Cotton Crop

Wet and windy

2009-06-06T17:20:00.004-06:00

We live near the gap in the mountains where the clouds, heavy with rain, squeeze through. So while all of Albuquerque is dry, we have had terrible wet weather. It has rained every day for 15 days and has been unseasonably cold. This is a bad beginning for our cotton plants. We have had more bugs and more windy leaf damage. However, you can see a good leaf forming in our stunted little plants right in the center. We have a lot of hope for a nice crop. We did lose a lot with the last hail - more than half this year.

So if you have poor looking plants, do not despair. Wait for the warm weather and have a happy surprise.

My tree cotton tale was so sad, I hated to bring it up. The seeds were from Ruth Schooley and I got them just before she died so suddenly. I babied the plant and took it in for the winter since I got the seeds kind of late. When it came back out, it looked fine for a couple of days but we had wind gusts over 60 mpg for several days running. I lost almost every leaf. The plant meant so much to me that I was distraught. But I should have been confident since it is coming back. We had to tie it a lot until leaves came.

Even on branches where the leaf fell off completely, a new one begins.

On the next two photos, you can see the damaged leaves, but good ones are coming out from the crown.

And the other garden plants? They are going ape. Look at the size of these two lavender bushes grown from seed. They are about 1/2 way up the mailbox which is a bit higher than most on the street. The bluish plant on the side is another variety of lavender which is larger than normal for scale.

How is your cotton doing this year?

Bottle garden

2009-05-03T16:56:00.002-06:00

We are still covered up here. Cold last night but plants are surviving.

The volunteer poppies are just about done for the year. They will fade out quickly with lovely seed heads.

Started inside but hardened off here, this plant has some true leaves and is ready for a growth spurt.

Pima babies are coming on strong.

We put our last seeds in the garden this weekend. Some Peruvian Brown and some of Judy's nice long brown. We had planted those early but had snow and I think it stopped the seeds. The new ones should come out fine. Oddly, at this point, some seedlings are far along and some just planted but you won't be able to tell who's who later in the season.

Seeds in the ground

2009-04-22T22:35:00.003-06:00

Finally it warmed up enough to plant seeds in the soil.
Fiberguy made crisp edges for the bed with a tamper and rake. These will hold a pool of water in, forcing it down deep into the soil. We do this also because we live on a steep slope.

Next the seeds are planted with soda bottles put on every site. Lovely rocks keep the bottles in place from strong blowing winds. The bottles will also protect the plants from bugs and especially hail. It is about 2 weeks to hail season here. Each bottle covers two seeds and gives us some to weed out if everything sprouts.

The green plants on the edge are volunteer poppies just about to bloom. They keep the other weeds down and hold the sides up nicely. Besides, I love how they look with the red blooms swaying in the wind. The poppies started up the street and around the corner and have worked their way down to us. Now we collect the seeds and sprinkle here and there in the backyard, but near the cotton it is all volunteer poppy plants.

Today we put in Pima and green but we still will be planting our three types of brown and a tree cotton. The tree is in fiberguy's office and will need to be hardened off. We are debating whether to leave it in the current pot or transplant it. Cotton is not fond of transplanting.

And so it begins

2009-04-14T23:23:00.002-06:00

Planted some of the crop in pots this year. We are still having very cold weather, especially nights so this will be our latest planting yet, I fear. But the little seedlings are popping up nicely. Pima gets planted first due to the very long growing season. Then brown followed by green.

Proud Cotton Mama

2008-04-24T00:36:00.002-06:00

Emergence. Look at this mighty seedling rip the ground above it's head.

And leaves are coming out all over.

Even in the big pots we are getting 100% germination. We will have to thin like mad I think.

And if you look very closely next to the rock you will see several little green shoots coming out.

So even after the snow last week, we are having luck. We still have some to get into the ground, but now seems like a good time. Oh and don't you like my volunteer poppy at the edge of the bed?

Cotton Crop 2008

2008-04-07T05:34:00.003-06:00

Our season starts a bit late this year. Down in the valley everything is blooming. Up on the hill, our perennial plants are just waking up.

This year we added a bit of organic matter and sand to beef up our output.

What's this? A volunteer poppy wanders into our cotton bed.

The proud gardener prepares to tamp the bed's edges for stage one of water control.

One pot gets some early seeds. We cover with the cutoff milk carton bottoms and heavy rocks to save them from the wind until they germinate.

