What does a cotton plant or field look like? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Over the 2010 Thanksgiving holidays, Jodi Termine got a chance to take a break from Kansas and get closer to home. Along the way, Jody (aka jtgirl on Twitter) was heading south on highway 39 in Georgia. As she neared Lucille, she snapped a photo and sent it my way.

Thanks Jody!

 

The post Thanksgiving Trip for Jodi Termine Means a Friend’s Photo for Me :) appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I thought I may need to warn a few of you…. I have a lot of cotton content building up in my head (on my cameras & harddrives too!). And what’s worse is I’ve convinced my niece who’s living with me to join the cause (I hope it is voluntary on her part, read this to understand). Last weekend we spent a few hours at a friend’s farm. We’ve gotten started on some things to post but expect a lot to roll out next week! In fact, she’s working on a blog post for Monday about her first farm experience.

Photos and video are a crazy reality in my family. So if I was shooting video, she had my DSLR. If I was shooting the DSLR, she was probably shooting video. Yes, we took plenty of time to just soak it up too, but I think she enjoyed capturing the day, crop, equipment & people as much as I did. Well, except I really enjoyed sharing it with her. So maybe my day WAS better.

To whet your appetite, here is one of the photos she snapped and picked out. It is a close up of a cotton boll. There are a few key parts of cotton bolls (if I get anything wrong here, I trust someone will help me get it right) that we started our day talking about:

• The part that holds the seed & lint onto the plant, you can see it separating two separate tufts, that is called the bract. Earlier in the season, that provides the protection for the fiber as it develops & matures. At harvest, they are tough like tree bark and can cut up your hands if you aren’t careful.
• The fiber grows in 4-5 small tufts called locks.
• Each lock contains a few seed and the lint is tightly attached to that seed.  You can feel the see in there pretty quickly.

I hope you are ready to come back & catch the rest of the posts in the Cotton 101 series.  If you’d like to know when a new post goes up, you can request email be sent to you (promise the email address is guarded) by subscribing above right or by entering the RSS into your reader.

If you have any cotton questions, PLEASE SPEAK UP! I’d love to answer any questions that are out there.

(Anytime you see the Cotton 101 logo above, you can find any posts on the topic as the photo is hyperlinked. )

The post Starting a Cotton 101 Series on the Blog appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Last Sunday as I drove home from a few days fun in St. Louis, I decided to go the road less traveled to see if I could find anyone picking cotton. I pulled off I-55 in Sikeston somewhat tempting the fates.

I chose Sikeston though because it’s one of the northern most areas where cotton is grown and I thought by pulling off there in favor of state highways, I’d have the biggest opportunity to see some cotton harvest underway. I hadn’t gone very far when I saw a familiar sight – a cotton gin that I’d visited with friends a few years ago. After a quick check-in with the office, not only did I have the green light to take photos in the gin yard, but I had directions to a nearby farm where they were harvesting.

Below are photos and a few points for anyone reading this who may not have seen cotton harvest or the new on-board baler/module maker that I saw.  (You may have already seen a photo I twitpic’ed from my BlackBerry last weekend as my friend Tara posted it.) I’ll put a few photos here and several more are in the slide show at the end.

Beautiful fields of Cotton Ready for Harvest

Big fields with lots of pretty white bolls! Lots of them too!

Cotton Picking

Cotton pickers pull the plant into the spindles which pull the lint & seed into the machine while the majority of the plant remains in the field. This farm (owned by brothers Wayne & Wade Parker so I was told) uses the new John Deere picker that picks six rows at a time & compacts the cotton into round bales for transfer to the gin.

Moving Cotton Module Bales for Ginning Access

A tractor driver was trying to keep up with the two pickers dropping bale/modules. He would pick the module up and move it to the turnrow so the gin could pick up several at a time in a module truck.

The post Cotton Picker & Harvest in Action! Photo Essay appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.