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.

This spring has been a bit nuts. Not only have we had weird cold snaps and some pretty significant storms, but I have been traveling a lot and all of those things come together to delay my seeing those precious cotton plants getting their start this spring. But today, as I drove back to St. Louis from Memphis, I got giddy about the time I reached Clarkedale, Arkansas as I could clearly see cotton had emerged!

I did what anyone this passionate about cotton would do…. I pulled over at the next exit and grabbed my camera! I had to capture these little cotton plants who have been putting up with pretty damp, cold weather the last week — which means the plants are a bit challenged for their growth. (Yes, I know, I am SO LIKE COTTON in that I prefer warm weather and look at cold weather as something I have to survive! ).

Cotton in Arkansas

Here are some of the first pictures I snapped. You can see the soils in Clarkedale are pretty damp. The soil was pretty light but there was definitely some clay content there and those plants are pretty happy that the temps this week will be in the 80s. (I am too!)

Cotton farmers in Arkansas are like a lot farmers this year, trying hard to catch up on planting! I saw some running pretty hard two weeks ago when I drove through the area. They were burning the midnight oil planting. They have finally gotten ahead of average.

Missouri Bootheel Cotton

You’d think that would be enough but it wasn’t… further up the road I decided to hop off the highway near Steele, Missouri. The Bootheel has a great history in cotton and some really good loamy soils that were lighter than the field I stopped in earlier. You can see the field has been draining too. For the past week or so, Missouri cotton farmers have been busy too! They have gotten back up to their average too!

2014 Cotton Planting Progress in the US

Since I was posting about the fact cotton is beginning to pop through the soil surface in some parts of the Mid-South, I thought I’d include the latest USDA planting progress figures. They came out today so they are definitely timely and you can see that in the past week, cotton planters have been running full blast is quite a few states!

 Wanna Know More?

If you are checking this out and thinking you’d like to know more about my favorite fiber, check out the series of Cotton 101 posts and these other posts that are popular. And ask any questions you have and I’ll find answers if I’m not familiar with the topic!

• Cotton Plant 101: What do a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like? VIDEO
• Farmers are Planning For Cotton Harvest as They Plant Cotton
• C is for Cotton – an A to Z Series about Agriculture
• Top 10 Cotton States in Area, Production, Yield & Value
• Cotton 101: Facts about Cotton – The Crop & Products

The post Young Cotton Plants & 2014 Cotton Planting Progress to Date appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I can remember a time when I thought of dirt as something that only seemed to change about it was the color. I had noticed it when my family took vacations and even in looking at the soils in my grandparent’s yard since grandmom was an avid composter. But when I moved from Memphis to Enid, Oklahoma, the color change was so stark with the red soils totally disconnecting from the browns I had always called home. 

Sure it was before I started working in agriculture, which has been a long time but those memories are clear. It wasn’t until I got to know farmers that I began to understand some of those differences and the meaning behind them. And it wasn’t until I lived in a farming community and called loam soils home that I really began to understand. So while this could be the post for the letter “s,” I think it works well for “l.”

If you aren’t familiar with various soil types, the experts I turn to are farmers, crop consultants, extension specialists & agents and members of the Soil Science Association of America. In fact, the SSAA has a great website that tells the story of soil. And I have an “I <3 soils” sticker from the effort on the bulletin board at the office.

Understanding Soils

The way soils were formed has a big impact on their appearance, the nutrients and more. I played around thinking about what sort of information to share on soils and loams in particular and found a great resource for basic soils information from the Queensland (Australia) government. So I guess there’s no reason to recreate this  info when they put it into words so well!

Soil is the thin layer of material covering the earths surface and is formed from the weathering of rocks. It is made up mainly of mineral particles, organic materials, air, water and living organisms—all of which slowly yet constantly interact.

Most plants get their nutrients from the soil and in turn, are the main source of food for humans, animals and birds. Therefore, most living things on land depend on soil for their very existence.

Soil is a valuable resource that needs to be carfeully managed as it is easily damaged or washed or blown away. If we understand soil and manage it properly, we will avoid destroying one of the essential building blocks of our envrionment and our food security.

via Understanding soil (Department of Natural Resources and Mines).

