By Clint Thompson
Cotton season is well underway across Georgia. The Georgia Cotton Commission and Camp Hand, University of Georgia (UGA) Extension cotton agronomist, encourage growers to be timely with their management tactics. That could range anywhere from fertilizer applications to weed suppression.
“I’d say everything that you do needs to be timely. It helps with everything to be timely. We’re coming up on some of that earlier planted cotton where we need to be thinking about nitrogen type; ramping up weed control,” Hand said.
“We’re entering some of these times where we start worrying about tarnished plant bugs. You can avoid a lot of mistakes by being on time. I think that’s one thing we can control and we can do right is be on time.”
Hand estimated that the rest of Georgia’s cotton crop will be planted this week, barring any rain events that would prevent producers from entering their fields. So far, the crop is in good shape.
“Right now, I’m in a field that was planted May 15 and it’s growing really fast. I’d say we’re off to a pretty good start,” Hand said. ‘There is some that was planted in that second week of May when we got some of those rains across the state. It just kind of looks like it’s not growing. Some of that could be seedling disease. Some of it is probably just it didn’t have a great start to its life. It’s just got to get the memo, and some of it just hasn’t gotten the memo yet. We’ve got some stuff that’s all over the place.
“I’d say overall, we’re still in really good shape; we’re in a good position to take advantage of this growing season.”