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Circular No. 6.— (Agros. 25.) 



United States Departnfetrf of Agriculture, 



DIVISION OF AGROSTOLOGY. 



[(irass and Forage Plant Investigations.] 



THE C'ULTIVATEI) VETCHES. 



The demand for early spring forage plants is increasing in almost 

 every section of the United States. This demand arises from a 

 variety of causes, chief among which is the rapid increase of the 

 dairying industry. Soiling crops and pastures supply the desired 

 succulent forage from early summer until the first hard autumn 

 freeze, and ensilage and root crops tide over the early winter. With 

 good management such sul:)stitutes for green forage may be made to 

 last until the grass starts, but on too many American farms there is 

 a period of shortage of succulent feed in late winter and spring. To 

 bridge over this critical period, annual leguminous crops, such as 

 crimson clover and the vetches, are each year coming deservedly into 

 greater prominence. The vetches are nitrogen gatherers. Like the 

 clovers they have the property of absorbing through their roots the 

 free gaseous nitrogen of the air, which is present in all well cultivated 

 soils, and fixing a portion of it in a form which may become either a 

 fertilizer if left in the soil or a muscle-making element in the forage. 

 Nearly all leguminous forage crops have this property and hence 

 their great importance as green manure and soiling crops. 



The vetches are also useful because they form a living mulch in 

 spring and early winter, shading the ground and preventing the 

 growth of weeds, thus retarding the constant loss of soluble plant 

 foods that is going on wherever a soil is left bare and unprotected 

 from the direct action of the elements. A mulch of weeds would 

 serve the same purpose, but all can see why it would be better to 

 have the winter cover consist of vetches or clovers rather than of a 

 tangle of noxious weeds. 



In the Southern States vetches should be sown in the late summer 

 or early fall, so that they may be out of the way in time to plant the 

 next season's field crops. In the North or wherever the winters are 

 severe they may be sown in early spring at the same time as the 

 spring wheat or other small grain. They are all crops which delight 

 in cool growing weather like that of the northern spring or fall and 

 the southern winter. 



HAIRY VETCH, OR SAND VETCH. 



( Vicia villosa. ) 



This annual leguminous plant is a native of western Asia. It has 

 been cultivated for about fifty years in some parts of Europe, especially 

 southern Russia, Germany, and France, and was introduced into 

 this country for the first time about 1847, under the name of Siberian 



