Cotton is sometimes offered in garden centers or hardware stores. There it is less praised for its use as a raw material for textile production than for its purpose as an ornamental plant (beautiful yellow flowers, interesting fruit clusters and seeds). What should you consider when growing this plant?
Can you grow cotton in Germany?
Cotton can be grown in Germany as an ornamental plant, ideally on the balcony or in the apartment. It requires a lot of warmth and sunlight, a nutrient-rich, slightly sandy and humus-rich soil and a germination temperature between 20 and 35 °C.
Can you grow cotton in Germany?
Cotton planting – regardless of which of the four known species – is less suited to our latitudes. This plant originally comes from tropical regions and requires a lot of warmth and sunlight.
Nevertheless, it is possible to grow the plant in Germany - but more on a small scale, such as as an ornamental plant on the balcony. The cotton can also be cultivated indoors. If you want to grow them for several years, you should overwinter them at 15 to 23 °C. Their minimum temperature is 3 °C.
Which location is suitable for growing cotton?
Plant the cotton from mid-May at the earliest in a sunny to partially shaded location that is sheltered from the wind and warm. The bottom should be like this:
- moderately nutritious
- humus-rich
- slightly sandy
- airy and loose
- humid environment
Sowing the seeds
Growing is easiest if you grow the seeds yourself at home. To do this, you need cotton seeds that are as fresh as possible, as these have the best germinability. The seeds are approximately 0.5 cm large and colored black.
How to proceed:
- start from January/February
- prefer in a warm living room or in the greenhouse
- Fill pots or seed trays with potting soil (€6.00 on Amazon)
- Sow seeds and cover thinly with soil
- Keep substrate moist
- Germination temperature: 20 to 35 °C
- Germination time: 1 week
- Repot or repot from a size of 10 cm
When does cotton bloom and fruit?
If you planted or sown the cotton on time, you can expect flowering to begin between May and September. The capsule fruits are ripe about 8 weeks after flowering.
Tip
It takes around 200 days from sowing to harvesting, so you should only grow the cotton outdoors in a mild region. The plant does not tolerate frost.
