COTTON CULTIVATION Cotton is very widely cultivated throughout the world, being grown on a greater or less scale as a commercial crop in almost every country included in the broad belt between latitudes N. and 33° S., or approximately between the isothermal lines of 6o° F. It must, however, be remembered that cultivated cotton is not one but several species or cultivated races. These for agricultural purposes may be classed in three groups : viz., Ameri can Upland, Egyptian and Indian black soil cottons.
The cotton plant requires certain conditions for its successful cultivation; but, given these, it is very little affected by seasonal vicissitudes. Thus, for example, in the United States the worst season rarely diminishes the crop by more than about a quarter or one-third; such a thing as a "half-crop" is unknown. Various cli matic factors may cause temporary checks, but the growing and maturing period is sufficiently long to allow the plants to over come these disturbances.
Cotton requires for its development from six to seven months of favourable weather ; i.e., plenty of sunshine without prolonged periods of dull, cloudy weather. It thrives in a warm atmosphere, even in a very hot one, provided that it is moist and that the trans piration is not in excess of the supply of water. A definite dry sea son to check vegetative growth when the crop is reaching maturity is an essential where this is treated as an annual crop. An idea of the requirements of the plant will perhaps be afforded by summar izing the conditions which have been found to give the best results in the United States.
During April (when the seed is usually sown) and May, fre quent light showers, which keep the ground sufficiently moist to assist germination and the growth of the young plants, are desired. Three to four inches of rain per month is the average. The active growing period is from early June to about the middle of August. During June and the first fortnight in July plenty of sunshine is necessary, accompanied by sufficient rain to promote healthy, but not excessive, growth ; the normal rainfall in the cotton belt for this period is about 42in. per month. During the second portion of July and the first of August a slightly higher rainfall is beneficial, and even heavy rains do little harm, provided the subsequent months are dry and warm. The first flowers usually appear in June, and the bolls ripen from early in August. Picking takes place normally during September and October, and during these months dry weather is essential. Flowering and fruiting go on con tinually, although in diminishing degree, until the advent of frost, which kills the flowers and the young bolls and so puts an end to the production of cotton for the season.
In the tropics the essential requirements are very similar, but there the dry season checks production in much the same way as do the frosts in temperate climates. In either case an adequate but not excessive rainfall, increasing from the time of sowing to the period of active growth, and then decreasing as the bolls ripen, with a dry picking season, combined with sunny days and warm nights, provide the ideal conditions for successful cotton cultiva tion. In regions where climatic conditions are favourable, cotton grows more or less successfully on almost all kinds of soil ; it can be grown on light, sandy soils, loams, heavy clays and sandy "bot tom" lands with varying success. Sandy uplands produce a short stalk which bears fairly well. Clay and "bottom" lands produce a large, leafy plant, yielding less lint in proportion. The most suit able soils are medium grades of loam. The soil should be able to maintain very uniform conditions of moisture. Sudden variations in the amount of water supplied are injurious : a sandy soil cannot retain water; on the other hand a clay soil often maintains too great a supply, and rank growth with excess of foliage ensues. The best soil for cotton is thus a deep, well-drained loam, able to afford a uniform supply of moisture during the growing period.
The culture of cotton must be a clean one. It is not neces sarily deep culture, and during the growing season the cultiva tion is shallow, since the feeding roots of the plants are near the surface. The result is a great destruction of the humus of the soil, and great leaching and washing, especially in the light loams of the hill country of the United States. The main object, therefore, of the American cotton-planter is to prevent erosion. Wherever the planters have failed to guard their fields by hill side ploughing and terracing, these have been extensively denuded of soil, rendering them barren, and devastating other fields lying at a lower level, which are covered by the wash. The hillsides have gradually to be terraced with the plough, upon almost an exact level. On the better farms this is done with a spirit-level or compass from time to time and hillside ditches put in at the proper places. In the moist bottom-lands along the rivers it is the custom to throw the soil up in high beds with the plough, and then to cultivate them deep. This is the more common method of drainage, but it is expensive, as it has to be renewed every few years. More intelligent planters drain their bottom-lands with underground or open drains. In the case of small planta tions the difficulties of adjusting a right-of-way for outlet ditches have interfered seriously with this plan. Many planters question the wisdom of deep-breaking and subsoiling. There can be no question that a deep soil is better for the cotton-plant; but the expense of obtaining it, the risk of injuring the soil through leach ing, and the danger of bringing poor soil to the surface, have led many planters to oppose this plan. Nothing definite can be said with regard to a rotation of crops upon the cotton planta tion, but since the advent of the boll weevil, much more attention has been paid to this question and to more diversified farming in general. Planters appreciate generally the value of broad-leaved and narrow-leaved plants and root crops, but there is an absence of exact knowledge, with the result that their practices are vey varied. It is believed that the rotation must differ with every variety of soil, with the result that each planter has his own method, and little can be said in general. A more careful study of the physical as well as the chemical properties of a soil must precede intelligent experimentation in rotation. This knowledge is still lacking with regard to most of the cotton soils. The only uniform practice is to let the fields "rest" when they have become exhausted. Nature then restores them very rapidly. The exhaus tion of the soil under cotton culture is chiefly due to the loss of humus, and nature soon puts this back in the excellent climate of the cotton-growing belt. Fields considered utterly used up, and allowed to "rest" for years, when cultivated again have produced better crops than those which had been under a more or less thoughtful rotation. In spite of the clean culture, good crops of cotton have been grown on some soils in the south for more than 40 successive years. The fibre takes almost nothing from the land, and where the seeds are restored to the soil in some form, even without other fertilizers, the exhaustion of the soil is very slow. If the burning up of humus and the leaching of the soil could be prevented, there is no reason why a cotton soil should not produce good crops continuously for an indefinite time.
