Cotton fields are squaring and have 10-14 nodes per plant. First fruiting sites are at nodes 6-8, except for the cold damaged cotton plants which have higher fruiting initiation. I expect to see the first bloom with 9 nodes above the white flower. I think we will have first bloom when the plants have 15-17 nodes and the plants will add one node every 3 days. Thus, we should see the first blooms in 2-3 weeks.
We are finding cotton fleahoppers at treatable levels and aphids are in some fields in low populations. Treat cotton fleahopper when populations exceed 15 fleahoppers per 100 on cotton.
For aphid populations that exceed 50 aphids per leaf, return to the field after 2-3 days to see if the aphid population is increasing or decreasing. Most of the time, the aphids will crash and will not reach a damaging level.
