The Cotton Project

I took a serious interest in growing cotton and learning to spin it in 2011. I had grown a few cotton plants at a time before, but that year I planted an 80 square foot bed of Nankeen Brown and 22 square feet of Erlene’s Green. The cotton beds were about 100 feet apart. My first weaving project, a nametag, used cotton from the 2011 harvest and in the photo you can see the brown and green I grew. The white was from cotton I grew in the late 1990s. I cropped this image of the nametag from a photo taken by Mary Delicate, while I was wearing it at a VABF conference. A nametag might seem like an unlikely first weaving project, but I made it to wear at my spinning group meetings and have had fun with it elsewhere. It has come in handy to document those early colors. Although my records show the brown variety was Nankeen, that has been called into question recently since, apparently, Nankeen Brown has fuzzy seeds and my brown has naked seeds. Learn more about that at Seed Conundrum.

My cotton varieties were much closer than the recommended distance for avoiding cross pollination. The crossing was not reflected in the fiber that year from the parent plants, but held within the seeds. Some plants would have been pollinated by those of the same variety, but others would have been touched by pollen from the other variety. The plants that grew from those cross-pollinated seeds would be the F1 generation.

You have probably seen varieties designated as F1 in seed catalogs. That is always an indication that it is a hybrid. With hybrids, the parents are from different varieties of the same crop, and their offspring (F1 generation), although a mixture of genes with loads of potential, produce a predictable crop. Hybridization is done to produce the special qualities that can be found, and predicted, in that F1 generation. It is when you move beyond the F1 that things get exciting.

In 2012 I grew cotton from the 2011 harvest. The seeds for the green cotton were fuzzy and the seeds for the brown were naked. The green and brown colors of cotton that I grow are faint at harvest, deepening to their ultimate color once the skeins are scoured by boiling in soapy water after spinning. Since I was not aware of the extent of the crossing, I didn’t examine the fiber from each bed, considering everything from the green bed green and everything from the brown bed brown. I would have had to look closely to distinguish the difference in color within each bed when the fiber was all mixed together. In the photos, the color looks evident because it has already been sorted.

Part of the 2014 Green bed harvest.

I was spinning the cotton off the seed, so I didn’t see the seed until the fiber was already on my spindle. Examining the seeds helps determine differences. Once I scoured the spun yarn and the colors popped, I could see how much crossing had occurred. The vest I made in 2015 contained harvests from my 2012 and 2013 green cotton beds. It made for a wonderful pattern and made me think about what was happening with the seeds.

Part of the 2014 Brown bed harvest.

In 2014 I planted brown and green cotton seeds saved from the 2011 and 2012 harvests. In 2015 and 2016 I grew Red Foliated White cotton only. I decided to study my 2014 harvest by closely examining the seeds and fiber from the green and brown beds. The fiber from the green bed was either green or light brown and the seeds were all fuzzy. The fiber from the brown bed was brown or light brown, with the darker brown having naked seeds and the lighter brown having fuzzy seeds. It appeared that what had crossed expressed itself as light brown, whether in the green bed or the brown bed. Apparently, brown is the dominant color. The green cotton had a more silky feel than the brown and that showed up some in the light brown fiber. The feel of the fiber helped me separate the brown bed harvest. Next, I wanted to see what would happen if I grew out these four sets of seeds.

I enlisted the help of my daughter, Betsy, daughter-in-law, Stephanie, and friends Molly, Susan, and Margaret. Betsy had seeds from the brown bed with the dark brown fiber (B/B), Stephanie grew out seeds from the brown bed with the light brown fiber (B/b), Molly and Margaret grew out seeds from the green bed that produced green fiber (G/G) and Susan grew seeds from the green bed that produced light brown fiber (G/b). I asked them to grow out about 10-12 plants for me. Some grew more than that, and some grew less. None of them are spinners or have any other interest in cotton other than joining in the adventure with me. I have wonderful family and friends!

Most likely this was the F2 generation, but some could be F3. What Betsy grew, B/B, was uniformly dark brown fiber with naked seeds. Stephanie had light brown and dark brown fiber, all with fuzzy seeds. Surprisingly, she also had four bolls with white fiber! Although they just look dark and fuzzy now, the lint on the seeds of these white bolls definitely looked green at harvest.

