There is something about the World Series. I can’t put my finger on it but it draws me in time and time again. Even if I haven’t watched much baseball during the season, the playoff season tends to grab me even if my team is totally out of it. I admit it. I am a baseball fan. I love agriculture and the two things sort of merged in a post I wrote this spring cause it was clear that spring training was much like farming to me. And as we look at the final few games of major league baseball this year, it seems appropriate that farmers are harvesting their crops across the country.

But across the Cotton Belt, and actually across farms across the U.S., farmers are picking sides. I see it in my Facebook feed and my tweets every game. On the surface, most people would assume cotton farmers divide their allegiance between the teams in the heart of the Cotton Belt. The teams that come to mind are the Atlanta Braves, Texas Rangers, Arizona Diamondbacks…. but you may not know how many in the Cotton Belt are also fans of the St. Louis Cardinals. There are a few reasons:

• A lot of Southerners came through St. Louis when they migrated north seeking jobs. This was especially the case with industrialization.
• There is a big gap in the “Mid-South” where there are no major league teams. St. Louis is the closest drive for many people in the southern area of the Mississippi River states.
• Several players have come from the Mid-South.
• Memphis has the Cardinals’ AAA farm team — The Memphis Redbirds — that has sent several players up.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that farmers in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and other states are pulling for the Cardinals…. and some of them are showing it in unique ways. Check out what my friend Tracey Sullivan saw while driving on Highway 51 near Ripley! I’d say that cotton farmer really loves the Cardinals! (If you know cotton farmers who are cheering for the Rangers in such dramatic fashion, I’d be willing to give them a nod too.)

How do you show your pride in sports teams?

STL Cardinals on a cotton module

Related articles

• Swing Batter, Batter — The St. Louis Cardinals Showcase Pork Safe at the Plate (agchat.org)
• How the Rangers and Cardinals Got Their Nicknames (suburbanmen.com)
• St. Louis Cardinals at Texas Rangers (fanup.wordpress.com)
• Pujols’ historic HR night carries Cardinals in Game 3 (nbcsports.msnbc.com)
• Cardinal Conquest: Albert Pujols Hits Three Home Runs in Record-Breaking Game (newsfeed.time.com)

The post The Cotton Belt is Picking Sides — I’m Pulling for the Cardinals! appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I took this photo last Friday and thought it was a beautiful shot to share on the blog. I mean to get it up on Wordless Wednesday, but the harried life didn’t let me get it up here in time. Then I had it written and a technical glitch killed it. But I refuse to give in! I really want to share this.

The photo is of me holding two five-lock cotton bolls. When I looked at the photo on my phone later I was struck by a few things.

• Sheer joy — The farmer I was visiting picked these as we walked along his cotton crop. I hopped back in the car and he reached over to hand three of the beauties to me saying “here are some five-lock bolls for ya” with a HUGE smile across his face. We were both thrilled (yes, it was Deltapine cotton).
• The beauty of five locks? As I started writing this post, I realized I had forgotten to put “lock” in my working cotton dictionary. So let me explain locks for those who may not know what they are looking at. Each of these has five small sections, you can see them here much like cotton balls pulled together. But remember, this is right off the plant. Each lock has several seed in it and the fiber is connected to the seeds. More locks tend to mean higher yield potential in the field. I’d say its similar to finding more 4 bean pods in a soybean field.  (Popular culture aside: counting and locks reminds me of the Sammy Hagar lyrics “one, two, three lock box”)
• Two such different sizes — The difference in size seemed striking to me. The boll at the top part of the photo is either from the top part of a cotton plant or out toward the end of one of the fruiting branches further down on the plant. The larger boll was further down on the plant and toward the mainstem.
• The photo itself — I am surprised how good a photo taken on my Blackberry looks when it was taken inside a vehicle! With the black background it looks like I was doing it intentionally when in reality it was a quickly snagged shot between stops in the field at the end of a long day.

What do you notice about the photo?

The post The Beauty of Five-Lock Cotton Bolls appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I read this article on Discovery News a while back and meant to get the blog post up ASAP but it seems it ended up filed away for too long. The article speaks to one of a host of research efforts that would enable people to purchase cotton clothes with different properties than are innate in the fiber itself. A previous example would be all the folks like me who hate to iron and can now buy wrinkle-free cotton.

As someone with a really light complexion, the idea that a cotton shirt could help protect me from damaging rays is something I can get behind. I think I’d be glad to have several in my suitcase on vacations to places like the Philippines, Turkey, Malaysia, etc.

Washing loads of clothes and getting a sunburn have never been particularly enjoyable experiences. However, scientists have developed a coating for cotton fibers that could not only lighten your laundry load, but protect your skin from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.

Using the water-repellent and UV-blocking functions of zinc oxide nanorods, researchers from Northeast Normal University in China created a coating for textiles that not only mimicks the water-repelling nature of the lotus leaf, but was found to have a UV protection factor (UPF) of 101.51, double the highest possible rating.

Previous experiments have created self-cleaning, UV-repellent fabrics through a surface application of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide films. But when team leader Lingling Wang and the rest of the research team modified cotton textiles with zinc oxide nanorods and dumbell-shaped zinc oxide crystallites, they found the material could potentially block a wider range of UV rays.

