These photos of the cotton were taken on 09.21.09.  The first cotton bol is now drying out and has popped open, exposing the expanding cotton fibers within. It took a long time to get to this point and I think it will be a while before it's ready for harvest.

Several new squares have appeared, throughout the plants, even on the ones I planted this season.  Most of the buds are toward the top. Before they arrived I actually considered pruning a foot off the top.  This would have delayed the bud growth or maybe they would have never had a chance to grow at all?

The next most mature bud already bloomed.  It's really high up on the plant so once that cotton ball starts growing it's going to make the plant really top heavy.  I'm already having a problem keeping the plant standing upright.  It's planted in a trough but is almost 5' tall.  Right now a chair is keeping it from laying down!

Ever since I planted these cotton plants last summer, I'd been saying that I would be happy if it could make even just one flower.  The north-facing patio where they live gets no direct sunlight, except for a sliver of rays for a few minutes before dusk.  Well, it produced the one flower, and yup, I'm happy as hell.  Now I wait and see if it produces that precious cotton ball, and I will be beyond happy.

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Here are pictures I took the morning after the pictures above.  It turns pink! :)

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The flower fell off the same day as the pictures above.  It leaves a pea-sized ball that grows quite rapidly.  These pictures below were taken 7 days later.

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Here is the cotton pod another 7 days later.

4 or 5 years ago I purchased cotton seeds off the internet.  Sprouted them in the spring, planted them, and by the end of the summer had a dozen of flowers that produced cotton balls from which I harvested the seeds and cotton fiber.  I continued sprouting the seeds and growing plants until they were about juveniles, but they would get attacked by mites.  And then a few years ago we moved to our current place and I just couldn't transport them for the move.  I was hesitant to plant them again, but since I had such an abundance linter-covered seed, I half-heartedly planted the cotton, vigorously sprayed them with water anytime I saw mites, and kept them feed and moist.  It paid off this year with the one flower I was asking for.

I started two more cotton plants this season next to these year-old plants, and they're already more than half the height of the older ones.  I don't expect that these younger ones will produce a flower this year or even next year, since it's so crowded in that trough.  But I'll just wait and see.