Released June 19, 2008
ALTUS, Okla. – Recent storms rolled through Oklahoma so quickly, and the subsequent dry wind was so severe, that some cotton producers do not have enough moisture to replant fields damaged by the wind and hail.
It is late enough in the planting season that cotton producers need to try and keep the stands they have if at all possible, said J.C. Banks, cotton specialist and director of Oklahoma State University’s Southwest Research and Extension Center.
“When evaluating damage, look at the terminal for initiation of new growth; also, the plant needs to have a root free of seedling disease to be able to recover,” he said. “If the terminal is lost, the plant will make use of its vegetative branches.”
Cotton with four true leaves has the potential to produce three vegetative branches below the terminal, the dominant, upper main stem part of the plant. Each of these branches will essentially develop into a cotton plant, causing the overall plant to appear more bushy than normal.
“Cotton in the cotyledon stage that loses its terminal will not develop into a plant,” Banks said. “If you observe plants with extremely large cotyledon leaves with an absence of terminal growth, the plant has lost its terminal and will not survive.”
Banks recommends waiting a few days following a storm to evaluate the cotton. This will allow the plant to initiate new terminal growth. Many times when looking across a field of damaged cotton, the light green color of new terminal growth can be observed.
“Count the plants with new terminal growth,” he said. “If you count 16,000 plants per acre on dryland or 20,000 plants per acre on irrigated land, and if there are not too many skips more than three feet on adjacent rows, the crop is normally worth taking to harvest.”
On 40-inch rows, a producer can measure 13.1 feet of row, count the plants and multiply the count by 1,000 to determine the number of plants per acre. Producers should measure 14.5 feet for 36-inch row spacing and 17.4 feet for 30-inch row spacing.
Additional information about Oklahoma cotton management is available through the NTOK Cotton Web site at http://ntokcotton.org on the Internet. NTOK Cotton is a partnership that supports cotton production in northern Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
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Contact: Donald Stotts, (405) 744-4079, donald.stotts@okstate.edu
