Picture: Charlie Coles talking about the varieties on trial at Jedburgh, Warren at the recent CGS field walk.
In the meantime, love might be in the air on Valentine's day, but I suspect many of us are over the heat of the last couple of weeks. These higher temperatures have had many shortening irrigation cycles to try and keep crops cool during this key reproductive phase and hopefully it pays off.
As we get into February, it would appear that many crops around Warren have had a cut out application of mepiquat chloride, with the southern end of the valley proposing to follow suit a week of two later. However you have managed the current crop demands, I hope it works out for you. If you are looking for some further guidance, then you might find listening to Mick and Peter talk about February as the critical growing period for flowering and yield setting useful.
Of course, monitoring your boll numbers and NAWF (Nodes Above White Flower) during this time is a good way to see if you are on track and CottonTracka® can help you do this.
February also represents a high-risk period for pest activity. Seasonal conditions and the local environment will dictate what we end up seeing in crop, but the weather this season might mean we see more whiteflies. Talk to your agronomist and neighbours about both the pests and beneficials you are seeing, as well as chemical control options. As always, we get better results when we work together. There are also some bad wilt symptoms showing up, so if it looks a little different or is somewhere new, then remember you can still send samples off for testing and confirm what pathogen is causing the problem.
