Seeding.—The three principal vetches all seed fully, and if permitted to mature no reseeding of the land is necessary. Maturing and reseeding of hairy vetch is secured either by mowing the mixed crop of vetch and small grain while the vetch is still in the stage of early bloom, a slight second growth then usually affording sufficient seed, or by delaying the harvest until enough vetch seed has matured, these seeds either shattering during the mowing or being borne on parts of plants that escape the mower.
In the Gulf states, hairy vetch seeds and dies in May, and the other agricultural species several weeks earlier. Immediately, the land is planted in other crops, as cowpeas, sorghum, sweet-potatoes, and the vetch seeds remaining in the ground do not sprout until August or September. Here the seed of any of the agricultural species is sown broadcast about September on land previously plowed, using two to four pecks of vetch used and one bushel of beardless wheat or two bushels of oats per acre. When intended exclusively for graz ing, one may use the above grains or rye. For hay, the earliest varieties of beardless wheat or Red Rust-proof oats are ready for mowing at the same time as the vetch. Rye and beardless barley mature before hairy vetch. Turf or grazing oats are too late for making vetch-and-oat hay on poor upland, but are suitable for this purpose when sown early on good land with hairy vetch.
When used for pasturage, vetch must not be so closely grazed in May as to prohibit seed forma tion. It seeds freely, more than one thousand seeds having been formed on a single thrifty plant. For pasturage, vetch is also sown on land not specially prepared, for example among growing cotton plants or where some cultivated crop has just been removed. In this case it is sown alone or with small grain and the seed covered by the use of a one-horse cultivator.
Inoculation.—In most of the southern states, the vetches when first grown require inoculation for best growth. This may be effected by means of pure cultures from the laboratory or by the use of one peck to one ton of soil from a field or garden where the garden pea (Pisum) or any species of vetch has recently grown thriftily and borne tuber cles. The seeds are dipped into water, into which a small amount of this soil has been stirred, thus depositing the nitrogen-fixing germs on at least a part of them. Usually a more thorough inocula tion occurs when, in addition to this treatment of the seed, one-fourth to one ton per acre of pulver ized inoculated soil is sown and promptly harrowed in. By means of inoculation on poor land where no vetch had previously been grown, the yield of vetch in the South has often been quadrupled.
[Inoculation is discussed at length in Chapter XIII, Vol. I, and under Legumes in the present volume. Root nodules on the hairy vetch are pictured in Fig. 592.] Harvesting.— Hairy, common, narrow-leaved vetch and other species make fair yields of palat able and nutritious hay. The hay is cured in the same way as alfalfa or clover. In the Gulf states narrow-leaved vetch is ready to cut in April, and hairy vetch early in May. Cutting should be done three or four days before the vetch is in full bloom.
Cees.
As stock-feed.—The vetches are very useful as pasture plants, cattle, horses sheep and swine usually eating them green or cured with avidity. There are, however, a few records of animals at first having refused to eat vetch. Sown in August or early September on rich land, hairy vetch may afford a little grazing in December and January, but ordinarily little grazing can be expected before February.
Vetch seeds have been fed experimentally to cattle with satisfactory results, but they are too valuable for this use. Hairy vetch is also useful as a food for bees, and in the South as a means of subduing annual weeds that make their growth in spring.
As a soil renovator and cover-crop. [See Cover Crops, p. 258.1—All species and varieties of vetch are useful for improving the soil by means of the nitrogen which the plants take from the air through their tubercles and store up in the vegetation or in the soil. For this reason, also, they find use as cover-crops in orchards. In New York, hairy vetch remains green all winter and grows in the spring.
Weedy character of vetches.
Some species of vetch are likely to become weeds in wheat-fields, the seed ripening at the same time as wheat and being difficult to separate from wheat. At the Michigan station this habit of vetches was pronounced, but farther north, where the season is too short to permit complete maturity of vetch sown in the spring, and in those parts of the southern states where little wheat is grown, this danger may be disregarded. A part of the vetch seed may remain in the ground for several years and then germinate.
Literature.
Alabama (College) Experiment Station, Bulletins Nos. 87, 96, 105; Arkansas Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 68; Delaware Experiment Station, Bulletins Nos. 60, 61; Massachusetts (Hatch) ) Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 18; Louisiana Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 72; Michigan Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 227; Mississippi Experiment Station, Bulletins Nos. 20, 44; New York (Cornell) Station, Bulletin No. 198; United States Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulle tins Nos. 18, 102, 147, and Circular No.6, Division of Agrostology.