Virginia Cotton:
Last Week of August
By Johnny Parker, Agronomist
Commonwealth Gin, Windsor, Virginia
August 25, 2008 -
Comfortable weather and several chances of rain are in store for the
last week of August in our area. There is also some improvement in
the cotton market after a brief dip down into the upper 60’s.
Commentary from the marketing guru’s offers opinions of some
optimism for continued slight increases to a more aggressive stance
of major improvement by others.
The maturity of our local crop seems about average. I would expect
some fields on very sandy land that were planted early to be ready
for defoliation in another couple of weeks, but the majority of the
crop for this area will continue to mature through most of
September. Fields that have bloomed into the second half of August
will not be ready for defoliation until October as those top bolls
will need about 45 days after bloom to get mature enough to add to
our yields.
If
you have some of this later cotton with a lot of young tender bolls
in the top of the plant, it would be beneficial to give them one
last look this week for bugs. Worms can also be important in
varieties without Bollguard II or Widestrike genes.