Bedding up land previous to planting is almost universal. The bed forms a warm seed-bed in the cool weather of early spring, and holds the manure, which is drilled in, usually to better advan tage. The plants are generally left 2 or Sin. above the middle of the row, which in four-foot rows gives a slope of z in. to the foot, causing the plough to lean from the plants in cultivating, and thus to cut fewer roots. The plants are usually cut out with a hoe from 8 to iq.in. apart. It seems to make little difference exactly what distance they are, so long as they are not wider apart on average land than z f t. On rich bottom-land they should be more distant. The seed is dropped from a planter, five or six seeds in a single line, at regular intervals io to rein. apart. A narrow, deep furrow is usually run immediately in advance of the planter, to break up the soil under the seed. The only time the hoe is used is to thin out the cotton in the row; all the rest of the cultivation is by various forms of ploughs and cultivators. The question of deep and shallow culture has been much dis cussed among planters without any conclusion applicable to all soils being reached. All grass and weeds must be kept down, and the crust must be broken after every rain, but these seem to be the only principles upon which all agree.
The date of cotton-planting varies from March i to June i, according to situation. Planting begins early in March in south ern Texas, and the first blooms will appear there about May 15. Planting may be done as late as April i 5 in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, and continue as late as the end of May. The first blooms will appear in this region about July 15. Picking may begin on July z o in southern Texas, and continue late into the winter, or until the rare frost kills the plants. It may not begin until Sept. 10 in Piedmont, North Carolina. It is a peculiar ity of the cotton-plant to lose a great many of its blooms and bolls. When the weather is not favourable at the fruiting stage, the otherwise hardy cotton-plant displays its great weakness in this way. It sheds its "forms" (as the buds are called), blooms, and even half-grown bolls in great numbers. It has frequently been noted that even well-fertilized plants upon good soil will mature only 15 or 200 of the bolls produced. No means are known so far for preventing this great waste. Experts are at an entire loss to form a correct idea of the cause or to apply any effective remedy. Cotton-picking is the most expensive opera tion in cotton production. It is paid for at the rate of from $1 to $1.25 per ioo lb. of seed cotton. The work is light, and is effectually performed by women and even children, as well as men ; but it is tedious and requires care. The picking season will average zoo days. For economic reasons it is difficult to get the hands to work until the cotton is fully opened. Picking is largely piecework and a picker will gather from i oo to 200 lb. of seed cotton a day according to the amount of cotton open on the plant. The loss resulting from careless work is very serious. The cotton falls out easily or is dropped. The careless gathering of dead leaves and twigs, and the soiling of the cotton by earth or by the natural colouring matter from the bolls, injure the qual ity. It has been commonly thought that the production of cotton in the south is limited by the amount that can be picked, but this limit is evidently very remote. The negro population of the towns and villages of the cotton country is usually available for a considerable share in cotton-picking. There is in the cotton States a rural population of over 7,000,000, more or less occu pied in cotton-growing, and capable, at the low average of i oo lb. a day, of picking daily nearly 5oo,000 bales. It is evident, there fore, that if this number could work through the whole season of ioo days, they could pick three or four times as much cotton as the largest crop ever made. Great efforts have been made to devise cotton-picking machines, but, as yet, complete success has not been attained. Lowne's machine is useful in specially wide planted fields and when the ground is sufficiently hard.
For cotton cultivation the land is ploughed, carefully levelled and then thrown up into ridges about 3ft. apart. Channels formed at right angles to the cultivation ridges provide for the access of water to the crop. The seeds, previously soaked, are sown, usually in March, on the sides of the ridges, and the land watered. Af ter the seedlings appear, thinning is completed in usually three successive hoeings, the plants being watered after thin ning, and subsequently at intervals of from 1 a to 15 days, until about the end of August, when picking commences. The total amount of water given is approximately equivalent to a rain fall of about 3 5in. The crop is picked, ginned and baled in the usual way, the Macarthy style action roller gins being almost ,exclusively employed. .
The sowing season varies in different parts of the country according to the rainfall. In all cases the heavier rains usually fall when the crop is young, and rainfall is generally inconsiderable when the crop is commencing to set its bolls. The uncertainty of the rainfall, the effect of unseasonable rains and the difficulty of manuring the crop in places with a precarious rainfall, render the acre yield of cotton in India small when compared with that of the American cotton belt. In the black cotton soil areas, the soil cracks deeply in the dry weather, which coincides with the ripen ing of the cotton crop. No cultivation of the land is feasible till the rains of the following season are received. Thus, prepara tory cultivation is usually scanty as the crop must be sown before the short sowing season is passed. Usually, at intervals of some years, the land is deeply ploughed, but since the soil is turned up in large clods, it is difficult to prepare a firm seed bed for sowing the cotton. The preparation of the land consists of running a heavy blade hoe over the bare ground, which cuts off any weeds and old crop that still remain on the land and, at the same time, levels up the soil surface.
Sowing is usually done with the drill, and since the Indian cot tons form only small plants, the rows are usually spaced some i8in. apart. In some parts cotton is sown as a mixed crop in alternating rows with a low growing cereal. When this is done the spacing of the cotton rows is wider apart. The distance of the plant in the row is determined by rainfall. The crop com mences to burst about four and a half months after sowing and the crop is picked as it ripens. The amount of cotton which can be picked in a day is only about 20 lb. Compared with the crop in America this is a very small amount, but it must be remembered that the boll of the Indian cotton is small, and with periodic pickings at short intervals there is never any great amount of cotton ripe in the field at any given time. The cotton which is picked is also much cleaner.
Cotton in the tropical African colonies is almost entirely a native industry, and the enormous fluctuations in the price of cotton in recent years, has been anything but helpful to the spread of cultivation.