I never picked cotton
But my mother did and my brother did
And my sister did and my daddy died young
Workin' in the coal mine
(Actually it was my grandmother did and her brother did growing up in Arkansas)
picking cotton and chopping cotton are two different things have done both, picked watermelons also.
Yep. What folks call chopping cotton is hoeing the weeds out of the rows of cotton.
Chopping cotton and hoeing cotton are two different things. Chopping cotton is done first.... that is when you thin the plants. Hoeing cotton is getting the weeds out. You only chop cotton once, but you usually had to hoe the cotton at least twice and sometimes 3 times. Picked cotton by hand, too.
We never did that in N. Tx dryland Cotton farming. Rainfall was so scarce that we never had to worry about “thinning the plants”. But the weeds here grow big with little or no rainfall whatsoever. So we were always hoeing rows of cotton.
Thank God we never had to pick cotton, though. Dad used to tell ya how good we had it, since he had to pick cotton as a kid. 🤠
I wouldn't know about cotton farming in Tx., but in N. La. granddad planted the cotton close so he could make sure he got a good stand. Then when the plants were a couple inches tall we had to thin it or chop the cotton. After that, we had to hoe the cotton, remove the weeds, a couple of times. By then the cotton was tall enough that when he plowed the middles, he'd throw dirt onto the row and cover any grass. I remember one year Granddad planted some cotton that got close to 6' tall. Dont know what kind it was, but he only planted that variety one time. Mostly the cotton was 3'-4' tall.
