Cotton bolls are 2 – 3 inches in diameter. This boll is considered a fruit because it contains seeds.
Soybeans and cotton
Soybeans in the field in October.
Driving through the Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas, and Mississippi, you can see the fields full and ready for harvest.
I don’t know much about growing cotton or soybeans, but the fields are beautiful.
The Cotton Belt
Cotton bolls.
The Cotton Belt begins at the back of the Carolina-Georgia tide-water and extends westward to the high plains of west-central Texas. It includes nearly all South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, the greater part of Arkansas and Louisiana, and most of southern Oklahoma and central Texas. It extends into substantial areas of south central North Carolina, western Tennessee, southeast Missouri.
Today, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and Arkansas are the leading producers of the old cotton belt. The dryness of those areas makes it easier to control insect pests. Large quantities of cotton are also grown on irrigated land in New Mexico, South Arizona, and Southern California.
Photo taken in early October, Cape Girardeau County, Missouri. This field is usually harvested in late October.
That’s enough American grown cotton to make over 250 million pairs of jeans a year.
The cotton plant has yellow and pink colored flowers. They are beautiful in the summer garden and lovely in flower arrangements. In October or November the cotton bolls put on another show.
Soft yellow hibiscus-like flowers of the summer blooming cotton plants.
If you’ve never seen cotton growing, there are different colored cottons. Plants can grow 5′ to 6′ tall. The plant requires full sun and a long growing season, typical in the cotton belt states.
Start plants indoors. Wait until temperatures are consistently above 60º before planting outdoors.