However, doing so meant carefully suppressing the photoactivity of zinc oxide, which reacts with sunlight in a way that compromises the water repellant nature of the nanorods. So they coated the nanorods with with a silica shell that not only effectively blocks the photoactivity of zinc oxide, but helps it retain hydrophobicity.

The scientists believe this technology will be useful in the surface modification of cotton textiles, creating durable, multifunctional fabrics with enhanced superhydrophobic and UV-ray blocking properties.

via This Cotton Repels Water and Sun : Discovery News.

What would you like built into your cotton clothes? Any brilliant ideas cotton researchers should be working on?

The post How Cool Would it be if Cotton Could Repel Water and Sun? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Kelly Whatley’s sons in the South Texas cotton at harvest time

South Texas cotton picking by Kelly Whatley

This photo grabbed me late last week…  My friend Kelly Whatley (Twitter, Blog, Google+) lives in the Corpus Christi area and like so many of us, has a tradition of taking cotton harvest pictures, especially if there is a field or two that make you proud. South Texas always gets the first bale in and it’s clear that they will again. Driving around in the Mid-South, I’ve seen variable crop conditions and this photo made me wonder when I may be able to see something here closer to home…. so I sent out a social media call. And as Kelly’s husband torqued up the pickers to roll, other cotton farmers sent me some photos from their farms!

So who replied?

Mississippi Delta

Last year at the AgChat Foundation Conference, I met some awesome folks. Was thrilled to find several cotton peeps in the mix! That’s how I got to know Shea Whitfield. Really kind of funny since I lived in the Mississippi Delta for a dozen years and had been through his hometown many times. And yes, since he’s from the world catfish festival…. I frequently ate farm-raised catfish while in town. Shea sent me this photo that a friend had taken…. a beautiful photo that shows the crop is loading up with fruit! (If you don’t know much about cotton blooms, you may enjoy this photo post about the way cotton looks in season.)

Rainbow over a Mississippi Delta cotton field by Keith Killebrew

Southern Alabama

I can’t give my girl Jillian Estess (Twitter, blog) enough props! She replied to my request with a bunch of photos — one even included her new hubby Jared up to his neck in cotton! She took the time to get photos of several different fields and make sure I could see the effects of this erractic weather and the scattered planting dates. Jared & Jillian are a couple of years into cotton production and with the weather challenges of this year, I bet the conservation programs they have have already paid off big time. Many of their fields are planted into oat or rye stubble. In a rainy spring, conservation tillage can help drainage while at the same time provide greater water holding capacity in-season when drought hits. All of the photos Jillian sent are from Cottonwood, Alabama.

Some cotton still in the four true-leaf stage  in Jillian & Jared’s FloriBama fields

some of Jillian & Jared’s “better looking cotton” that is planted in rolled cover (rye)

tallest cotton we have (needs to be pixed!!) Squared and flowering

Georgia’s Dooly County

One of my Twitter friends, @cottonfarmer Gene Roney regularly shares photos of what’s happening at his farm in South Georgia…. well, from the looks of things, a bunch of cotton is growing strong.

South Georgia cotton field

My home state of Tennessee!!!

And how could this be finished without checking in with my peeps locally! The crop here is in full bloom in many places and cutting out in some. (One of these days I should get that cotton dictionary up huh?) So far, some farmers are feeling okay about the potential here in Tennessee, kind of surprising knowing so much went in the ground so late! Just look at how many squares, blooms and young bolls you see on the closeup.

[slideshow]

The post Current State of the 2011 US Cotton Crop in Photos appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Water receding near West Memphis, AR

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.

windblown cotton seedlings in NE Ark

Throughout the week though, photos showed up from friends on social media.

My Twitter friend  Marshall Sigsby is a crop adjuster in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He is nice enough to keep me up to date on the cotton crop in his area with photos now and then.

This week, his first alert was with a photo by Logan Towles who scouts the crop in northeastern Arkansas. It was a really rough Monday near Leachville, Arkansas. It looks like the farmers here had gone so far as to have a wind break of wheat in the field to protect the seedlings and yet that was not enough. Logan also posted a photo (in below slide show) of the impact the weather had on a center pivot.

Marshall also posted a photo of the impact the drought was having in cotton fields in Wilson, Arkansas. The photo looks like something from National Geographic to me. This photo was posted Thursday morning:

Cotton hurting from drought in eastern Arkansas

flooded farm fields in Tennessee — heavy rainfall this week

So imagine the shock to plants and people when the next morning people, plants and animals in the region got rain Thursday night! It had been prayed for but some got more than they wanted. In fact my friends Marjory & Bob Walker  seem to have gotten more than their fields can handle just outside of Somerville, TN. On Friday the water was drowning out seedlings that were just emerged. Hopefully other areas got the right amounts of moisture because there is an expectation some of this may be lost.

We have a lot more of the season ahead of us but I have to say with the highest cotton prices of my career, I had truly hoped we would have a good production season. Instead for now I’m seeing drought in the Southeast & Texas and a combination of weather issues in the Mid-South. I hold out hope that things are going well in the Carolinas and maybe out west.

Please help! I would love to have happy cotton folks sending me some pictures! In fact, I am desperate to see them! I may even be willing to get in the car and drive to see it first-hand!

[slideshow]

The post Cotton 101: Early Season Weather Problems in Mid-South Cotton appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

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.