The first couplet (in fact, the first eight lines, or octave) of the sonnet portrays a landscape full of death and misery.
The poem is set in the southern U.S., a region historically linked with the growth and trade of cotton. Cotton was central to the economy of states like Georgia (where much of Toomer's Cane is set); it was also a main driver of the transatlantic slave trade, which forced millions of enslaved Africans to work on plantations in brutal conditions. The very mention of cotton in this setting gestures towards this tragic history. Though slavery had been abolished by the 1920s (when the poem was published), racial segregation and tension were a daily reality for Black Americans. Some small cotton farms were Black-owned, but white landowners still kept many Black workers and tenant farmers in dire poverty.
The "Boll-weevil's coming" has meant disaster for the region. This cotton-loving beetle has chomped through the plantations and caused great economic damage. Symbolically, the poem may be linking this predatory pest with the greed and destruction of the cotton industry. Between the beetle's appetite and the "the winter's cold," the crop has basically failed this year. The stalks look "rusty," or reddish and decayed. There's a weariness in the atmosphere (the "seasons" seem "old"), reflecting the time and effort wasted on this year's spoiled cotton crop.
Notice how lines 1-2 use harsh sibilance, alliteration, and other consonance to conjure up an inhospitable environment:
Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold,
Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old,
The tough /k/ alliteration and /t/ consonance, together with the hissing or buzzing of the /s/ and /z/ sounds, add up to a series of unpleasant sounds. (Try saying the lines out loud!) Sonically, it's as though a chill wind blows through the poem, evoking the desolation of this wintry scene.