September has not been kind to much of the cotton in North Carolina with rain, cloudy days and cools spells. Also much of the cotton is top crop heavy and was not mature enough to take advantage of the decent defoliation windows we had in September. Looking at the predicted weather at Rocky Mount, temperatures are less than ideal for defoliation, but we have some sunny days ahead and we need to think about using what we have. Look for warmer days with sunshine to maximize defoliant activity particularly boll openers.

You see we have a couple of warm days, with little chance of rain and with sunshine on the 12th and 13th. We also have decent temperatures from the 17th through the 21st but with less sunshine and increased levels of chance of rain. This period is not great, but is likely to be better than what conditions will follow. There is a lot of cotton with unopened top crop we need to get open so we recommend using high rates of boll openers.  For cotton with several upper bolls of questionable or borderline maturity, consider using a Finish/Terminate tankmixture.  Likewise, the activity of TDZ will be less and slower with nightime temperatures in the low 50's or high 40's, therefore consider switching to Ginstar/Adios/CutOut to properly address regrowth and defoliation.