Harvest from Molly and Margaret (G/G). we were expecting mostly green fiber.

I thought that the plants with fiber that was definitely dark brown or green had not crossed. That was apparently so with Betsy’s harvest, but not so with Molly’s and Margaret’s (G/G). They had fewer plants, but nevertheless, I was expecting green and instead, got light brown to tan, with only a very small amount of green. Green is definitely recessive and elusive.

Susan’s harvest (G/b) was sorted into 9 colors/shades.

Susan (G/b) had a very interesting harvest with the most variation of green and brown and some of her colors were quite dark when scoured. Although most of her harvest had fuzzy seeds, she had some medium brown with naked seeds. I am sorting the colors of each harvest and spinning them separately, then scouring to find the true colors. In my garden this year I am growing the greens. I have pulled two from Susan’s harvest, the small bit from Molly and Margaret, and I will be including Erlene’s Green from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I’m looking forward to seeing what I will get, knowing full well they will be crossing with each other.

My wonderful crew is helping me again this year. Stephanie is growing out the white cotton. With green fuzzy seeds, we’re thinking she will get more than just white fiber. Molly and Margaret are each growing the light brown/tan fiber from their harvests. There should be green in there somewhere.  Susan is growing seeds from the plants she grew that yielded silky brown fiber and had green fuzzy seeds. Betsy had to bow out of The Cotton Project this year because she is growing cotton for Southern Exposure. They asked her to grow Nankeen Brown, which is how we realized there was a question with naked vs. fuzzy seeds for that variety.

Sally Fox of Viriditas Farm has been researching colored cotton since the 1980’s and has been breeding for longer staple length and color. She says she has some F19 generations of cotton that haven’t settled yet and still yield surprises. We are having a good time with this and, from looking at Sally’s experience, it appears the adventure could continue for quite some time.

 

4/2/2021 edited to correct a date

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Seed Conundrum

tomato seeds–l to r, Long Tom, Barnes Mountain Red, Cherry

Seeds aren’t always what we think they are. They are part of our world, which is always changing, so it is logical to think that seeds change over time, also. We can take great care to keep seed varieties pure, or mostly so, and then find out things happened that we didn’t expect. That’s life.

We can’t always tell by just looking at seeds how they will express themselves. Here are seeds for three varieties of tomatoes I am planting this year. One is a cherry tomato that is large by today’s cherry tomato standards, red, and has a real tomato taste, not sweet like the newer varieties. I used to grow these for restaurant sales more than 20 years ago. One variety is for Long Tom tomatoes. Long Tom is a very meaty variety that grows to an oblong shape weighing about 4 ounces. It is great for drying and has few seeds.

The third variety is for a tomato I call Barnes Mountain Red. It is a large red meaty tomato with great taste and good for all uses. A few years ago my daughter, Betsy, received seeds for Barnes Mountain Pink to grow out for a seed company. Unbeknownst to the seed company, the variety wasn’t stable and the seeds produced yellow, pink, and red tomatoes. The seeds for the pinks went back to the seed company with the instability noted. Betsy loved the yellows and saved the seed, wanting to work with it when time allowed. I am not big on off-colored tomatoes, but loved the red ones, so I saved the seed from some of those. I was happy they produced red tomatoes for me. (Many of the varieties in my garden have some sort of story connected to them.) Each of these tomato varieties is much different than the others, but you can’t tell that by looking at their seeds, except that there are always fewer seeds from the Long Toms and in this photo they look a bit darker.

You know that I have been working with cotton, specifically Nankeen Brown and Erlene’s Green. Betsy grows seeds for four seed companies and this year the seeds she agreed to grow for Southern Exposure Seed Exchange included Nankeen Brown cotton. I happened to be around when she opened the box of seeds she had received from Southern Exposure and had the opportunity to take a peek at the cotton, expecting to see dark seeds with no lint, otherwise known as naked seeds. To my surprise, they were fuzzy!

Nankeen Brown Cotton seeds–from Southern Exposure on left, my seeds (now called Sunfield Brown) on right.

