Harvest

For me, Nov. 1 signals the approach of Thanksgiving and brings to mind all the ways in which we are blessed. It’s ironic to be writing this with only a scrap of filtered light coming through the window and...

• By Tyson Raper • The forecast lows for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights in Tennessee have bounced around over the past few days, but this morning they included a 26, 28, 28 and 31 degrees. I’ve passed many...

Parts of Mississippi’s landscape are turning white, but unlike some northern areas, this coloration is caused by cotton bolls opening for harvest, not snow accumulation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that nearly a quarter of Mississippi’s cotton crop had...

Harvest is almost complete in South Texas. Gins are running full blast and modules are stacked as far as you can see, according to Dr. Josh McGinty, Extension agronomist in Corpus Christi. Grades look good and yields are all...

With harvest season less than a month away for some Georgia cotton farmers, knowing when to defoliate is an important decision all growers have to make, according to Mark Freeman, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension cotton agronomist. Before cotton can...

• By Bill Robertson • Another challenging season is starting to wind down. While our extended planting window resulted in a widely variable crop with regard to stage of development, Mother Nature usually has a way of narrowing the gap...

The agricultural workforce is shrinking and some Clemson University researchers believe robots may help provide a means to protect America’s food and fiber industries. A group of them studying the use of robots in agriculture recently met with researchers from...

Many of our cotton producers were glad to leave 2018 behind them as crop management was difficult through most of the year due to wet conditions after a dry early May. Even though the crop was one of the best...

In looking back at the 2018 season, a multitude of adjectives come to mind that describe the weather and field conditions. Wet, hot, dry, windy, sunny, muddy — they ran the gamut this year. Some areas fared well, while...

While some farmers got a later start than usual, the above-average temperatures in May propelled the crop to one of our fastest starts. As we rolled into harvest, the frequent and often heavy rainfall caused delays and had negative...

• By Clint Thompson • What was an extremely promising Georgia cotton crop was devastated when Hurricane Michael ravaged south Georgia Oct. 10-11. According to Jared Whitaker, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension cotton agronomist, the prospects of 1,500 to 1,800 pounds...

In the days before Hurricane Michael ripped across the Southeast, social media was blowing up with photos of some of the most beautiful cotton ever. Stunning fields of solid white gold. And then the weather forecast turned ugly. Meteorologists confirmed...

After some mid- and late-season pest issues (lygus, mites), and a rough summer with high temperatures, most cotton fields still look relatively good going into boll maturation. Late plantings and fields that sustained a lot of early to mid-season...

.textbox {padding:2px 6px 4px 6px; color: #000000; background-color: #D6EAF8; border: #000066 2px solid;} Oklahoma Brothers Carry On Cotton Legacy. By Carroll Smith, Editor — In 1906, the year before Oklahoma was granted statehood, the Williams’ family traveled in a covered wagon from Texas...

CALIFORNIA Heading into the 2018 growing season, the biggest “maybe” out there again is irrigation water supplies and lack of rain and snow to date. Water supply issues are not yet a “done deal” for 2018. We are still hoping...