For the earlier planted cotton, this crop continues to load up very nicely, but it is going to have to have this rain this weekend in order to produce an above average yield that we are shooting for. Some of the later planted cotton may be able to hold off another week to ten days. The shorter water cotton needs it now, we saw a lot of small bolls being shed this week

Stink bug numbers are starting to build again and are being found in a much larger area this week. 47% of the fields that were checked had at least one stink bug in them. I’m not in panic mode yet or suggesting we spray everything, but keep an eye out. One stink bug in a field is not a concern. I’m more interested in the fact that the number of fields with stink bugs is increasing so much. Hopefully we can spread them all out and 1-2 per field will not effect our yields. There are several fields that I am going to follow up on this week that had more than 1 per field or more than 1 per spot checked. There is one field in each region with 3 fields in region 3, south of 2401 and east of 137. Hopefully you won’t here from me.

Spider mites have started showing up in cotton this week along some of these very dusty, powdery turn-rows. Beneficials are doing an excellent job of controlling mites at this time after they get started. You have to make sure you still have mites before you spray, don’t just spray because of webbing.