As Kansas heads into the fall, there are signs that in spite of hot weather and sparse rainfall in August, cotton producers are heading into another successful harvest, according to Rex Friesen, agronomist and crop consultant for the Southern Kansas Cotton Growers Association.

Moving toward the end of August, Friesen says he’s been seeing a lot of fields with blooms toward the tops of the plants — right where they should be for the time of year in order to produce a mature boll before a killing frost hits.

“It takes about 45 days to go from a white bloom to a mature boll and from the end of August, that puts you at mid-October,” Friesen says. “We can normally expect a killing freeze by the end of October. If you get into September for blooms, you are likely to run out of heat before they are fully mature. That means a loss in quality and a loss in pounds. It some years, we’ve been lucky to get a later freeze, but cooler weather can still mean the crop runs out of heat before it matures.”

He says he has a “home plot” experiment to track the crop’s performance by planting date, and his latest-emerging plants — those that came up after the June 19 rain — have just started to bloom.

“It’s behaving like a 25-year-old when it needs to be nearing retirement,” he says. “That’s not good, but how well it eventually does depends entirely on what kind of weather we get for the rest of the summer and fall, especially when killing freeze arrives. It needs a lot more heat and a freeze to be really late.”

While some fields are showing signs of severe water stress, others are looking really good, according to Friesen. He says plants are lush green with thick canopies, and that makes it a good idea for producers to consider adding a defoliant when they apply boll opener this season.

“I normally try to get the job done as cheaply as possible,” Friesen says, “but if your yield potential is really good and you have a lot of dense foliage, it could very well justify spending a little more to get those leaves off using a true defoliant such as Folex, with your normal rate of ethephon. You’ll still need a follow-up treatment of paraquat to dry it all down before harvest.”