SPECIAL EDITION
Grower’s Cotton Pre Plant Seminar

The attached flyer contains the agenda for this year’s Cotton Pre Plant Seminar program. We want to make certain that every cotton producer in the LRGV will come out to listen for the latest in technological information regarding cotton production in the LRGV. Additionally, there will be the Lower Rio Grande Valley Cotton and Grain Producers Association annual meeting during the lunch hour. Not only will CEU’s be available, but lunch will be provided as well. We believe this year’s program will be the best yet with some very useful information for what we all hope will be a successful season. We look forward to seeing you at the Cotton Pre Plant Seminar on Thursday, January 30, at the Texas Agricultural Research and Extension Center’s Hoblitzelle Auditorium in Weslaco. Registration begins at 8:00 am. See you there.

Field moisture in reasonably good in most area fields as of this writing. Some fields were being pre-plant irrigated to prepare for seed corn plantings, but most fields appear to have adequate moisture to make a good stand of a crop for the first time in a number of years.

Corn and grain sorghum plantings began in the last few days and will likely continue, weather permitting. No cotton can legally be planted before February 1. We would recommend that no cotton be planted before the middle of February. Ideally, we would like to see all of the cotton planted in as narrow a time frame as possible. The compactness of the planting window will spread boll weevils in the area around uniformly on fields. Also, if all fields were to be planted in a narrow and uniform time window, all fields could end the season together and thus prevent such massive weevil populations from destroying the late fields, because there would not be any “late” fields. Planting uniformity also would lend itself to more uniform stalk destruction at the end of the season and further limit boll weevil population increases and escapes to “overwintered” habitat.

Boll weevil traps being deployed by individual growers around the LRGV have indicated a mixed bag of weevils with one report indicating as many as 12 weevils per trap average over several traps in an area. Consistently warmer weather will likely find more weevils moving around the LRGV. Be prepared to use overwintered weevil sprays where either history or current weevil trapping indicates that weevils are active. Well timed overwintered weevil treatments can be very effective in reducing weevil egg laying in the earliest of squares and thus significantly delay boll weevil increases later in the season.