Everyone seems to have an opinion on watering cotton in humid regions- do this, don’t do that unless this happens, etc. Even when you do everything right in a normal year, dryland cotton in TN often comes out close (and occasionally ahead) of irrigated. In a normal year, cotton often finds its way into the more droughty areas of the farm and is often bumped out from under pivots to make way for corn or soybeans which typically respond better to irrigation. Unfortunately, it looks like our response to irrigation during 2022 will more closely mirror that of TX or AZ than what we’ve seen in TN during the past few years. Still, there are a few important things to keep in mind to maximize the response of cotton to irrigation. In this blog, Dr. Avat Shekoofa and I have compiled a few of our ‘dos and don’ts’.
More times than not, when a cotton planter left a TN field in 2022, a thunderstorm bringing ~2″ of rain and cool weather would arrive 3 days later. I’ve walked more replants this year than ever before and unfortunately the old saying ‘if you are on the fence, keep it’ rarely applied; in many fields, we weren’t anywhere near the metaphorical fence. Still, Tennessee’s ragged cotton crop has generally turned the corner and mid and late June have been cotton weather; our earliest cotton reached early bloom well prior-to the 4th. In this blog, I cover a few things to keep in mind as we begin to apply PGRs to more acres and look to push a few slower farms into ‘taking off’.
