October 10, 2009 - The weather forecast continues to show several days of sunny and warm conditions during the next 10 to 14 days with almost no risk of damaging freezes for cotton that is waiting to be defoliated.  The coldest temperatures are expected to occur next weekend when low temperatures could drop below 40 degrees into the upper 30's. 

As long as temperatures do not hit freezing conditions we should not see damage to cotton.  There is some idea that temperatures in the low 40's change the plant metabolism so that further advancements in maturity are extremely slow.  That is no big deal for our area since farmers are just waiting for favorable windows to finish defoliating in mid-October anyway. 

In my opinion, cotton has made some nice advancement in October, but by the end of next week, I would like to have all the cotton defoliated.  I see no advantage to waiting beyond the next warm spell that should occur at least by next Friday.  The top harvestable bolls appear to be close enough to maturity that after another 4 or 5 warm days, they will be mature enough to get open within several weeks after defoliation.

Peanut Frost Advisory to Cotton Damage
Yesterday, the Peanut Frost Advisory flagged this coming Wednesday (Oct. 14) with a frost risk.  Today that has been removed.  This is a conservative model designed to anticipate the worse case scenario since peanuts are so sensitive to frost.  It basically takes a freeze to damage cotton.  I would expect the chance of a freeze is extremely remote for next week.  However this is based on the available weather forecasts that change daily so it is advisable to monitor the updates.

Cotton Frost Advisory - No Frost expected for the next week.
Defoliation should focus on high rates of boll openers which has bee slow.  Higher water volumes (15 gpa+) are desirable in this bigger cotton.