There is also a good handout on soils available from Penn State.

Who needs good soil?

A lot of people may answer the question of “who needs good soil?” with things like “farmers” or “gardners” but I suggest good soils are critical for all of us and it is inherent on all of us to protect them. That kind of dedication is clear on the I Love Soil site when it says:

Soil is an amazing substance. It is a complex mix of ingredients: minerals, air, water, and organic matter—the countless micro-organisms and the decaying remains of once living things. Soil is made of life and soil makes life.

To the farmer, soil is where crops grow.

To the engineer, soil is a foundation to build.

To the ecologist, soil supports and connects ecosystems.

To the archaeologist, soil holds clues to past cultures.

To craftspeople, like potters, soil provides clay to make things.

To the soil scientist, soil is all of these things.

Soil has been called “the skin of the earth” because it is the thin outermost layer of the Earth’s crust.

Like our own skin, we can’t live without soil.

via The Story of Soil | I Heart Soil.

What is a loamy soil?

Since I wrote this because loams prompted my more detailed awareness in the importance of soil a couple of decades ago, I figure I should explain loams. This definition of loamy from the Soil Science Association may leave a question or two for folks who haven’t studied soils, but I have to serve up what the experts say and I think its a good start:

loamy (i) Texture group consisting of coarse sandy loam, sandy loam, fine sandy loam, very fine sandy loam, loam, silt loam, silt, clay loam, sandy clay loam, and silty clay loam soil textures. See also soil texture. (ii) Family particle-size class for soils with textures finer than very fine sandy loam but <35% clay and <35% rock fragments in upper subsoil horizons.

So loams are a whole group of soils, just like clay soils then on the spectrum you get the combinations of the two. The photo here shows the silt loam soils that became a familiar feeling underneath my feet during my years in the Mississippi Delta. Those silt loam soils (aka ice cream soils) are perfect for planting cotton! And we are getting to planting time which is a time of great promise and hope for farmers, even if planting is running late due to the cold spring.

Ideas?

M, N, O, P, Q and R are for ____

I’d love to know what your thoughts are on loams and other soils. This week I will be writing M, N, O, P, Q and R posts. Yes, we are on the downward slope will be brought to you by the group of letters I mentioned, so what do you think the word of the day should be?

See the other posts in this series by clicking on the logo at right and reviewing the letters, or by browsing the A to Z ag tag archives. You should also feel free to add ideas for upcoming letters!

Related articles

• Soil Testing: Type of Soil
• Day One. Saving Topsoil
• F is for Farmer! – An A to Z Challenge in Agriculture
• C is for Cotton – an A to Z Series about Agriculture

The post L is for Loam, Love Great Silt Loam Soils appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

There has been so much rain in the Mid-South recently and I thought some of you may be wondering how rain may impact the cotton crop that is still in the field. So I’m posting another harvest time video. The previous two videos showed 1) what the cotton plant looks like as it nears harvest and 2) a field that was being defoliated and talked about why. This video shows cotton that is fully defoliated and would be ready for cotton pickers if it wasn’t for the rain.

When you think about how beautiful a cotton crop is at harvest, you picture big, white, fluffy bolls of cotton. Well when rain hits, it can change all of that depending on the weather.  The two biggest impacts are reductions in lint yield and decreased fiber quality.

Cotton Yield Impacts of Rain

The cotton plant is built to hold lots of cotton bolls of varying sizes with bigger bolls closer to the stalk and the bottom of the plant. As rain falls, it soaks right into the lint making it heavier. That can give the plant a hand time holding onto the link so it starts to stringout (just realized that word wasn’t in my working cotton dictionary). If the rain is particularly hard or if its also windy, the link can actually fallout of the bracts / boll and land on the ground. That definitely takes its toll on yield.

The photo at right shows the quick impact that even a light rain can have. There are still some bolls that are holding together well, but some of the others are stringing out pretty badly.

Cotton Quality Impacts of Rain

Cotton lint is one of the valuable crops that what you want to harvest is exposed to the elements — same goes for a lot of fruits and vegetables. Since the lint is exposed to the weather and all, it can be plagued by things that will deteriorate the quality that’s there.

