Vicia villosa Seeds | Hairy Vetch

Violet-and-white vetch flowers and hairy trailing stems of Vicia villosa over a winter cover crop — Hairy Vetch (*Vicia villosa*): Fabaceae, native to Europe and western Asia.

LATIN NAME: Vicia villosa

COMMON NAME: Hairy Vetch, Winter Vetch

Plant Profile

Hairy Vetch is a trailing, climbing annual legume of Europe and western Asia, with finely divided leaves tipped by tendrils, hairy stems and clusters of violet-and-white pea flowers in late spring. Sown in autumn, it covers the ground through winter and is cut down at flowering to release its nitrogen into the soil.

It is the most cold-hardy of the vetches used in agriculture, surviving winters that kill common vetch, and its dense spring growth makes it the standard legume of cover-crop mixes in cold districts. Left alone it scrambles over any support, including its own neighbours, with lightweight enthusiasm. The tendrils are simple and few, so it climbs by leaning rather than gripping, and in a mix it threads through a cereal crop without dragging it down.

Science & Biotechnology

Its nitrogen contribution after a winter stand is one of the better-documented figures in cover-crop research, commonly around a hundred kilograms a hectare, which is why rye-and-vetch mixtures are the textbook organic rotation. The seed is hard-coated, and a proportion germinates only in its second season, an adaptation to unreliable seasons that growers manage by buying scarified lots.

Its flower clusters are worked heavily by bumblebees in late spring, and beekeepers across its agricultural range take a vetch flow. Its seeds have been found viable after passing through the digestive tract of birds and stock, which explains its spread along drovers’ roads and hedgerows.

Uses & Benefits

In the garden it is sown in autumn on vacant beds and cut at flowering in late spring, a fortnight before the bed is wanted, or lifted and composted. Its roots leave structure and nitrogen behind, and its winter cover stops erosion on open ground.

As forage it is grazed or cut for hay before flowering, and it makes a fine bee pasture where a patch can be spared. Its dense spring growth also suppresses weeds so completely that some growers use it as a smother crop before a lazy-starter planting like squash. Its seed is also sold for game cover mixes, where its scrambling habit knits together thin stands of kale and quinoa.

Growing from Seed

Sow the seed two centimetres deep in autumn, three to six weeks before hard frost, into any cultivated soil; inoculation with the vetch rhizobium improves nodulation in ground where no vetch has grown.

It germinates in cool soil and grows slowly through winter, then races away in spring.

Cut it at flowering, before the seed sets, and leave the residues on the surface or dig them in shallowly a fortnight before planting; a stand allowed to seed becomes a weed of its own making. On heavy clay, leave the surface undisturbed after cutting and plant through the mulch, which is how the no-dig growers use it to best effect.

Our Take

The winter-hardy cover crop that feeds the soil: autumn sown, spring cut, and a hundred kilograms of nitrogen if you time it right.

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