I first grew what I know as Nankeen Brown in my garden in 2005 and saved the seed. I still have the seed container labeled 2005 in my stash. I didn’t grow them out again until 2011 when I also grew Erlene’s Green. There was eventually some crossing that I will tell you about when I write about my Cotton Project. Every year since, the darkest brown fiber had seeds that were naked. If the fiber was lighter brown, it had crossed with the green and the seeds were fuzzy. To my best recollection, I bought the seeds from Southern Exposure and even remember there was a story about a Nankeen shirt connected with that variety.

The folks at Southern Exposure are friends of mine, so I contacted them questioning what they had sent. Anything they could find on Nankeen Brown indicated it had fuzzy seeds. They didn’t start working with Sea Island Brown, which has naked seeds, until 2008, so I wouldn’t have gotten those seeds. Although I keep many records, including seed invoices, I can’t seem to find the file from 2005. What a conundrum! Until now I would have sworn I was working with Nankeen Brown and it had naked seeds. I don’t know what happened there, but life goes on. I am renaming my brown cotton Sunfield Brown, since Sunfield is the name of our very small farm.

Most varieties don’t expose themselves like cotton does. Visual inspection doesn’t reveal differences. Seed companies do their best to make sure the seeds you receive are what they say they are. I have heard stories about gardeners having ordered seeds that grew out to be different than advertised. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it happens. The companies are dependent on their growers, who farm in a variety of areas, most likely with different soils and more or less a different climate than you are gardening in. I’m sure the growers work to ensure cross pollination doesn’t happen. However, anything can happen from seed, to plant, to seed that is distributed—and it does. Of course, this doesn’t explain what happened in the cotton mix-up. What a conundrum about that cotton.

We can get tied up in names of varieties, complete with detailed descriptions of what they will look and taste like and how they will grow. Personally, I don’t think the same variety of anything would grow the same in different climates and different soils, even within the same region. What matters most is how it grows in your garden. Discover what you want to produce, and experiment with varieties until you come close. Then save the seeds each year to have a strain of that variety that is acclimated to your soil, weather, and gardening habits. Seeds contain a whole history in their genes and you can bring out what works best for you. Then name it what you want. However it came to be that you grew that variety is your story and now you can give it a name.

Peppers are coming up in front of the tomatoes in the coldframe.

So as not to be too far from what you started with, you might include the name of the original variety in your new name. The Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog carries a tomato variety called Roma VF Virginia Select, a strain of Roma VF that Pam Dawling developed at Twin Oaks Community near Louisa, Virginia. You probably know that peppers like warm conditions to germinate, but I have two pepper varieties that germinate well in the cooler soil of a coldframe—Ruffled Hungarian and Corno di Toro. I have not renamed them, but have been saving my own seeds and growing them in the coldframe for years. I donated seeds to my local seed library. I would love to see seed libraries stocked with varieties of seeds that are acclimated to their area and contain descriptions of what the local growers experienced. No matter what you call it, if it grows well in your garden, that is all that matters.

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Seed to Garment: Spinning Cotton

Nankeen Brown and Erlene’s Green cotton with a tahkli spindle. The fiber is lighter at harvest, as you see in the bolls, and darkens once you scour it.

I love to spin cotton, but I will be the first to admit that it is not an easy thing to learn. I had no knowledge of spinning any fiber when I took on cotton, but I wanted to learn to spin fiber that I grew in my garden. Wool spinners had told me it was hard to spin cotton because it was such a short fiber. However, since I would learn on cotton, I figured that would be my normal.

Cotton is a short fiber, being only about an inch or so long, more or less. You are probably familiar with seeing drop spindles that spinners use. You see them hanging from the fiber in front of the spinner while she/he works. Short fibers, such as cotton, require a lighter weight supported spindle. The tip of the spindle rests in a small dish while spinning. I needed to acquire a spindle and instruction, so I turned to Joan Ruane in Arizona. I didn’t make the trip there, but learned from her video, which came in a kit that included a tahkli spindle, support dish, bobbins, and cotton sliver. It took much practice to go beyond something that resembled rope to something that resembled thread, but I kept at it. Eventually muscle memory kicked in and things got easier. Joining a handspinning group helped tremendously.

