Cotton harvest finally winding down in SE Alabama

Cotton harvest is still underway in southeast Alabama, but the weather forecast calls for five to seven days of open conditions, and that should allow growers to finish up most fields, says William Birdsong, Extension Agronomist-Row Crops, based in Headland, Ala.

“By and large, the crop was better than we projected it to be,” Birdsong said this afternoon. “There were still several pocket areas where yields were disastrously low on cotton and peanuts. But late rains in July and into August helped the cotton a good deal and improved peanut yields, though not to the same extent.”

Where cotton appeared ready to make no more than 300 to 500 lbs/acre, the late-summer rains nudged yields up to 600 or even 800 lbs/acre. In spots that also caught spotty showers earlier in the summer, some 800 to 1,000 lb/acre averages were reported, he said.

“There was still a good bit of cases where 100 to 300 lbs/acre was the best cotton would due because of the prolonged drought,” he added. “But where growers caught some of those late July rains and were patient, it paid to hold off. We didn’t necessarily have a warmer winter, just more of a waiting game. A lot of it wasn’t defoliated until November 1. The DPL 555 really cranked back up.

Peanut yields were better than expected, too, but not to the dramatic extent Birdsong saw with cotton. Some fields that looked to go 1,500 to 2,000 lbs/acre ended up averaging 2,000 to 2,700 lbs/acre.”

The increase in corn prices, he said, will likely push more acres into that crop in ’07. “Hybrid availability could be an issue,” he noted. “We’ve seen wheat seed run short, now to the point that people generally don’t care what variety they plant, just so they can get some seed.”