You know it's funny but last year, I was sortof researching the whole idea of cottom myself. I saw that they were actually growing and selling seed that would give you brown cotton, reddish cotton, or even a light blue cotton, which was supposedly directed towards the jeans industry. The one major factor about it is that I believe it needs a long long growing season and it needs alot of heat to do well. That's why it is grown here in the South part of the U.S. In addition, there are some major insect pests that can take them out (boll weevil) so commercial places have to really spray the fields. Not sure about your variety but there is a neat site with pics of cotton plants here (just to give you an idea). There's a good general document (PDF) on cotton here. You might check the Farm Forum too... I may lurk on a discussion about it.

Email sent. Sifting through my veggies getting ready to winter sow. About half of all of the vegetables I have are harvested in winter.

I love my cotton plants too! I got 3 small seedlings from Mistiaggie at one of the swaps and I have had so much fun watching them grow. The leaves and flowers are very pretty. I have been collecting the cotton and I am saving the dried pods to make a Christmas wreath. I cut mine back a little and now it is very full. It doesn't have flowers right now so I was thinking on cutting it more because once it starts flowering I won't have the heart to do it. Thank you mistiaggie! Carmen

I think it´s best to go yourself to Peru to the Lambayeque region in the north. That is the region where algodon nativo is grown and used by artisans to make articles to sell. Morrope would be the best town to start with. Then to Tucume and other smaller towns. I was going to go there in May but the plague interrupted. Look on the internet for algodon nativo en Peru. You will find many articles and pictures of lilac and mauve (fifo), and marron (deep reddish brown) and pardo (orange brown) and also dark browns along with the greens and tans. I don´t have any of these myself besides a little bit of mauve and some of the reddish brown I bought in the US. You need to meet someone there who will make the introductions for you since this is a deeply indigenous region and they are very careful with their colored cottons. They mostly just want to grow for making artesania and but I was hoping to find someone who would sell me fiber. I really don´t know what you would find and it may take a long time to make the right connections, etc. I would love to know about the blue in Arizona. Can you give me a link for that? Gracias. There are organizations in the area like Artesanos de Túcume. The Algodon Nativo site on Facebook is interesting. Sr. Jorge Montaño, (jluismon@gmail.com) in Lima could be helpful He deals in algodon nativo fiber. And Julian Bravo in Tucume seems to be very active with this. If you are able to get any of the colored fiber outside of Peru, I hope you will share some with me. Gracias.