When you look for cotton fiber to spin, most likely what you will find is cotton sliver, which is a long rope-like preparation. You might come across roving, which is a thinner preparation of sliver. I often use the words sliver and roving interchangably. I learned when working with sliver that, by dividing it lengthwise into several strands, it was easier to work with if I only used a strand at a time. You might also find cotton in the form of punis, which is cotton that has been carded and rolled into cigar shapes. I have never spun from punis.

Box holding tahkli for winding off; plastic, wood, and homemade bamboo bobbins; lazy kate that holds two bobbins for plying.

None of those preparations are quite like what you will be working with from your homegrown cotton, but it is something to learn from. I believe that anyone learning to spin should learn to spin with a spindle before progressing to a wheel. For one thing, it is cheaper to get started. Also, you gain skills that will help you with any spinning. With only one tahkli spindle I was able to spin enough cotton to make my vest, which you can learn more about here. Once the spindle was full, I would wind it off onto a bobbin and fill the spindle again. In the photo you can see the cardboard box I used to hold the spindle while I wound off onto bobbins. I bought plastic and wooden bobbins and even made some from bamboo. With 2 bobbins on a lazy kate, I could ply the cotton on a larger spindle made with a dowel and 2” wooden wheel. I used 2-ply cotton for both warp and weft when I wove the fabric.

Indian book charkha from New World Textiles.

After the vest, I made a shirt. By this time I had acquired an Indian book charkha from New World Textiles and used that to spin all the cotton for the shirt. I had also acquired a Louet S10 spinning wheel. I used the spinning wheel for the plying, but I needed to get a high-speed bobbin to do it. No matter how fast I treadled, the regular bobbin did not go around fast enough. Cotton requires a high spinning ratio. Plying with the wooden spindle worked great, but using the spinning wheel for that job was faster.

I can spin off the seed with the tahkli, but find the charkha is so fast that it is better to take the seeds out first, which I do by hand. However, when I first started working with cotton I thought I would need to card it. Cotton cards cost more than I wanted to spend for a project I was just getting into, so I bought dog brushes at the pet store. They worked fine. I’ve since acquired regular cotton cards, but the lighter weight dog brushes are great for starting out. I only card the fiber if it has become compacted. I’m working with some cotton right now that I didn’t grow. This cotton had the seeds removed with an electric cotton gin and I find that I need to card the fiber before spinning. Some spinners card cotton and roll it into punis. I find that unnecessary. The fiber that I’ve taken the seeds from is loose enough to spin as it is and the fiber that I’ve carded is also loose enough. Of course, spinning it off the seed is the easiest way and that can happen with your homegrown supply.

Sliver, roving, and punis are fiber preparations that are better for commercial transactions. They can be manufactured, measured, stored, and shipped easier than working with cotton fluff pulled from the seed. Actually, in manufacturing, the fiber isn’t pulled from seeds, it is cut from them in the ginning process.

Swift with skeins and balls of naturally colored cotton for a shirt.

When I made the vest, I worked with one spindle at a time and put the fiber on bobbins. From there it went into skeins. Since three spindles came with the charkha, once I had three spindles full, I wound the fiber from all three spindles into one skein using my swift. Lacking a swift, you could wind it around anything that you could remove it easily from. I scoured the skeins by boiling them in a large pot of water with washing soda and a bit of soap. That is when the color pops. The fiber was then wound into balls over a core of crumpled paper. The balls you see of cotton in this photo are what I prepared for my shirt.

The cotton you grow in your garden is a premium product. Hand picking ensures that the fiber is never subjected to the harsh treatments that commercial cotton is. Take care in the picking to not also gather leaves or other bits of the plant that will dry and be hard to pick out later. Removing the seeds by hand is not hard. You can take a small bag of seeded cotton with you anywhere and work on the seeds while you are waiting for whatever you need to wait for. It is good to keep your hands busy. Save the seeds to plant next year.

For spinning, I have recently moved up to a Bosworth attache charkha, which is wonderful. As much as I like it, I would hope that you start your cotton journey with a tahkli, like I did. I still use my tahlki and spin with it in public whenever I can. Spinning in public is a great way to meet people and spread the word that this is actually something you can do, not something out of the history books. Have fun spinning!

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