ated eeee*y 
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Washington, D. C. v April, 1927 
COTTON-SPACING EXPERIMENTS AT GREENVILLE, TEX. 
By Homrer C. McNamara, Assistant Agronomist, Office of Cotton, Rubber, and 
Other Tropical Plants, Bureau of Plant Industry 
CONTENTS 
Paze Page 
EN CHO GH CULO Te se ee 1 Chopping and its relation to yields__________ 4] 
Spacing experiments in 1921________________- 4 | Relation of spacing to flower production __-__ 42 
Spacing experiments in 1922____..._..___-___- 5 | Relation of spacing to boll and lint characters 44 
Spacing experiments in 1923_.._-_-__._.._.-_-- 10 | Relation of spacing to weevil resistance_____ 46 
Spacing experiments in 1924____._______--___ AoE [ELC ONCLUSIONS S: 2s Ais ee Ss ae eee 2 SARS 46 
Spacing experiments in 1925___..._...._--.-- 29 MIG CORA GUE CIs yee oe en eee en eee AT 
Summary of yields from spacing experiments_ 39 
INTRODUCTION 
Cotton-spacing experiments were conducted at the United States 
Cotton-Breeding Field Station at Greenville, Tex., from 1921 to 1925, 
inclusive. These experiments showed a definite tendency toward 
ereater yields from plants spaced less than 12 inches apart in the 
row, and the highest yields were obtained from rows that were not 
thinned or chopped but left in the original stands with the plants 
averaging 2.to 4 inches apart. Within certain limits there seems to 
be a general positive correlation between the number of plants per 
acre and yield. Although there is undoubtedly a limit to the num- 
ber of plants that can grow in a row and produce more cotton than 
plants spaced 12 inches apart, this limit has not been determined 
for Greenville conditions, even with heavier rates of planting than 
are usually employed. 
The experiments included a wide range of different stands and 
spacings, planted on the well-known black land or Houston clay of 
Texas. In connection with these experiments at the Greenville sta- 
tion, two experiments were conducted on a farm near Campbell, 
in the same county, on a fine sandy loam soil characteristic of the 
small stream bottoms of eastern Texas. 
In the 1925 tests cotton was planted at the rate of 45 pounds of 
seed per acre and left unthinned, which gave an average distance of 
~ 23911274 -—1 Tas 
