How to Landscape with Cotton Plants

If you would like to add an unusual landscaping plant to your yard, consider planting cotton. It is a beautiful plant, easy to care for, and kids love the cotton bolls at harvest time. It also adds a bird and bee friendly landscaping plant that feeds the bees and keeps the birds warm.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A long growing season
• A warm to hot climate
• Reasonably fertile soil
• Cotton seeds
• Irrigation or sprinklers

1. Dig up a spot in your yard that gets plenty of sunshine. Cotton loves heat and sun, and it will thrive best along south or west walls. Add about an inch of compost, and dig it well into the soil. Water the soil down for a few days before planting the seeds.
2. Using a sharp knife, scratch the surface of the cotton seeds that you will be planting. Cotton seeds have a tough exterior shell, and if you break through the shell, even with a tiny nick, it will absorb water and come up much faster.
3. Plant the seeds about an inch deep, water them well, and make sure the soil is damp, not wet, while they germinate.
4. Once the cotton plants are up, water them a few times a week if you live in a hot dry climate like those found in the southwest, or less frequently if you live in a more humid climate, like those found in the southeast.
5. Feed the cotton an all purpose fertilizer once a month. Since cotton is a flowering plant and produces a fruit, it needs a steady supply of potassium to continue blooming and set fruit.
6. When the bolls have ripened, they pop open, and the cotton becomes visible. It is still not ready for harvesting, however; wait until it becomes fluffy and the stem of the boll comes off the plant easily.
7. When it is ripe, the cotton can be used to decorate any number of things, and the seeds can be harvested for next year's crop of cotton.

Tips & Warnings

• If you let your cotton stay in the yard through the winter without picking the cotton, the birds will pick away at it to make nests with the fluffy, warm cotton.
• Watching the birds harvest the bolls is as much fun as growing the cotton.
• Some cotton plants have sharp bolls, so watch your fingers when picking out the cotton from the boll.