There are two ways to gather cotton. One is to pick the cotton free from the bowl. All you have is cotton and seed.
The other method is to pull the whole bowl along with the cotton. The trash is separated at the Cotton Gin.
With mechanization there is a difference in the spindles that get the cotton from the stalk.
Around here all cotton was pulled, in the days of hand harvesting. Now it is stripped with a cotton stripper, (machine).

In the good old days the Gin would have a large enclosure where the Bin Trash was burned. Now the Gin Trash is used for a mulch. Gin Trash will be mostly cotton burrs, old bowl parts, some leaves and stems. In the good old days of hand harvest there would also be some rocks to add weight.

One thing good about the good old days was after harvest the farmer would allow some families to scrap out the cotton field, gather the cotton the hand harvest or machines missed. Kind of biblical really.