A band of storms overnight delivered much needed rain to Grant Borchardt’s dryland cotton crop at Tara.
A total of 40 millimetres covered the farming country and increased his hopes of achieving a reasonable summer cotton picking.
The Borchardt family planted 486 hectares of Bollgard 3 cotton in a double skip row planting configuration last October.
“This rainfall should help secure our cotton crops’ ability to reach a picking above a bale an acre,” Mr Borchardt said.
“We were lucky enough to receive 30mm of rain on the crop last week and that was starting to put some bulbs on the cotton plants.”
Overall, Mr Borchardt said this season had been very similar as the same period last year.
“We had a good spring and then we’ve had the heat in January, which is exactly like last year’s growing season,” he said.
“We had high hopes when the wet weather started early in spring, but this will be the fourth year in a row we have missed good summer rain.
“That’s negatively affecting our pasture the most and therefore our Merino sheep herd is doing it a bit tough at the moment.”
Before last night’s rainfall the Borchardt’s cotton crop had only received 50mm since it was planted.
“I’m finding cotton to be a fairly tough crop and the cotton plants aren’t likely to grown much higher than they are now, but the extra soil moisture will help a lot,” he said.
“I still have to talk with my agronomist to see what the rain will really mean for the cotton crop.”
The Borchardt family had fallowed the paddock, where the cotton is now planted, after a wheat crop harvest two years ago and decided cotton was the best choice to plant on the farming country this summer.
“The price of sorghum is low and mungbeans aren’t the most attractive option around here, so with cotton prices at $500 a bale it was an attractive crop to plant,” Mr Borchardt said.
“We have all the equipment to plant a cotton crop and get it to harvest, which helped us make the choice to plant it.”
Besides patchy rainfall, the biggest challenge for the cotton crop has been Mirid insect infestations.
“The Mirid pressure on the crop has been high due to the late winter and early spring rain,” he said.
Mr Borchardt is now hopeful of picking 1.5 bales of cotton per acre after the overnight rainfall.