Post by PapaVic on Dec 8, 2008 14:10:22 GMT -5
Another job we had at the experimental farm was to chop cotton. The planters set the seed about one per inch or two. When the seedlings were up about three or four inches tall, we'd take a hoe and walk down the rows and chop out spaces between the plants two hoe blades wide leaving a clump of three or so seedlings every eight or ten inches apart.
Part of the testing also included herbicide effectiveness. Each plot of test cotton was one acre in size. They would treat each acre plot with a different kind or a different concentration of herbicide. Then they would take four of us out with one college student and the college student would time us with a stop watch to see how long it took us to chop all the weeds out of each acre plot. Everything was cross referenced. Like they would use the same variety of cotton in sandy loam and in gumbo soil and the same herbicide in each type of soil, and they would time us in one combination of conditions in the morning and the same combinations some other day in the afternoon. Whatever took us the longest to chop out the weeds was the least effective herbicide and so forth.
The absolute best weed treatment was "herbicidal oil" (carbontetrachloride) applied when the cotton seedlings were less than 3 inches tall and hadn't yet developed "bark." When the seedlings were like that, the carbon tet would slide off the stems and only kill the weeds. Unfortunately, it was found that carbon tet is highly carcenagenic. Hahahahaha. The second best treatment was butane torches mounted on cultivator rigs and aimed so they wouldn't scald the young plants ... only burn the weeds within a few inches of the plants.
Another assignment was reserved for rainy days and it was the absolute worst of all. They'd put each of us in a small corn crib like room with a couple of 50-pound burlap bags full of weed seeds. Yeah, they actually harvested weed seeds and we had to sort them out by type.
We had tall stacks of brass wire mesh sifters and you had to dump a couple of cups full of weed seeds at a time into the top screen and sift them down through the stack. Then you had to take the stack apart and take each mesh size separately and pick out the strays and only save the particular type of weed seed that was the target of each mesh size ... like Johnson Grass, Morning Glory, etc.
The boss would come around to collect the weed seeds periodically and he'd inspect each beecker full of seeds and if he saw too many stray seeds in there, he'd dump the batch back into a burlap bag. Shit.
Anyway, they took the seeds to the greenhouse and actually grew pure lines of weeds to test herbicides on. Dig it?
The best job was wrapping cotton blossoms for inbred seed. But that only happened certain weeks of the summer and it was all over.
And as to rice growing ... yeah they grew rice down in Stoneville area too ... mostly on gumbo soil (called Buckshot by the locals) because that is the rottenest kind of black clay there is and only good for rice. Now all those rice paddies are converted into catfish ponds.
Bill
Part of the testing also included herbicide effectiveness. Each plot of test cotton was one acre in size. They would treat each acre plot with a different kind or a different concentration of herbicide. Then they would take four of us out with one college student and the college student would time us with a stop watch to see how long it took us to chop all the weeds out of each acre plot. Everything was cross referenced. Like they would use the same variety of cotton in sandy loam and in gumbo soil and the same herbicide in each type of soil, and they would time us in one combination of conditions in the morning and the same combinations some other day in the afternoon. Whatever took us the longest to chop out the weeds was the least effective herbicide and so forth.
The absolute best weed treatment was "herbicidal oil" (carbontetrachloride) applied when the cotton seedlings were less than 3 inches tall and hadn't yet developed "bark." When the seedlings were like that, the carbon tet would slide off the stems and only kill the weeds. Unfortunately, it was found that carbon tet is highly carcenagenic. Hahahahaha. The second best treatment was butane torches mounted on cultivator rigs and aimed so they wouldn't scald the young plants ... only burn the weeds within a few inches of the plants.
Another assignment was reserved for rainy days and it was the absolute worst of all. They'd put each of us in a small corn crib like room with a couple of 50-pound burlap bags full of weed seeds. Yeah, they actually harvested weed seeds and we had to sort them out by type.
We had tall stacks of brass wire mesh sifters and you had to dump a couple of cups full of weed seeds at a time into the top screen and sift them down through the stack. Then you had to take the stack apart and take each mesh size separately and pick out the strays and only save the particular type of weed seed that was the target of each mesh size ... like Johnson Grass, Morning Glory, etc.
The boss would come around to collect the weed seeds periodically and he'd inspect each beecker full of seeds and if he saw too many stray seeds in there, he'd dump the batch back into a burlap bag. Shit.
Anyway, they took the seeds to the greenhouse and actually grew pure lines of weeds to test herbicides on. Dig it?
The best job was wrapping cotton blossoms for inbred seed. But that only happened certain weeks of the summer and it was all over.
And as to rice growing ... yeah they grew rice down in Stoneville area too ... mostly on gumbo soil (called Buckshot by the locals) because that is the rottenest kind of black clay there is and only good for rice. Now all those rice paddies are converted into catfish ponds.
Bill
