"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:

From: "Brian Sandle"
: As well as looking a bit less curly your non-GM plants are a darker
green,
: less yellow than the GM ones. How much of that is due to moisture
storage
: by the mulch, as opposed to some sort of residual effect of the
Roundup
: on the RR plants, or differences in film? I presume the film was
the
same.

http://www.couger.com/farm

There is no differece from the RR resistance most of the differece is
one is
taken faceing west and on is take facing south and the convential
till
has
been out of the ground a little longer and is greener from more
photosyntisis and less disease problems.

But is the disease resulting from the need for the plant to put more
energy into making the RR metabolizing protein?

You are tying to see more than can be drawn from those pictures.
They are different varieties on different soils that were planted
on different days by different planters and the soil condition was
extremely different.


Where are some other honest comparison photos?

I have never seen photos of comparing cotton that is just coming
comparing up with RR and conventional. The latest research I know
of shows RR varieties costing a few pounds of lint and BT
varieties adding about twice what RR costs. In my moisture limited
conditions in south west Oklahoma no one can see the difference.

In west Texas last year the best irrigated cotton made 5 bales to
the acre most of them are using RR cotton because of a perennial
weed they call lake weed that needs spraying with Round Up. Before
RR cotton we would have to lay out a year to get it. The few
pounds RR cotton cost sure beat skipping a year of crops to fight
perennial weeds like lake weed or silver leaf night shade.

I doubt that a set of photos on the internet exists that compares those
conditions.

The photo set I put out is to compare soil condition. Trying to
stretch it to compare RR to conventional is not possible because
the there are too many variables. I was raised in that area and
all the cotton looked normal except it was surprising to see the
cotton in the conventional photo made it up because it was planted
the day it rained. The only reason it made it up was the soil was
work up so loose from trying to get rid of clods in dry weather
that the soil didn't saturate on the first rain.

You can't ever compare cotton on those two palaces on the way they
come up. Because cotton comes up slower on the soil where the no
till plot is.

That might be since the Roundup/AMPA residue, not ploughed in, is
affecting the micro-organisms producing nitrogen?

It is a sandy hill top that take a 2 or 3 days
longer to come up than cotton on the convention place if things
are equal and the cotton is planted at the same dept. Normal we
got cotton up about the same time. He can start planting a day or
two earlier than I did and normally planted a little shallower
than I did.


The photos were taken on May 15, according to the text files. Now
the plants have had 2 1/2 months how do they compare in colour &c? A
few days out of 2 1/21 months should not be making a big difference.

If it had rained more than once it would have. Everything is burned up. My
brother is more intersted in irrigation wells.

The only way I ever compared cotton was to put the one I was
testing in the two out side boxes of the planter and harvest them
separately. That way I could compare them with the variety I knew
all season long side by side. Unless the fields are treated
exactly the same the comparisons aren't valid.

Here are all the pictures I shot that day.
http://www.couger.com/farm/album/

Your text for the original ones you have on /farm gives June 14.

Are those red ants the leaf cutters?

No, another name for them is harvrester ants. They feed mostly on seeds.
http://insects.tamu.edu/images/insec...e/cimg361.html

How have the RR plants stood up to any pests?

No pest porblems with out rain. Both are buring up from lack of rain. I
haven't seen them since they are 200 miles from where I now live. But none
of the cotton will be much good if starts raining tonight.

You said you were moving out of the system of `conservation tillage'
which I described, in which the destroyed unwanted plant matter
stays in the top layer(s) of soil. I presume you meant your `trad'
pictures were that? Then why cannot any former plant matter be seen?

The lands was in alfalfa hay for the last 5 years. AFSIK no one has ever
tried to use hay meadows in conservation tillage. After the several years of
hay trucks, balers, swathers and cattle running over the ground it too hard
to do anything but plow it as deep as you can and try to turn the weeds
under and cut the roots of the alfalfa. I suppose if you could get a 5 foot
sweep plow to go in the ground that might work if you didn't pull it in two.

There would be little or no residue left on a hay meadow you were plowing
up. If you didn't bale it you would graze it off after frost to eat all the
over wintering alfalfa weevil you could anyway.

Any residue that was left would be long gone making a seed bed from the
clods turn up from the hay meadow no matter how it was killed.

You can't use the same method for every situation. Prior crops and weather
dictate what you have to do to a large degree.

Gordon