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Cotton

How Cotton is Grown

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Cotton

Cotton is grown around the world in approximately eighty countries. It’s interesting to learn just how cotton is grown. There are two primary methods for growing cotton, the no-till method or the tilling method. The no-till method is also referred to conservation tillage, as it helps to preserve the integrity of the land by preventing erosion.

Planning is required before cotton is grown. Careful thought and consideration should be given to the land selected for planting to increase chances for a successful crop. An irrigation plan needs to be in place. Seed and equipment need to be ready for planting.

The no-till method allows cotton seeds to be planted right through the litter atop the soil by using special farm equipment designed just for this purpose. The machines that plant the cotton are called planters. Specially designed ones make no till planting possible.

With the traditional tilling or plowing method, the farmer tills the carefully chosen land. When plowing the land, mounded rows are created that the seeds are deposited into. The problem with tilling the soil is that it leads to further soil erosion, which takes its toll on the environment over time.

The time to plant cotton varies depending on the planting zone the farmer lives in.
Cotton should be planted as early as possible in spring, but no sooner than the last chance of frost has passed.  Cotton should not be planted before the ground has started to warm up. As cotton has a long growing season, but needs sunny days to thrive, it is best to try to plant as early as possible.

Once the soil is prepared, the seeding is done with man made mechanical planters. These machines which are how cotton is grown can seed as many as 10 to 24 rows at a time.  Machinery like this saves the farmer much time and helps to increase cotton production.

The way that cotton is grown is that the machine planter creates a narrow trench in every row. The seed is dropped into the trench and covered back up with soil which is packed down by the planter. Seeds are spaced in a uniform fashion either clumped or placed individually.

Seedlings begin to appear typically about five days after planting has taken place. In about 2 months’ time, flower buds should begin to appear on the cotton plants. Approximately three weeks later, the blossoms should start to open up. At this time the flower petals begin to change color from a creamy white to yellow, then to pink and finally to dark red. After three days of remaining red, they will shrivel up and fall off, leaving behind green pods which are known as bolls.

Within each boll, the cotton fibers grow and push their way out. As the boll gets ready to be close to ripening, it turns brown. Eventually the expanding fibers break the boll apart and the cotton candy looking cotton comes bursting out. The crop is harvested by picking machines in the United States.

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A Very Brief History of Cotton

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The history of cotton is ancient. Cotton has been grown for thousands of years. There is documentation that cotton was growing on the Earth before Christ was born.  Historians have been able to determine that cotton was growing on the Earth at least seven thousand years ago. The oldest location cotton has been found was in Mexico. Inside an ancient cave there were tiny bits of cotton bolls and of cotton cloth.

The history of cotton dates back to around 3000 BC in Pakistan. Archaeologists unearthed tiny cotton fragments there on digs. Historical documents from India mention cotton in writings dating as far back as 1500 BC.  The consensus for some time seems to have been that the cultivation of cotton began in India. As mentioned earlier, cotton has been found in other parts of the world, dating further back, but those areas are believed to have been sightings of wild cotton. Cotton does grow wild in some parts of the world.

The history of cotton in the United States dates back to the American Indians. There is documentation as far back as the 1500’s and the Coronado expedition to America that speaks of cotton crops. In 1556 Spanish settlers raised a crop of cotton in Florida. In 1607 the first cotton seed was planted by colonists along the James River in Virginia.

In the early 1700’s, it was against the law, to either import or manufacture cloth from cotton in England. This was during the height of the British Empire.  This law was put into effect to help protect the English wool industry.

While American colonists knew how to grow cotton, they lacked what they needed mechanically to maximize production. In 1790 Samuel Slater came to America. Slater had been a cotton mill worker in England. Upon his arrival, Slater constructed the first American cotton mill strictly from his memory of the mill he worked at back in England.

The cotton mill was a move in the right direction, but cotton was still so slow to clean. Production was limited as a result. Eli Whitney recognized this fact and saw a desperate need for a better way beyond hand cleaning to remove the cotton fibers from the seed.  In 1793, he invented the cotton gin. This invention sped up the separation process of removing the cotton from the seed so dramatically that it revolutionized the industry.

Prior to the cotton gin being invented, only one pound could be cleaned per day per worker. A cotton gin could clean 55 pounds of cotton per day. This increase in cotton production completely revolutionized the cotton industry worldwide and is easily one of the most important contributions to the history of cotton.
In 1850 an automated picking machine was invented. Shortly afterwards a stripper machine that could remove bolls and other trash from the plant before picking was introduced. These advancements continued to improve cotton production in a huge way, changing the history of cotton, making it an even more important cash crop worldwide.