From Cotton Seed Distributors
Web on Wednesday

Bill Arthur, a Darling Downs irrigator, talks about his experience with growing irrigated double skip cotton. 

Bill, you grew irrigated double skip row cotton two seasons ago. How did it go?

Yes pretty well Craig. The stuff that we managed to give two irrigations to sort of went around 2.2/ 2.25 bales per acre. Other stuff that we only managed one on went just under 2, around 1.8/1.9 bales per acre.

And how was the quality?

Quality was fine. That was our main concern and one of the main reasons we went to double skip in an irrigated situation. We didn’t have enough water to plant solid and with the discounts around these days it just made more sense for us to go double skip and guarantee our quality with what limited water we had.

What have been the main areas, the key areas that you’ve had to concentrate on with double skip irrigated cotton?

Probably the tendency for a bigger bush and also your weed control in your skip. They’re the main areas that we were concerned about.

So the cotton you’ve grown two seasons ago, you didn’t plant any cotton last year with the water situation and this year so all the stuff this year would be on the fallow obviously?

Yes it was all fallowed and it got away to a pretty good start actually.

Looking at Bollgard® II cotton you’ve got a couple of different varieties here this year compared to conventional or growing with conventional. Do you think it’s going to be easy to grow Bollgard® II cotton under a double skip situation?

It certainly is, you just look at this little crop here. It’s loaded with fruit, it’s compact, it hasn’t tended to run away at all and at this stage I don’t even know if we need to pix it.

Where as, probably, the conventional you may have to put some pix on that just to hold it back?

Yes at the moment you know, we’ve had some pretty good rain as you know and definitely the 80 sort of is getting a bit toppy at the moment and probably should have been pixed but just didn’t coincide well with insect spray so yes, certainly the next one will have pix in it.

Looking at the fertilizer program in this double skip situation, what sort of program have you followed?

Generally we’ve cut our nitrogen rates back of course. We just take our soil tests and I think this field had 100 units under it and it’s obviously enough at this stage.

Have you been able to achieve much savings in water use?

Well we haven’t had the water to start with but I don’t know if we save much water; well certainly we do save water but what it does, it lets us grow a quality crop with less water.

Because your situation here being on one metre beds you’ve really got to water virtually every furrow so you’re watering probably 100% of the country but being in a double skip the cotton is utilizing that water a lot better across the whole skip as well?

Yes, that’s right. That creates a small problem, we water down between the rows but we still water the skip as well and come irrigation time generally the furrow in the skip, timing wise it doesn’t go through even, it’ll go through a bit quicker. So that’s one hassle that we’ve got but that’s not too bad generally.

What are your thoughts on a grower planting solid in a limited water situation and then deciding well, you know I’m not going to have enough water and then ploughing cotton out. What are the key things to look at there?

I think the idea is fine but you’ve got to have a definite cut off in mind and stick with it. There’s no point in trying to hang on that bit too long and stressing the crop because you’re no better off than where you were. You know, you might as well leave it solid but yep, be disciplined and have your cut off date in mind and do it and I think the strategy is fine other wise just plant double skipped to start with.

Go right from the start double skipped, not be tempted to sort of stretch it too long and the crop getting too stressed?

That’s right.

Given the recent rain we’ve had here on the Downs and in a lot of other areas, you’re pretty confident the crop will get through OK now?

Yes, this year is sort of almost in the bag as far as moisture wise and getting through. Next year we’ll have the same dilemma in our situation unless the river keeps running of course but we’ve always got a limited irrigation so we’ll see how the varieties go this year, particularly Bollgard and make a decision next year as to whether we stick with our double skip configuration or go back to solid.

With the season sort of a fair way through now and looking towards the crop cutting out through to defoliation and picking, what are the key areas you’ll keep in mind there, setting the crop us for finishing?

Well we don’t want the crop to get, particularly the conventional, we don’t want it to get any bigger than what it is, so pix will pay an important role in keeping the bush size down there. That’ll be about it, hopefully we haven’t got too much fertilizer under it and it cuts out OK.

And given your experiences before and this year, you’d be confident in looking at double skip again if the situation arose?

Definitely, and particularly as I said before with the discounts getting more savage it just makes common sense to me to sort of keep the quality up there and if that means if water limits or runs the risk of quality problems, you’re better off just doing a skip configuration.