16 BULLETIN 1153, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



question of late thinning may be forced upon the farmer by b^ad 

 weather or other accidents that not infrequently interfere with the 

 work of thinning at the stage that he prefers. Too much rain, pres- 

 sure oi other farm work, or inabilit}' to obtain enough labor for 

 chopping at the proper time may bring the farmer to the necessity 

 of thinning his cotton late and still getting as large a crop as possible. 

 In such cases it is important to know that wide spacing is not ad- 

 visable and often is positively injurious to cotton that is thinned late. 



Late-planted cotton often shoots up rapidly to a height of a foot 

 or more before it can be chopped, and then a serious injury may be 

 done if the plants are spaced more than a few inches apart. Many 

 farmers suppose that such fields, because of the tendency to rank 

 growth in late plantings, should have wider spacing than cotton that 

 is planted and thinned early, but the practical need is to restrict the 

 growth and get a crop of bolls set as early as possible, especially 

 under weevil conditions. If the cotton is thinned late, so that the 

 vegetative branches are suppressed, the plants need not be more than 

 6 inches apart in the rows, and the largest yields are likely to be 

 secured from still closer spacing. 



As a general principle or rule, the longer thinning is deferred the 

 less thinning should be done. If the plants do not average less than 

 2 or 3 inches apart in the row, little or no advantage in yield should 

 be expected from thinning. Farmers who consider this too unrea- 

 sonable should at least try the experiment for themselves, since this 

 can be done with no expense or trouble by the simple expedient of 

 leaving some of their cotton without thinning when the stands are 

 not too heavy. 



Of course, good results are secured very often with early thinning 

 and wide spacing under the conditions of moderate growth that are 

 more likely to be encountered early in the season. Early planting 

 is the more necessary to insure good results with wide spacing, while 

 with late-planted cotton the precaution of closer spacing is the more 

 necessary, to avoid the production of large late-maturing plants, 

 which is the normal tendency of rank growth. If late cotton is 

 spaced widely and allowed to grow large, the prospects always are 

 poor, especially under weevil conditions, but the chances of a crop are 

 greatly improved by leaving the plants closer together. 



Late plantings are not advisable, of course, and usually suffer 

 much worse from the weevils, especially if they are close to early 

 plantings that breed weevils in advance. But late plantings may be 

 the only chance of a crop if early plantings are destroyed by bad 

 weather or other accidents, and an opportune period of dry weather, 

 by checking the weevils at the right time and restricting the growth 

 of the plants, may allow a late planting to set a good crop. In some 

 cases early plantings have been outgrown and outyielded by later 

 plantings in adjacent rows. This is explained by the checking and 

 stunting of the young plants by exposure to long periods of cold 

 weather or other unfavorable conditions early in the season, while 

 the later plantings have more uniformly favorable conditions. 



CONCLUSIONS. 



The expression "boll-weevil cotton" is used in Texas to describe 

 an abnormal luxuriance of the plants induced by the boll weevil. 

 In years when the weevils are abundant early in the season and 



