I'm thinking about looking at a little place that's in the middle of cotton country. I guess I'm asking whether it's worth it, since what I want to do is garden there. I know I'll have to deal with pesticides, etc., that would almost certainly have been used there, but the piece I'm looking at lain idle for a few years. Any comments?
What does cotton farming do to soil?
The fact that cotton was grown on it should not be a factor. Of course any heavy feeding crop can deplete the soil, that includes corn and cabbage as well as cotton, but folks today don't usually deplete thier soil but constantly amend it. If it has lain fallow for a number of years does it have a good crop of grass or weeds? If it is bare or has sparse vegetation, than It is depleted and may be more trouble that it is worth to bring it back to productivity. Any pesticides would be long gone.
The couple of pictures I've seen on the realtor's website show stuff growing. WHAT stuff, I have no idea, but I'll take a weed reference book with me. Thanks for the insight; it's just what I need to know.
Brigidlily, are you looking in east Texas or west Texas? In west Texas a bigger issue would be water sources. Shallow aquifers are going or have gone dry. New wells have to be much deeper and are very expensive.
I started thinking about that when all the fires were going on over the weekend. It's in central TX, not too far from Brenham.
Fortunately, the aquifers east of the Balcones Fault are shallower than those in west Texas. There are two aquifers here under the ranch. The first one starts at about 40' on average although with the exceptional drought we have been having, the level has probably dropped. Unbelievably, a small spring on the property is still flowing. Brenham is 48 miles southeast from me. The water table might be even higher. This link contains maps of Texas aquifers.
http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/mapping/
THANKS!