The temperatures look good for the rest of the cotton planting in 2026. A lot of fields are drying up with rains predicted for this weekend. Growers should be careful about planting to deep to try to reach moisture. The best chance of success is to plant shallow into dry soil in these conditions. Planting deep (greater than 0.75") only places the seed in marginal moisture at best, which may be enough to sprout seed but is often insufficient for emergence. Likewise, deep planting only prolongs the time to emergence and adds additional stress to developing seedlings. Planting too deeply prior to reach moisture could result in poor stands, especially if we get some hard packing rain on soils that tend to crust. Planting shallow (0.5" or as shallow as possible while still covering seed sufficiently with soil) into very dry soil allows for rapid emergence once rains arrive, and cotton seed can sit there for quite a while to wait on a rain.

The insurance cut-off for cotton is May 25. Some growers may want to keep planting past that date. There is a 1% reduction in insurance for each of the 5 days following May 25. With the increase in cotton prices growers might want to stretch cotton planting into this period. When we look at planting date studies, yield does not change much from late April through the first week in June. However, it is important to note that management practices should be very timely for cotton planted in late May through the first week of June, as we have reduced flexibility to make up for minor losses throughout the season. We typically see a drastic decrease in yield potential when cotton is planted sometime after the first week in June in most years.