When those seeds come up the rest of the seeds go in. We put 3 seeds in each hole and weed them out as they come up. This can be good later if we get holes in the main beds. Seeds are planted to a depth of about 2-3 times their size using a pencil eraser, covered well and hand tamped. The sacrificial seeds we put in were green cotton. It is the fastest to germinate for us.

Each year we put in a few plants of each type of seed that we have just to keep the seed stock alive. I wish I knew more about how to store it to keep it good for years, but I just keep it planted up each year. We usually have a main plant bed and an auxiliary area. The main bed gets Pima this year and the smaller bed gets green. The green was prolific last year and I still have a lot to spin. While the Pima plants were nice, they just don't make as much cotton fiber as the green or brown. I was really hopeful for the Peruvian brown seeds from last year - they came up so nice and red. But they just turned the dark chocolate brown after boiling, so I think I will stick with my much longer brown. It looks tan in the boll but dark brown in the skein.

Cleaning Cotton Yarn

2008-04-07T05:10:00.002-06:00

After spinning up bits of the fiber from the leftover dehydrated cotton, I boil it with a tad of baking soda and Dawn dish liquid. I use a tiny squirt and about a teaspoon, but this is a small batch. See the color develop? I boil for an hour if the color is strong. The water is totally brown when I am done.

The rest of the skeins are just whatever was left on my bobbins throughout the house. Mostly spun from the seed or ginned but not carded. I prefer spinning mixed colors and plying them together. I used to gin, card and make punis, spin very even and 3 ply the yarn. But now I rough spin, or just spin from the seed or ginned cotton with no carding. It works on my homegrown since the cotton is very clean and fluffy. It wouldn't work on field picked cotton as there is more leaf trash. I spin by holding 2-3 seed's worth very lightly and spin a spiral or woolen draw. You know, you pull your hand back, get slubs, let more twist in while still drawing back and the slubs pull out to the same thickness as the rest of the yarn. My seed spun yarn is a bit lumpier as you are always joining on new seeds.

I ply with 3 strands to bring up the grist in the yarn and to cover for any thin or fragile spots. Only on one of the following did I use 4 ply to make it extra thick for washcloths.

The general goal is a fingering to sport weight yarn that will pass through a knitting machine. I get so much cotton every year that I just sort by grist at the end of the year and save up for the big projects. I do hand knit most of it, but if I want to machine knit in the future, I will have a good supply. There is a great machine knit tuck pattern that gives a waffle stitch and is superb for washcloths.

More cotton eye candy

2007-10-23T01:10:00.000-06:00

Harvesting the big fat bolls before the rains come.

Green is drying and fluffing

My Pima bolls are small and not too impressive so far this year. I try to catch them before they get rained on in the field and let them dry and pop open inside. The browns and greens are popping like popcorn outside. I harvest twice a day and can't pick 'em all. But the frost is coming and there is still so much cotton out there.

End of Sept - lots of cotton

2007-09-30T00:49:00.000-06:00

It is coming in all colors now. The Pima is still a little behind but starting to produce.

The green primarily has 5 lobes, but sometimes I get a 4 lobed or 3 lobed green. One branch had brown, but we just didn't get the photos, sorry. And we got 3 white bolls off the green plants and two white from the brown plants. The white wasn't the immature white tip stuff either. It was a big fluffy white boll right on a colored plant. I set those aside, but I am not quite sure what to do with them. The white is long and nice.

Sept 16 - First boll

2007-09-16T00:45:00.000-06:00

A big fat Green Cotton boll just popped open. The branches are all hanging low with our biggest crop ever.

End of August

2007-08-30T00:41:00.000-06:00

Ooh, it is getting soon now. I still have a lot of flowers opening but color is starting to come into the green cotton plants. Almost like they are sunburned or like an autumn display, they show red in the stems and leaves. This is the signal, to me, that the bolls are about to open. If we had a lot of bugs like whitefly or aphids, we would defoliate by hand starting about now. This would keep the sticky substance off the clean cotton. But this was an extremely bug free year and we will just let nature go and see what happens with the crop.

Mid August

2007-08-15T00:34:00.000-06:00

Pima flowers still just getting going (yellow), while the green flowers are almost done (red above).

Fat Green.

Occasionally I get a yellow Pima blossom with a red center, like a tulip with a dark center. Very pretty and it happens on the same plants as the creamier yellow flowers. This one was a late flower on the bottom of the plant.

