It’s been since the end of May that I’ve posted photos of the cotton fields by my house. Then, the plants were so cute and itty bitty. This is what they looked like on Sunday:
The plants are about knee high now. Come October, they’ll be ready to pick scoop. In the photo below, you can see the buds are just starting to form. The bud is dead center.
Off topic: does anybody have an extra one of these I can buy? This is your standard issue cutting table leg (philocraft). I just need the leg as shown in the photo. I’m lacking one to put together another section of cutting table. Let me know.
I remember school field trips to the cotton gin as a child. It was wondrous to see all that dirty fluff turn into something usable.
One year I actually won a tee shirt with the “cotton” logo on it. I answered some trivia question about cotton I believe.
The downside was that we lived in a farmhouse in the middle of a bunch of cotton fields. Every year the defoliant would rain down and kill our yard, plants, vegetable patch etc. And is there any wonder that now I’m incredibly chemically sensitive? The smell of the defoliant will give me a migraine now even if we’re just driving by a recently sprayed field.
The stage of cotton growth you’re showing here, with flower bud development, is called “square”, the name given to the early bud. Just before the flower opens is a stage called “candle” (petals showing but not open), and then finally, bloom, when the petals open.
Bolls open about 50 days after pollination.
We have cornfields at the end of our backyard. To tell if the corn is growing well and on schedule, the saying goes…knee high by fourth of July.
I can see corn forever looking off my back deck. It’s so green…all the way to the mountains.
When there is a nice breeze the corn has a flow to it that appears to be in a rhythm of some sort…if you have ever seen the movie “Witness” you would remember how beautiful the wind blows on the fields..