I got some cotton seeds for Christmas (brown, white, and green), from Melvenea Hodges’ Traditions in Cloth website. This plant will grow some green cotton bolls, if all goes according to plan. Minnesota is not a historically optimal place for growing cotton, but I thought I’d give it a try.

The plants were about 3’ tall by the third week in July and were blooming away. A very gorgeous feature of these plants is that the flowers come out of the bud pink and then turn white as they open fully.

By September the bolls were ripening. The brown cotton was by far the most abundant; I only got a bit of the white and the green.

Not only were the brown bolls more abundant, they were faster to ripen and seem fuller and fluffier.

Now comes the job of separating the fibers from the seeds. It is easy and quite satisfying to pull a wad of cotton from the boll. Most of my bolls have four sections, but several have three or five. I hear that two sections is possible, as well.

This pile of fluff came from two bolls (8 sections). I counted about 10 seeds per section. The seeds look a lot like Four O’Clock seeds but are more irregularly shaped. And they like to keep some of the fiber attached to them. I’m going to plant more in the spring.

I planted brown and green seeds this spring. The green seedlings seem to be happier than the brown, which is a bit surprising, as the brown ones were much sturdier last year.