After the cotton has been harvested in the fall, the stalks are cut down and turned under the soil. In the spring, the land is plowed again and the soil is broken up and made into rows. Other times, cotton is planted on flat land. Farmers in south Texas plant cotton as early as February. In Missouri and other northern parts of the Cotton Belt, they plant their cotton as late as June. The Cotton Belt is a strip of land across the United States where cotton is the major crop.

Seeding is done with mechanical planters and covers as many as ten to twelve rows at a time. The planter opens a small furrow in each row, drops in the correct amount of seed, covers them, and packs dirt on top of them. The seed is planted at uniform intervals in either small clumps ("hill-dropped") or singularly ("drilled") dropped into the the soil. Machines called cultivators are used to uproot weeds and grass, which battle with the cotton plant for soil nutrients, sunlight, and water. Uprooting the weeds and grass also helps to retain the soil's moisture.

About after two months after planting, flower buds called squares appear on the cotton plants. In another three weeks, the blossoms open. Their petals change from creamy white, to yellow, to pink and finally dark red. After three days, they wither and fall, leaving green pods which are called cotton bolls

Inside the boll, which is shaped like a mini football, moist fibers form and push the newly formed seeds outward. As the boll ripens, it stays green. The fibers continue to expand under the warm sun. Finally, they split the boll apart, and the fluffy cotton comes forth. It looks like cotton candy, only white. When the cotton plant is defoliated or has been killed by frost, the boll turns brown. Defoliation is the process whereby a plant is sprayed with a chemical. The chemical causes the leaves of the plant to fall off so that the leaves do not get caught up in the cotton picker.

Machines now gather cotton fifty times faster then workers who used to harvest the crop with their hands. At one time in the United States big cotton plantations covered much of the South. Black people, slaves, were brought from Africa to the United States to work on the cotton plantations.

History of Cotton Importance of Cotton Where Cotton is Grown How Cotton is Grown

How Cotton is Spun and Woven How Cotton is Ginned and Marketed