By Clint Thompson
The Georgia Cotton Commission and University of Georgia (UGA) Cotton Team encourage producers to be prepared for the upcoming planting season.
UGA Extension cotton agronomist Camp Hand believes growers need to be cost conscious when preparing to plant this year’s crop. It starts with ensuring the planters are ready to roll.
“I would be making for sure that everything is dialed in, especially with planters and stuff like that. If you have a mishap on a planter, that’s a lot of money. If you’re planting too many seed or not enough and you get a bad stand and it’s a planter issue, that’s something we can control,” Hand said. “We need to get a stand the first go around, we don’t have the margins. We don’t need to be spending money on fuel or wasting time. Make sure everything is good to go for planting.”
Hand encourages farmers to consult with their county Extension agents on variety trial information. Then they can make the right decisions on what varieties to plant. Farmers also need to make sure the right nozzles are on their sprayer.
“If you’re going to spray Liberty, get the right nozzles on there and make sure you’re getting the most control out of that. It’s just little things to help with offsetting input (costs), being timely and different things like that are what I’d be thinking about relative to cutting down the number of trips over the field. If we don’t have to spray twice for weeds or if we don’t miss an application, let’s not do that. We need to save as much money as we can this time,” Hand said.