Cotton, cotton, and more cotton!

Remember the cotton bolls I grew and harvested last fall?  Well, over the winter I "ginned" them by hand.....the pasta maker did not work, unfortunately..... and it is amazing how much cotton I now have from only 36 seeds planted last spring!  I will never ever need to buy cotton seeds again!

Cotton seeds from the 2013 harvest!

Here is my harvest of each of the four kinds of cotton that I planted:

This is the entire harvest spread out on my queen-sized bed, with cat and paperback book for comparison.
Keep in mind, I started out with only 36 seeds!

White.
I am not sure what type.  There are many and this one was
not labelled.

Sea Island Brown

Erlene's Green

Nankeen, not nearly the yield as the others.

I believe that I would have had a better yield of the Nankeen if I had not planted it so late.....several weeks after the others.  By the way, Nankeen cotton's color probably looks familiar to you.  It comes from India where it was commonly used for British soldiers' uniforms, and the name for those uniforms....."khakis"!  The draw was that it was cotton that didn't need to be dyed and it was cheaper than the white.  Because white cotton had a longer fiber staple and could be easily dyed in lovely colors, it was more expensive and desirable for commercial applications.

One interesting thing about my crop was that I didn't think what the outcome might be by planting the green, white, and brown right next to each other.  I watched the bees go in and out of the blossoms, still not realizing what might happen.  Then when I started "ginning" the cotton bolls, I noticed that cross-pollination had occurred, most evidently with the green and brown, which bloomed after most of the white had already started making bolls.  I saw several shades of brown that had crossed with the green, and many more shades of the green that had crossed with the brown and the white.  You could identify each of the crosses as either mainly green or mainly brown, and the green with brown was definitely a different color than the brown with green.  A blue-green and a reddish brown were also noticeable in more than one boll.  I saved some of the seeds of each color variation to plant for further exploration.

In this enlargement of the photo of my green cotton, the different shades of green are quite evident.

The ease with which the colors cross pollinated is why in some states and/or regions where white cotton is a commercial crop, you are prohibited from planting colored cotton.  Keep this in mind if you are thinking of planting cotton in your garden.  You can find out by simply calling your local extension agent.

Picking the seeds out by  hand was an adventure. The Sea Island brown was the easiest to pick, then Erlene's Green and the Nankeen.  Hardest of all was the white, which wanted to hang onto the seeds for dear life!  

You can see how relatively clean the Sea Island seeds are compared to the others.

The length of the staple was different in each variety as well.  The green and white were the longest, with the Nankeen being very short.  Not sure if this is due to my late planting of it, and therefore less time to develop in the boll, or if it is just the nature of this variety.

Although not a great photo, this shows the various staple lengths of the fibers by variety.

I found the green to be the softest of all, with the white coming in a close second in this category.  All in all, I was most impressed with the green.  I will try the Nankeen one more season to see if I like it any better, however, as it stands now I don't think I will like it enough to plant more of it after this year.

This year I will plant the different colors away from each other to lessen the chance of cross pollination.  At the same time, I am going to plant the seeds from several of the cross pollinated bolls in large pots, again away from the others and each other.  I would like to see if, for instance, the blue-green is viable in the seed, or if it will just revert to the original.  I would love to develop a blue-green cotton!  I also like the brownish green and the reddish brown.  Could I eventually produce a cotton more red than brown?!  Stay tuned....I am loving these possibilities!  I am a sucker for genetics.  At one point in my life, a very long time ago, I dreamed of being a research biologist.....

I spun up some of my harvest just to see what it was like and below are some labelled samples.  I can tell you that, at first, I felt like I was spinning "string" and it was not very exciting after years of spinning other, more "interesting" fibers like wool, llama, yak, buffalo, or silk.  So, I decided to blend it with another fiber.... llama in one case, and silk noils in another.  I really liked the latter!

As I spun the different yarns, however, I began to have a better appreciation of spinning cotton.  It can, and sometimes does, seem like spinning string (especially with the commercially prepared top that spins very smooth), but if you relax your control and let the cotton do what it wants, then the most wonderful lumps and bumps, and thick and thin places appear, and it begins to take on a really nice character that only cotton has.  I became more and more excited with each of my samples as I saw all the possibilities of spinning with cotton!

I will be trying my hand at spinning cotton this spring and summer and will keep you updated.  I really want to spin cotton for several reasons:  I live in a warmer climate where wool really isn't practical for the most part, cotton is a common crop here in the South and I can easily grow my own cotton source, and I like a challenge (sometimes!). I am also drawn to it because it was the fiber that Gandhi (of whom I am a great admirer) spun on his charkha during his civil disobedience movement.  I spin my cotton right now on my Ashford Joy or my Ashford Traditional wheels, but I would one day love to learn to spin it on a charkha of my own.  It is on my Bucket List!

Cotton must be processed in a different way compared to other fibers that we spinners enjoy spinning.  I will outline those steps in a future post, along with some processing and dyeing tips and tricks!

If you would like to grow some cotton of your own, please email me a request at llama_mama@msn.com with "cotton seeds" in the subject line, and I will get some to you at no charge.



Spring seems to have finally gotten here, and I am standing in High Cotton here on HeartSong Farm!