Over the past couple weeks, I've been inundated with questions concerning both plant bugs and stink bugs.  I think it's critical to clarify a few issues.

First, when deciding to spray for plant bugs, square retention or presence of plant bugs should not be used alone to trigger a spray.  These MUST be used in tandem.  Square loss can be caused by lots of environmental factors (e.g., extreme heat, drought soil, cloudy weather) as well as plant bugs.  So you need to scout and determine that you have a threshold level of plant bugs AND square retention below 80% on the upper two or three top positions before you spray.  Scouting recommendations and thresholds for cotton pre-bloom can be found here.  If we spray unnecessarily in cotton we can expect to battle pests all season.

Secondly, we do not need to worry about stink bugs in cotton until bolls are present on the plant.  Stink bugs are present in cotton and they will need to be treated this year.  However, stink bugs cannot cause any impacts on plant height, height to node ratio, square retention, or flower initiation.  Put simply, stink bugs should not be treated in cotton before bolls are there.