• The most common one happens when moisture soaks into the lint. If the weather is not really warm to dry it out quickly, that water will create an environment for molds, mildew, etc to form on the boll, much like will happen if you leave a wet t-shirt balled up on the floor. That leads to spotting, discoloration, etc. and textile mills don’t want to deal with those problems when they are spinning yarns or weaving and knitting fabrics.
• One that can happen but is more rare, is the seed can begin to sprout in the boll. The seed is all tied into the lint, so any growth of the seed, leaves plant matter to provide contamination as harvest goes to the gin.

Harvest Problems on Video

The video shows a bit more and now and then, you can actually hear the rain that was falling on me! There is also another video from a couple of years ago when I got to the field with our of the awesome agronomists I work with — Dave Albers and he shows hardlock bolls, quality issues and more.

The post Cotton 101 Video: Impacts of Rain on Cotton During Harvest appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

The post Cotton Plant 101: What do a cotton plant, blooms & bolls look like? VIDEO appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

aka Vocabulary the Way I’ve Heard Cotton Farmers & Other Experts Use It & How It Can Be Misunderstood

If the title and subhead don’t point out this is not an academic endeavor, then let me say it outright. THIS IS NO ACADEMIC DICTIONARY ON COTTON. This is just a simple compilation of words that we use in cotton that may make other people not in the industry shrug their shoulders and say huh? Would appreciate additions, clarifications and questions all!

Bollbuster

• What it isn’t — This was the most fun to use when I was in New York in my awesome Italian community. Depending on the accent, you could easily make it sound like ballbuster which was used a good bit of the time to refer to someone giving a guy a real hard time.
• What it is –There are crop protection products that you can use to help get the bolls on the plant that are designed to help the boll drydown and open more quickly. A real cool snap of weather can have a similar impact on a crop that has bolls drying down. There is a single harvest aid product that has this name but the reality is the slang use is the way I have always heard it.

Burr (pronouced brrrr)

Canopy

• What it isn’t –It is not the sort of tent you put up so you can relax outside for a few beers.
• What it is — It is the shading of the dirt between plants when the plants grow big enough to shade out the dirt underneath them. This is really important because that cuts the sunlight off from weeds & grasses that may want to grow…. of course if the weeds have already gotten above the crop, then they will get lots of photosynthetic energy and will keep growing.

Cut-out

• What it isn’t — I know lots of you think scissors and coupons or paper dolls with the word cut-out, that’s rarely the image I have of cotton farmers though. And if you get caught cutting up in school you are in trouble. Neither of those apply.
• What it is — In cotton, cut-out is a growth stage in the crop. And it really refers to what happens when the crop stops putting on new leaves, branches, bolls, etc. Because cotton varieties can be either determinate or indeterminate as well as range in maturities, cut-out can vary. But when your crop cuts out, you know that all the yield potential you have is already in the field. Farmers don’t want the crop to cut out until they have a good boll load, but mid season stress, particularly drought can lead to premature cut-out with small plants and very few bolls.

Fair to middlin’

• What it isn’t — Just a saying on how your day is going.
• What it is — Fair to middling was part of the grading system before it became a numerical system. The word based system included a spectrum including poor, fair, middling, good and excellent meaning

Fallout

• What it isn’t — A laughing fit that is so hard you can’t stand up!
• What it is — At harvest when cotton lint gets blown off the plant or otherwise comes off the plant. It results in farmers getting fewer pounds per acre.

Fruit

• What it isn’t — A kind of alcohol that you serve with tonic & a twist of lemon!
• What it is — A facility that separates the seed from the lint so we can turn the lint into thread & fabric as well as use seed for oil & livestock feed. You can see how a gin works in this post.