It is a waiting game right now. The plants are fully grown - about shoulder high on the green and a bit shorter on the Pima. The bolls are filling up very well, but I am still getting a lot of flowers. At this point, it is clear that the Pima is behind by about a week or two. I interpret that as Pima has a longer growing season.

Pima has triangular darker ones.
Green has round bolls.

Lots of flowers still coming on the same branches as bolls.

String of bolls.

Beginning of August

2007-08-06T13:40:00.000-06:00

I am a little behind in the photos, so you may be astonished at the growth. Flowers everywhere and plenty of bolls forming now. It has been unusually rainy. Bugs are apparent on the browns only, and just a few whiteflys. Serious hail damage occurred and leaves have big holes poked into them. We also lost the top 6 inches on several plants due to hail.

Up to the truck's side mirror and growing fast.

Little string of flowers on the green.

Pima trilobal leaf and flower bud.

Bolls and Flowers on the green.

Mid July

2007-07-24T17:31:00.001-06:00

We have green lushness.

The green cotton is a dense mass of leaves.

The flowers change from yellow to pink as they fade.

Many flowers opening now.

Like grapes on the vine, little strings of green pearls.

First Flowers

2007-07-12T01:55:00.000-06:00

Thick lush leaves and pretty first flowers on the green cotton.

July 6th

2007-07-07T00:46:00.000-06:00

Pima is looking great. It is a little shorter than the green, but it has lots and lots of flowers.

Potted Pima really going strong.

The tan and Peruvian brown is really looking bad - very buggy and growing slowly.

Green is just shooting up. Each day it fills in fast. And so many flowers.

See the pretty little string of 'squares'? One branch has flowers and the other is greenery.

More than knee high by 4th of July.

End of June

2007-07-01T14:15:00.000-06:00

The heat is really starting to have a great effect on the cotton. It is now growing like mad and the bug damage is significantly less. This is one of the reasons to ignore early bug damage and wait it out. Or just use your fingers to gently brush away the aphids if your crop is small.

The leaves are glossy and healthy. We have had some serious storms and lost 4 plants to wind damage. Tomato cages, stakes and ties have been introduced this year, much more significant support than had been used in prior years. Hail has ripped a lot of leaves.

But the clustering of fresh leaves shown here signify that the production of flowers is not far off. I suspect I have some flowers coming out of this bunch.

See the triangular shaped, trilobal leaf in the center? That is a Pima and is easy to spot.

The plants don’t look that tall here, but they are shooting up inches per day now. Mid calf will soon be knee high. And even small patches can produce more cotton than you can spin in a year.

This is a green cotton plant. Note the wider leaf of slightly lighter color. It has red veins and a less glossy leaf. The hail damage is evident here too as well as old bug damage. New leaves are quite healthy.

Cotton is a crop with bugs, there is no doubt. But the thing is, for us, that those bugs don’t really damage the production of our little crop. We don’t have vast fields and that would change our views. Since the greatest damage we get is a sticky substance at the end of the season, we pick carefully to avoid this and ignore any bug damage on these plants. Less chemicals, happy cotton.

I don’t know if you can see the little bar between these two beds. It is an easy watering system that fiberguy built. It is like a little pool that holds in the water with an opening to fill the lower pool when the top one is full. This means that we can put down the hose and water will trail down to the lower beds. We don’t get run-off and don’t have to water as often. These are like little steps, kind of like a little lock system in a canal.

These two pots are more problematic. First is the Peruvian brown. Not at all disease or bug resistant and it gives a very short stapled dark brown cotton. I am growing this mostly to see if I can cross it and get a longer darker brown. I will remove more than half of these plants, getting rid of the sickest and most frail. Again, note the red pigment in the veins. The other pot is my lovely long tan. These are the most slow growing, but are the best producers. We got the most heavy hail damage in this location so the jury is out on how many I will weed out. Also not a hardy plant, this tan shows no bugs on the plants, but a lot of bug damage. I see no wasps or ants on them trying to eat the honeydew left by aphids. No aphids, no whitefly. What is eating them? Will they survive? Last year, they looked terrible and produced so much tan cotton that I don’t think I will finish spinning it for three years. Almost hoping they don’t do well...

Second week of June

2007-06-14T01:45:00.001-06:00

We had some early bug damage, mostly by green aphids. With only 40 plants up and sprouted, it was easiest to rub the bugs off for now. If they make it through the first month of bugs, then I don't need to address them anymore. There will be so many leaves that I can afford to lose quite a few before the cotton ripens.

