When is cotton picked

Although they sound funny, these are common terms in cotton farming. They refer to the different types of machinery used to harvest cotton. A cotton stripper pulls the entire boll off the plant, along with its leaves and branches. After being separated inside the harvester, the resulting fiber, called seed cotton, is directed separately into a basket.

Just like with the cotton picker, the seed cotton is collected in a big basket. Farmers decide whether to use a cotton stripper or picker based on the variety of cotton they grow. Then, the person driving the boll buggy will pull alongside the harvester. The cotton picker or stripper operator will dump the full basket of seed cotton into the boll buggy, and the tractor driver will then take the fiber to a cotton module builder.

A module builder does exactly what its name suggests—builds cotton modules, which are about 32 feet long and weigh about 10 metric tons, equivalent to 22, pounds. Modules are tarped, or covered with a big plastic sheet, to prevent excess moisture from damaging the module until it can be ginned. A popular new machine, the round baler , is another common sight in Texas fields these days. The round baler eliminates the need for separate boll buggy and module builder machinery because the round module builder is on the harvester.

After a field is harvested, module trucks, or semi-truck rigs with special trailers, come along and pick up the modules or round bales, then transport them to the gin yard to await ginning. The cottonseed is used for either animal feed or sent on to be pressed for cottonseed oil and other uses.

The cotton fiber is then sent a to mill where it can be woven into cloth that is used to make our bed sheets, soft towels, clothes and more! So, there you have it: cotton harvest from field to gin. As with outdoor planted cotton, the answer to when to harvest cotton will be somewhere around days after planting.

The health of cotton plants can be affected by several factors, and many of these contribute significant stress to the plants. Some of the most common stressors are moisture, pest attacks, temperature, and nutrition. When summer temperatures soar past 95 degrees Fahrenheit, it begins to really affect the cotton plant, and leaf production suffers as well as the creation of carbohydrates.

When carbohydrate levels drop, the plant has insufficient sugar levels to satisfy all its needs, and that generally leads to fewer bolls on the plant, as well as less fiber content in each of the seeds.

When night-time temperatures remain high instead of dropping off to a more appropriate 68 degrees, the temperature can have a double whammy on hurting the delicate plants. Moisture also comes into play, because when there is excessive humidity present, it does not allow for plant moisture to evaporate, and for cooling all the components of the plant.

If there is too much rainfall present in the summertime, that can have the effect of drowning out the still immature root system of the cotton plants and hinder its growth. There are two major pests that love to feast on cotton — the boll weevil and the pink bollworm. Boll weevils like to consume the cotton seeds, and its feces has a profoundly negative impact on cotton lint.

It severely attacks bolls and flowers, and for that reason, there is a program of eradication underway in the major cotton-growing states. After cotton has been harvested, producers who use conventional tillage practices cut down and chop the cotton stalks.

The next step is to turn the remaining residue underneath the soil surface. Producers who practice a style of farming called conservation tillage often choose to leave their stalks standing and leave the plant residue on the surface of the soil.

In the spring, farmers prepare for planting in several ways. Producers who plant using no-till or conservation tillage methods, use special equipment designed to plant the seed through the litter that covers the soil surface.

Producers in south Texas plant cotton as early as February. In Missouri and other northern parts of the Cotton Belt, they plant as late as June. Seeding is done with mechanical planters which cover as many as 10 to 24 rows at a time. The planter opens a small trench or furrow in each row, drops in the right amount of seed, covers them and packs the earth on top of them.