Sounds logical: plant more plants to get more cotton.

If you’re trying to increase your crop production there’s one obvious way: plant more plants. On the other hand, if your available acreage is limited, then the only way to plant more plants is to crowd them a bit closer together. That’s the idea behind ultra-narrow row cotton planting. With narrow rows, your plants can be equally far from plants in the same row as they are from plants in the neighboring row, so your plants are placed in a grid pattern. But putting more plants closer together might also limit the growth and production of each individual plant. So to figure out if it will work, you need to try it. In 1999, researchers at the Safford Agricultural Center did just that in 1999. They evaluated the yield by weighing their crop on a platform scale. So far, it looks as if there is no increase in yield with high-density planting.

For further information visit cals.arizona.edu.

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