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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-971
Cotton Pima
Gossypium barbadense
Pima cotton is grown for its extra-long-staple fibre, the strong, fine fiber spun into high-count yarns for fine textiles and worked into rope, carpet and surgical dressing. The seed presses into a cooking oil and grinds into flour, and crushed seed meal feeds cattle, but every food and feed use runs into gossypol - a natural toxin concentrated in this cotton more than most - so seed for people or for pigs and poultry needs a low-gossypol variety or dehulling first. It is a frost-tender tropical shrub that needs a long, hot, dry season to open its bolls, which is why it is grown as an irrigated one-season crop wherever winters freeze rather than as the small perennial tree it becomes in the frost-free tropics.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 10–12
- Soil
- Sand · Loam
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moist
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 5.2–7.2
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 6.6–9.8 ft
- Mature spread
- 8.2 ft
- Plant spacing
- 3.9–5.9 ft
- Root type
- Tap
- Spread pattern
- None
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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