High Cotton (aka Tall Cotton in some areas)

• What it isn’t — Not just the lyrics of an Alabama song.
• What it is — A saying that speaks to a really good part of life. I even wrote a whole post on this one! High Cotton blog post

Layby

• What it isn’t — this term makes you think of a mom taking a nap alongside a newborn baby… Please do not think cotton farmers are in the habit of taking a nap between the rows if you hear this term.
• What it is — Instead, this is talking about the timing of the last weed control activity. Farmers have to keep an eye on weeds until the crop canopies over the rows. (see above for detail). At this time cotton farmers can take a bit of break on weed control which is great cause they have lots of other this to think about with the crop (insects, fruit retention, disease, etc)

Mike/Mic

• What it isn’t — Not a guy who goes by the common nickname for folks named Michael.
• What it is — A measure of fiber quality that is largely related to maturity of the fiber. My favorite way of explaining mic (short for micronaire) is to visualize cotton lint as an artery or vein because cotton puts on an external cylinder wall with very fine walls. As the fiber matures, the walls strengthen — kind of like really high cholesterol levels can do to our circulatory system. The property is measured by having a known force of air pressed over the lint. Resistance is measured so immature fiber will collapse and provide the most resistance, whereas air will pass over perfectly round ones. Mic is important as textile manufacturers look at dyeing and weaving.

Picker

• What it isn’t — Guitarists rock my world routinely and I know a couple of cotton farmers who may have musical streaks, but pickers aren’t people in the US any more except in rare research cases where people harvest individual bolls, plants, etc.
• What it is — Enormous pieces of highly complex machinery now harvest cotton crops in the US, Australia and Brazil. Pickers pull lint off the cotton plant and prep it for storage or may even take care of creating the on-board module. There are some photos and posts on the Cotton 101 page.

Square

• What it isn’t — I know that there was a time when a person would be called square, much like a nerd. Farmers and the plants they grow are rockin’, no way they could be mistaken for square. And a pinhead-square would have to be a lowblow!
• What it is — When the plant goes into fruiting mode (starts putting on blooms/flowers), the buds are very small and some folks think that the earliest part of the bud looks squared a bit cause there are generally four sides. Because the square is so small, it can be especially vulnerable to damage by insects so scouts tend to check them to make sure nothing is going to get in the way. Pinhead by the way refers to the size of the square/bud!

Stringout

Stripper

• What it isn’t — A scantilly clad woman dancing with a pole.
• What it is — A piece of harvesting equipment that is sometimes used in the High Plains of Texas. Unlike pickers, strippers pull a good bit of the plant matter into the machine when harvesting. The machine is not as complex and consequently not as expensive, but the tradeoff is found in fiber quality quite often as extra cleaning at the gin can result in reduced fiber quality.

Turnout

• What it isn’t — the folks who come for a party, a misheard lyric from DJ Snake & Lil John (Turn Down for What)
• What it is — A ratio of seed to lint that comes from the gin. Since lint is the piece that offers the greatest profit potential, farmers like to get a higher percentage of lint than seed.

The post A Working Cotton Dictionary (Words Cotton Folks Use that May Confuse Others) appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

This is one of the posts in the Cotton 101 series to introduce people to the basics of cotton farming. 

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 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.

A couple of years later I made my first visit to a farm in West Texas where they bedded up in order to plant between the raised beds. That way water could reach the seed in that truly dryland area. And in lots of places they plant to a level field. Different strokes for different folks or conditions.

Temperatures — A general guideline for planting from a temperature perspective is to wait for 65 degree soil temps at 8 am at a depth of 4-6 inches. You want to get that same temp for a few days and have favorable weather conditions (air temperature and sunlight), as well as consider the moisture, soil texture and ground cover.

One of the considerations that distinguishes cotton from some of the other major Southern crops like rice and soybeans is row spacing. Cotton is planted on rather wide rows (most farmers I know use 38-inch rows or something similar). With the humidity that plaques so many areas of the Cotton Belt, that wide spacing allows a bit more air to get through the crop and lessens the likelihood of late season issues with boll rot. Of course, this can give farmers a tough time as it takes longer for the crop to canopy and the increased spacing allows for more sunlight to get through encouraging weeds later into the season.

Consistency of row spacings is important since equipment rolls through the field for insect or weed control as well as harvest. And unlike a combine a cotton picker leaves the majority of the plant standing in the field so if the spacings aren’t consistent, you can really big problems at harvest.

The post Cotton 101: Cotton Planting Considerations appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.