Notice, however, the twisting of the leaves due to bugs. For years, I worried over this. The last few years, I try hard to ignore it and get better cotton. How does that work???

I will get white fly a bit later in the year - probably around the 4th of July when the plants are around knee high. They don't seem to affect the crop either. If they start to really bother me, I will mix up some Dawn, Lemon sudsy ammonia and Miracle grow to hose them off. In past years, I might add tobacco juice to the mix, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. The first few weeks are the critical times for the new plants. If they make it that far, then nothing kills them. We do lose about 1/2 to hail.

Most resistant to bugs: Pima. Least resistant: Peruvian Brown. Pretty good is my green/pima cross. At this time, you can't see much difference between the colors, but soon, the flowers and leaves will differentiate.

Fiberguy built nice little earthen walls around the small beds. These act as little pools and 'save' the rain that comes down. Since the small garden is on a serious slope, it is miniature terrace gardening.

True leaves

2007-05-21T02:05:00.001-06:00

Not much to look at yet, but the true leaves emerge. Now I have to pluck out those extras.

So far this year we have great seed/sprout ratios. Pima, green, brown, tan and Peruvian brown with very short staple but great dark color. 3 heavy hails have taken out about 1/2 the crop but we put in many extras. Weather has been cold and rainy, but that helps right now - less watering. Soon the changes will be visible each day.

It Begins

2007-04-29T21:16:00.000-06:00

Green. First up this year.

Spin from the seed - leftovers

2007-01-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

With growing cotton, it is easy to separate out those lovely fluffy good bolls from the lesser, immature bolls. But what do you do with the bad bolls? I am too frugal just to pitch them. And the fiber is especially soft. They can’t be ginned – or, at least, I can’t gin them as the seeds will crush and make a real mess. Also, I don’t know exactly what color they are sometimes. They appear white, but they may be green or brown underneath.

What I did today was spin a bin of them from the seed, or more correctly, off the seed. Saves ginning and carding. Now my yarn on the bobbin is not my number 1 best spun stuff. Oh, but wouldn’t it make great fluffy washcloths? I wouldn’t wear it for socks, as it is probably tender and wouldn’t hold up. It might make a great tank top though.

What would you do with it? Think it isn’t worth spinning at all? Let me hear from you.

Pan of seed cotton, with individual seeds separated, but not particularly fluffed.

Pan of seeds left at the end of spinning.

Spinning directly off the seed.

Spun cotton singles.

Field to cloth

2007-01-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

The colors, at least on my screen, are pretty close to the original dishcloth. This was spun, kinda roughly, washed, knit on a knitting machine in a 1x1 tuck and then boiled for 1 hour. Since then, it has been used maybe 50 times and washing in washer and dryer.

The back looks like ribbing.

The brown and green were the bolls show below. The green changes to a dark blue green and the pale tan becomes this rich dark brown. I have to be careful picking white bolls. They may look white outside, but if I put them in the wrong bin inside, I can easily get colored streaks in my white cotton. The color is in there hiding, even though I might not see it when I spin. I must carefully label the bins. This becomes most important when I am harvesting either immature bolls or unopened bolls.

Immature bolls have seeds that are not fully formed and all the cotton appears white. It is usually tender and sometimes shorter. Actually it can be very soft, but I must spin it from the seed as the immature seeds will fail my ginning process.

Unopened bolls are usually fully formed but late. So I will have pale colored cotton and big seeds. But to open these, I use a dehydrator. It works so well, they just pop open. However, these seeds must not be mixed with my other seeds as they have been heated and are no longer viable. Since we got so much rain this year after the bolls began to open, many more of my bolls went through this drying process. We normally have very little rain in Albuquerque after the monsoon season.

Cotton eye candy

2007-01-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

I am preparing a tutorial on how I gin with a pasta machine and leather. But for now, I thought I would show you a little more of the '06 crop. The single seed is Pima with quite a halo of fibers.

Colors

2007-01-11T01:41:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by fibergal.

Soon the seed planting will begin for 2007. I just wanted to whet your appetite for some nice colors.

Seed harvest and sort

2006-12-23T05:22:00.000-07:00

Finally getting all the seeds sorted and ginned from this year's crop. Lint's a flyin' and I am getting ready for some serious spinning.