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In the fall, while many gardeners put their plots to rest, some sow winter cover crops to improve the soil. Hairy vetch may seem like an insult, but this pretty plant is actually a fantastic cover crop for out-of-season growing.
A good cover crop protects against erosion, aerates the soil and replenishes nutrients. Hairy vetch is one of the best cover crops. It does all three, plus strangles weeds.
Grown alone or in association with rye, vetch is a great way to boost nitrogen levels in the soil. Whenever I plan to improve the soil on my farm, I think of vetch and look forward to a field of purple flowers in the spring.
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Vetch is the ideal cover crop
I first heard about cover crops when my husband was apprenticed on an organic farm in southern New England. There the peasant sowed rye and hairy vetch (Vicia villosa) in his fields each fall and buried them in the ground after the snow melted.
If you’ve never planted a cover crop before, I’ll give you a brief introduction to the practice. We plant cover crops to improve the soil during the “off season”. Cover crops cover the soil to protect it from erosion caused by winter winds, rains and snows.
They also work to improve the soil – replenishing some of the nutrients we took from it during the growing season. You can use them as green manure.
Most cover crops are winter cereals and legumes. You plant them in the fall, then bury them just before you plant them in the spring. Vetch is a legume (from the same family as peanuts and alfalfa).
Because vetch blooms in early spring, many gardeners choose to bury it before the flowers appear. Plowing before flowering prevents your vetch from becoming weeds or reseeding in your garden bed.
But the flowers are so pretty. They also make excellent fodder for bees, which appreciate the early-flowering plants when they emerge – hungry – after a long winter. There’s nothing wrong with waiting for your vetch to flower to plow it into the ground!
Sow vetch
When preparing the ground for a cover crop, start by removing last season’s debris. Pull up dead plants, rake leaves and turn the soil. If you have a plow or tiller, you can simply till the soil.
I like to add soil amendments just before plowing. I’ll sprinkle some wood ash from last year, rake up some well-composted manure, then plow through the whole mess until it looks soft and loose.
When your soil is freshly plowed, scatter your vetch seed. Do this as soon as possible after plowing to give the vetch a head start. If you wait a day or two, all the weeds will have a chance to sprout first and choke out your cover crop.
You will need approximately 1 to 2 pounds of seed for every 1,000 square feet of garden. If your garden is much smaller, consider getting about a half-pound bag of vetch for 400 to 500 square feet or a quarter pound bag of vetch for 100 to 300 square feet.
Broadcast the seed by scattering it semi-consistently throughout the garden. I like to mark out garden space in 10 x 10 foot plots, scatter them, then cover the seeds. Then I move on to the next marked route.
If you have a particularly large garden, this method can get tedious, so feel free to use a row seed spreader.
After the seeds are scattered, cover them with about a half inch of soil. Water the whole bed very well – let the water soak into the soil, then come back and water again. We don’t want puddles, but we want the water to have penetrated beyond the top half inch of the floor.
If you sow vetch and rye together, mix the seeds before scattering to allow your crops to mix naturally.
When to plant
Since vetch likes to produce initial growth before going dormant in winter, it is best planted about a month to 40 days before the expected hard frost. For us in New England, that puts planting around the first of September.
Of course, you can also plant vetch in early spring for a bright summer bloom. Or early July if you want to harvest it for animal fodder. Most people who grow vetch use it as a winter cover crop, but don’t limit yourself. Vetch is a very functional plant.
If you plant your vetch too close to a hard frost, or end up with a surprise early frost, don’t worry your spring vetch might be a little late, but in most cases hairy vetch planted too close to winter, will come again in spring.
Since hairy vetch is hardy down to -20°F, it is able to survive even some of the harshest winters we have. It performs as a successful cover crop in temperatures down to USDA hardiness zone 3.
Ideal ground
Hairy vetch does not do well in heavy, poorly drained soil. If your soil is compacted or tends to retain water, you may want to consider other cover crops.
Ideally, vetch prefers sandy, well-drained soil with a pH between 6.0 and 7.0. But it can adapt to less than ideal conditions as long as its need for well-drained soil is met.
Vetch grows best in full to partially sunny locations. Especially if you plant before winter as a cover crop. Vetch will establish faster and more firmly in a sunny space.
Vetch in fall, winter and spring
Once sown, your vetch will quickly sprout and begin to grow. There is no need to thin vetch if you are using it as a cover crop. If you grow it for its pretty flowers, thin your plants to about 3 inches apart.
Hairy vetch grows slowly in the fall, but growth continues all winter – under the snow. In the spring, your vetch is well established. As temperatures warm, hairy vetch begins to grow rapidly. It rarely exceeds 3 feet tall, but it is long, trellis vines can reach over 12 feet long.
If vetch is grown with a grain like rye, it will gladly trellis the stalks of cereals.
Allow your vetch to grow for about 3 weeks before it’s time to plant summer crops in the garden. Most growers like to cut vetch before it flowers, to avoid letting it sow in the ground. But if you don’t mind having a new crop of vetches starting in the fall, enjoy the flowers.
pests
Since it grows mainly during the winter, vetch does not have many problems with pests. You will rarely have problems with diseases either. Winter weather will kill most common pests and diseases before they have time to damage your crop.
But in early spring and late fall, you might have trouble with some of the common pests.
aphids
These little pests are a problem no matter what you grow, including vetch. If you see aphids on your hairy vetch, it’s time to break out your trusty bottle of insecticidal soap. Spray the undersides of leaves whenever you see signs of aphid damage.
If you have a huge spread of vetch, be sure to add neem oil as well. Neem oil reduces the risk of your invading aphids having baby aphids and creating an aphid community in your garden.
Slugs and Snails
Like aphids, slugs and snails are common pests. They are especially common in wet spring gardens. If you see signs of slugs or snails in the garden, set beer traps among the vetches.
Beer traps are basically small beer pots driven into the ground. The top of the pot should be about level with the ground. Slugs and snails like beer. They are attracted to the smell of beer and drown in it.
If you have ducks, you can also release them among the vetches. Ducks are great predators of slugs. Once the vetch is well established, your ducks won’t do much damage to it.
If you have a slug or snail problem in the fall, stick to beer traps. Ducks will eat young vetches as well as any slugs.
To harvest
When your hairy vetch has finished growing and it’s time to clean up the cover crop, cut your vetch at the base and let it fall. Harvest after about two months of spring growth. Then cross over and cut the stems as close to the ground as possible.
Stems dry out when cut. After about a week, you can plow the dead plant material into the soil and let it continue to release nutrients.
Tilling old plant material into the soil helps improve soil structure. It helps improve drainability and slowly releases its nutrients into the soil. This green manure will provide a fantastic growth base for heavy nitrogen eaters like tomatoes and corn.
You can also feed vetch to goats, rabbits and chickens, but never to horses or cattle.
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