forage plants, because it lengthens out the soiHng season, and fur- 

 nishes green foliage late in autumn and very early in spring, during 

 two periods of scanty vegetation. Winter vetch should be cut for 

 hay when in full bloom. Considerable care is required to get it into 

 the stack or barn without its heating. Anyone who can make good 

 cowpea or alfalfa hay can successfully handle winter vetch. 



KIDNEY VETCH. 

 (Anthyllis vulneraria. ) 



The kidney vetch (fig. 5) is a perennial leguminous plant which is 

 found wild over a large part of Europe. It grows naturally along 

 ^badsides, wherever the soil is dry and 

 thin and the subsoil calcareous. It 

 was first introduced into cultivation 

 by a German peasant about 40 years 

 ago. This farmer noticed that the 

 vetch grew on the dry calcareous soils 

 of hillsides, in places too poor to sup- 

 port even white clover. He gathered 

 a few seeds, sowed them the next year, 

 and kept on saving and sowing the 

 seed until he had enough to plant quite 

 a large field. From this small begin- 

 ning the cultivation of the kidney 

 vetch has spread throughout northern 

 Germany and many foreign coun- 

 tries, and to the United States. 



CULTIVATION. 



In Germany the custom is to sow 

 the seed in autumn at the rate of 18 

 to 22 pounds per acre, with oats, bar- 

 ley, or other small grain as a nurse 

 crop. Sometimes it is sown alone in 

 the spring. The product of the first 

 year is very small, so that it is only 

 a profitable crop when it is sown with 

 grain, in order that some income may 

 be derived from the land during that . 

 time. The second year the vetch 

 throws up large stems that often • 

 make a growth 3 or 4 feet high. 



The yield of hay is quite small, gen- 

 erally not more than one cutting per 

 season, and perhaps a ton or a ton 

 and a half of hay per cutting. It is 

 cut in full bloom, and cured in about 

 the same way as red clover. Two fig..5. 

 crops may be secured in one season 

 by cutting the first before the plant blossoms, but usually the after- 

 math, consisting entirely of root leaves, is depastured and no attempt 

 is made to get more than one crop of hay. 



-Kidney vetch (Aiitlnjllis mdncr- 

 aria): n, flower. 



