 Hi, I'm Bill Robertson. I'm Cotton Extension Agronomist with the University of Arkansas System, Division of Ag Cooperative Extension Service. And standing out here in the field here in Jackson County, first I kind of like to talk about last year. Last year we had a record year. We made 1,263 pounds on an acre, set an all-time record. And so in a good year like that, we really expect acres to be up and acres are up. I think the USDA number was half a million acres. I really expect that number to be a little bit higher when the dust sows. We have a lot of new growers this year for cotton that hadn't had cotton on, they hadn't grown cotton, but there's been cotton on their farm, but it's been probably 20 or 30 years ago. And when we look at planting progress this year, we were so much better than the last two years, as far as getting in the ground. We didn't have, we didn't plant a lot in April, but the first half of May we really got a lot planted. And most of my plots went in that first half of May. And so we're making pretty good progress. When we look at squaring and flowering, we're running, I think a good week ahead of last year, but we're just a little bit behind our five-year average. So all in all, cotton is really coming on, doing well now. We had a lot of wind that really caused us a lot of struggles early. And just getting on top of pigweed, the whole world's been revolving around pigweed and out starting to revolve around controlling pigweed to putting water on the field. Typically about the 18th to the 20th of June is when, you know, year in, year out, since I moved to Arkansas in 1995 is generally when we need to be able to start watering. But this year, the high temperatures, it was brutal on cotton. Cotton started slowing its growth and really have a direct impact on earlyness and a big impact on yield potential. And so that's the reason why really we had to start watering cotton a little earlier than what we like to. And so when we get into our irrigation situation, we need to stay on top of things because it really has an impact on the fruiting and with the reproductive growth and vegetative growth of cotton. Because, you know, cotton is different than like our grain sorghum and our corn and our soybeans and rice. Cotton's a perennial. It's a tree. And it wants to grow and respond to stress like a tree, not like an annual crop. And so we have to trick a tree to grow like an annual crop. And so there's a lot of things that are involved in that with fertility, with irrigation and trying to maintain a balance between our vegetative and reproductive growth. And so that's kind of where we are now. Our early cotton was planted in April and first part of May. So as we run in, we were busy controlling insect pests or thrips, early season insect pests, controlling pigweed. Now then, we're still watching for insects as we get into squaring and get into flowering or plant bugs are going to be more of a concern. But the big deal right now is staying on top of things with water. Well, if we look at where we are right now, we're still pretty well on track to be my target at first flower, to have nine to 10 fruiting nodes above the first position white flower. When we do that, then the plant has enough horsepower at first flower to produce the yield that we like to see. So I really feel like we are still on track. You know, we've had some tough conditions and you know, every year is a little different. But I still feel like for most of our fields, we're still right on track to be where we want to be at the end of the year.