The Cotton Plant

The music your hear playing is:
CCR's rendition of :
Cotton Fields Back Home
To turn music off scroll down to
bottom of page

"Well boy it sure feels good to breathe the air back home
You shoulda seen their faces when they seen how I had grown
In them old cotton fields back home"

Our livlihood depends on the cotton plant. Whether that be in production or farming. Creepy Garden Farm, Inc. plants most of the 400 acres it has in cotton.People that live in the South and other cotton producing areas are accustomed to seeing the fields
in Spring filled with tracters and planting equipment.

Likewise in theAutumn we see the harvesting equipment and hear the cotton gins begin to crank up. There is the unmistakable smell of mature cotton in the air....and farmers tired of heat and anxious about their cotton yield began to plan their harvest.

On the other hand people not native to cotton or an area that is grown in is mesmerized by the rows of white fields and the heavy farm equipment it takes to harvest it. They stop on roadsides and visit my husband's gin just to see the fluffy white plant and see the gin in production. This page is dedicated to those that are the curious about this southern crop...hopefully you will leave my pages with a little
more understanding of cotton and it's production

Cotton requires most of our daylight time from March until November---that is "Planting Time" through "Harvest Time".

The crop itself is the most difficult and most expensive of most plants to grow in our area. As my husband and most of his farming friends have joked...."They may as well have gone to the gambling boats and lost their money there!" But I tell you....Farmers are loyal --They easily forget the loss of last year's crop when March
and Spring rolls around. Call it an addiction or call the farmer a masochist because the smell of that freshly turned dirt is all it takes to get him to take the "chance" again this year. Chances on maybe hitting the weather just right.....chances on keeping the bollweevils down...and chances on avoiding an infestion by any number of insects that would pray on
the wonderfully edible parts of OUR livleyhood.....*S*

Maybe this is just what you've been surfing for. I have gone to the cotton field just today and brought back some fine specimens from our crop this year. From our fresh cotton field to your computer here are the different parts of a cotton plant found on one plant.....with a little explanation from "just a farmer's wife" on each picture below....ENJOY.

The first sign of a boll being produced by the plant is called a square.

The size of this square when it is first visible is very tiny...so tiny, in fact, that Farmers refer to them as "pinhead squares". This is the time that the farmer starts watching his plants for thrips and boll weevils. He starts to apply chemicals if needed

From the Square emerges a mostly yellowish/pink bloom....a big beautiful, open bloom that usually has it's glory for one day.

The next day the beautiful yellow/pink bloom of the previous day turns into a dark withered reddish/pink bloom that falls away and reveals the tiny formation of the boll in the terminal.

This is the result of the four phases that the cotton plant experiences for one boll. The (hopefully) wet July will fill this boll out. The warm,hot days of July and August will bring this boll to maturity where it will pop
out its fluffy bounty (hopefully) in a five lock boll.

At which time harvest machinery will be tuned up...the cotton gin will crank up and by October will be running 24 hours a day
to separate the seed from the cotton lint and to make bales that will shipped to the mills.

For more information on Cotton Gin Production click below:

COTTON PRODUCTION

EARLY COTTON GIN PRODUCTION

For Fun:

King Cotton
Superstitions and folklore

Part of my Halloween in the South pages...
Superstition and magic powers associated with
Cotton in the 19th century

Sign my Guestbook

View my Guestbook

Site Navigation

A 'simple site index is located here'.

Sweetmamapam Site Index

Any Questions??? Just sign my guestbook below or drop me an e-mail

easley@tecinfo.com