I planted my first cotton trial this year on April 13th. That trial protocol specifically requested an early plant date into adverse conditions. But with the temperatures and general lack of rainfall in the forecast through the second and third weeks of April, we continued planting. Here on the 14th day of May, my crew has only a few small and large plot trials remaining before we get to our late-planted trial work, slated for the first week in June. Most fields in the mid-April window have come up to acceptable stands. Some fields planted closer to the first of May- right in front of what I hope was our one and only blackberry winter for 2026- caught both cool temperatures and rainfall events in excess of 1″. A few of those fields have been very slow to emerge, and some are moving to replant those fields now. Continue reading
Below I have linked the presentations from this year’s Cotton Focus. Many, many thanks to each of the speakers for delivering what many reported was the most valuable program we’ve had in recent memory. 
We are inviting you to participate in a study conducted by University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture focused on estimating the economic impact of deer damage to row crops, specialty crops, turfgrass, and nurseries. We tried to make the survey only long enough to collect the data we need to measure the economic impact. We are not asking for any personal information.
In this post, I’ll provide data supporting what I have penciled to be an ~860 lb per acre average lint yield for Tennessee. I’ll also provide a little background on how the USDA NASS numbers are generated and what we can do to make sure these estimates are improved when data is being collected by USDA NASS. 
Below you will find three average tables from the 2025 University of Tennessee Cotton Variety Testing Program. The first link contains the averages from the 40 entries planted at six official variety trial locations. The second link consists of two tables, the first table containing the averages from 13 XtendFlex varieties planted at eleven county standard trial locations and the second table contains averages from 6 Enlist varieties planted at seven county standard trial locations. Special thanks to the USDA-AMS Quality Assurance Office in Memphis- I received the last of the quality data from their office this past Saturday. These average tables are a precursor to the complete report, which will likely be complete later this week.