Vetch

I've been admiring the many different wild flowers that are blooming around our land.  One that I think is really beautiful is hairy vetch.   It is a vining plant that produces pretty purple flowers.  There is a very nice bunch that is growing on our eastern boundary fence.  Here is a picture of it:

Vetch is a "legume", a plant which has nitrogen fixing bacteria that form nodules on its roots and add nitrogen to the soil.  Nitrogen is a vital nutrient for plant growth.  Therefore, vetch is widely used by organic growers in the United States as a winter cover crop, as it is both winter hardy and can fix as much as 200 lb/ acre of atmospheric nitrogen. 

Vetch produces tiny pods that contain several seed each.  These tend to dry up and pop open early in the season, thus dropping the seed  onto the ground.  These in turn come up as volunteer plants the next season.  So, it can turn into a nuisance in a field.  But, Tom uses buckwheat and Austrian winter peas as cover crops, so we've not had that problem. 

I do, however, enjoy the bunches of wild vetch, like in the picture above, that grow here and there.