Wee Waa cotton growers send in the pickers

Among them was Will Woolcock, who manages Gunedra, west of Wee Waa, on behalf of MH Premium Farms.

"Saturday was probably a day or two early," he said.

"But I was just looking at this weather this week and given what happened up at Goondiwindi two weeks ago, I didn't want to be in that position - get to the finish line and have 80 or 100mm of rain on it."

Between April 4 and April 7, up to 140mm of rain was recorded at Goondiwindi, making paddocks in the area too wet for machinery and likely to cause quality downgrades in both cotton and mature sorghum crops.

The 4000-hectare Gunedra has 2000 hectares of irrigated cropping country with water entitlements from the Namoi River supported by bore water.

It is cropped on a rotation of "one in one out" with cotton, followed by wheat, corn or chickpeas and sorghum. Cotton and grain crops are also grown on the 2000ha of dryland paddocks.

Mr Woolcock, who has managed the property for almost three years, said it had been a topsy turvy period, with floods preventing in-crop nitrogen application in 2021-2022, followed last year by a damaging mite outbreak in late planted fields and an early frost in late April.

This year he's growing 840ha of irrigated Sicot 606B3F and 400ha of dryland Sicot 748B3F, with 40ha of Sicot 812RRF as a refuge instead of pigeon peas which had proven difficult to establish.

Mr Woolcock said they chose 606B3F for its high verticillium tolerance and solid performance.

"I know a lot of people don't particularly like 606," he said.

"It's one of those varieties you either love it or hate it. People have commented that our crop ... didn't end up with the big Christmas tree of nothing sitting on top of the crop. It's come up really well. We're about halfway through picking and indicatively everything will be more than 14 bales."

Preparation for this year's crop was a lengthy process that started in November 2022 when paddocks were ripped several times with a Horsch Tiger MT, followed by a double pass with a grader board.

Soil tests were used to determine how much nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and micronutrients were needed and they were applied with a spreader before the beds were pulled up by February-March.

Between then and June, 250 units of nitrogen was applied and the paddocks rested over winter.

Come spring, any hills needing it were renovated, then passed over with a steel drum roller to create a firm bed ready for planting from late October to early November.

Seed was sown at 14 seeds to the metre on 1m row spacings using a John Deere 1720 12m MaxEmerge planter with eSet plates on the irrigated fields, and single skip on the dryland which was planted in mid-December.

Below average rain - 240mm since July 1 and less than half of it during the season - meant weeds were less of a problem than usual and two early Roundup sprays were enough to keep them at bay.

In mid-December, 150kg/ha of urea was spread and incorporated with an interrow cultivator ahead of the first in-crop irrigation.

All up the crop received about 8.5 megalitres/ha across 11 irrigations with water delivered to 160ha by lateral irrigators and the rest with syphons. The feasibility of converting to bankless is under investigation.

After monitoring showed a likely repeat of the previous year's mite outbreak and silverleaf whitefly populations rising in the summer heat, they sprayed Movento insecticide and Zeal miticide.

"We had some mirids at the time as well, but we came out of it very well," Mr Woolcock said.

"It was a dream run through to the end of January when we had that hot snap. It was set up to be a monster of a crop but after those days of temperatures in the mid-40s it went from all flowers to dropping squares at the next watering.

"Coming out of that period we probably lost two nodes of cotton. The agronomist said we needed to rethink our yield expectations from 14-16 bales back to 12-14, so we managed the crop to that."

Mr Woolcock said it had been a near perfect year for irrigated cotton, but the dryland cotton had struggled in the unusually dry conditions.

Despite receiving just 100mm of in-crop rain, it looked well and was expected to yield around two bales to the hectare.

"You don't have to go too far from us and the numbers are completely different," he said.

"Go east of Wee Waa and they've probably had the best summer in years and we've had the one of the driest summers we've had in a long time."

The first of the irrigated paddocks were sprayed with defoliant in late March and the first pass over dryland crops was made last week.

Picking began on April 12. The cotton modules will be sent for ginning at Namoi Cotton, Merah North, and Queensland Cotton, Boolcarroll.

The private pension fund of London-based Australian billionaire Lord Michael Hintze, MH Premium Farms has acquired about 40,000ha in Australia since 2007. The 16 aggregations stretch from Giru in Queensland's north to Hawkesdale in south-west Victoria and produce a range of fruit, nut, grain and cotton crops as well as sheep and cattle.