In High Cotton

Have you ever grown cotton?  Not me -- well, until this year.  In June I went to a Master Gardener program at Henrietta Creek Orchards in North Tarrant County, and I was given some cotton seeds.   So I planted them in my garden, and lo and behold, they grew!   The seeds germinated in about a week!  

This picture was taken in July about a month after planting.

The cotton plant continued to grow... and then it bloomed!

I think the foliage and blooms look somewhat like a hibiscus.   

It is a very pretty plant, and it never wilted even on the hottest of days.

  

And then came the cotton boll (a/k/a seed pod)

In the blazing heat of August, the seed continued to mature...

 until September when the seed pod broke open to reveal exactly what

I put in the ground back in June!

Each boll contains 20 to 40 cotton seeds

(So I'll have plenty to plant again next spring!)

 

I wear clothes made of cotton, I put cottonseed meal in my compost pile to crank up the heat (it's a high nitrogen source when I don't have enough "green stuff"), and I add cotton burr compost to my soil to beef up the organic material in the soil.   All that...and a beautiful plant!   Isn't gardening fun :-)

Until next time...

Happy gardening!

Toni :-)