Saturday, September 22, 2007

Field of Cotton

Here's the plant where bluejeans, t-shirts, towels and bed linens begin. Cotton grows on stalks and is ready for harvest in the fall. The white fiber matures inside a green boll that gradually turns brown and woody. Eventually, it bursts out of the boll and is ready for picking.
There isn't as much cotton around here this year due to drought and a switch by some farmers to peanuts and corn.
If you want to know how much cotton it takes to produce a suit, a pair of jeans or a towel, check out this link.

13 comments:

Victoria said...

I love this shot! That cotton seems to go on forever...

GMG said...

Wow! Great shot. Have never seen a cotton fielsd this way...

isa said...

Looks like an early snowfall on tall plants ;-)
I wonder, how many plants it takes to make a towel?

Janet said...

Hi. I am not sure how many plants it takes to make a towel, but weight-wise, approximately 10 ounces of cotton will make a towel. Each cotton bale weighs an average of 500 pounds. Thanks for asking!

Z said...

I'd been waiting for this photo since you posted the one of the single boll. Quite an impressive sight!

I read Grisham's The Painted House some time ago, and that formed my image, rightly or incorrectly, of old-time cotton farms.

Z said...

Back to respond to your comment on my blog. All the rooftop photos are from Besserstein, the hill that sits overlooking Villigen. I go up to the top once in a while, and always enjoy the photo ops.

Funny, The Painted House is the only Grisham that I've read! :-) Maybe you won't like it, because my understanding is that it's completely different from his usual work.

Susan said...

Your photos give a wonderful feel of the old South.

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Very interesting! Not something you see 'round these parts much!

CaBaCuRl said...

I love how a photo like this provokes so many varied responses. We grow cotton in Australia,too, but it has been badly hit by the on-going drought here.There is quite a lot of antagonism towards the cotton-growing industry because of its high uses of water and chemicals.

WichitaKsDailyPhoto said...

Neat photo of a field of cotton. It's amazing to think of pillow cases getting their "roots" in a cotton field. I'll sleep differently, tonight. ;)

jeremyDP said...

very nice shot.

Mike's Travels said...

Really interesting. Seems weird ,the way it grows like that.

Anonymous said...

The most amazing thing to note about cotton fields is the change in height over the years. When I was a kid, the cotton came up to a man's chest. Current cotton crops are only two or three feet tall. The taller cotton was picked by hand back in the dark ages, and the much shorter cotton is picked by machine.