266 Practical Farming 



give I.I tons of digestible matter, of which one-sixth will 

 be protein. Even as high as thirteen tons of green forage 

 have been reported. 



Hairy Vetch {Vicia villosa) belongs to 

 Hairy or ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ legumes that have been known 



Sand Vetch ^ , . r ^ ^ ^ 



as "tares." The plant is perfectly hardy 



in any part of the country. It is an annual sown in late 

 summer or fall and mown in the spring. If the seed are 

 allowed to ripen before mowing, the plant will reseed the 

 land and come again in the fall, and if in a wheat-growing 

 section, it may become a pest in the wheat crop, the tares 

 that the enemy sowed in the man's wheat field as stated 

 in the Bible. 



When sown for hay, the vetch should always have some 

 tall growing grain like wheat or rye sown with it to sup- 

 port the plants, which otherwise will sprawl on the ground 

 and get damaged. Sown with wheat at rate of one bushel 

 of wheat and a peck of vetch in September, a fine hay 

 crop can be made by mowing when the wheat is just 

 passing into the dough stage. In the Middle and South- 

 ern States, the mowing can be done in time to put the 

 land in com, and the com crop will be helped by the 

 nitrogen-gathering capacity of the vetch. 



But where wheat is one of the staple crops it will be 

 well to avoid the vetch. We once grew a crop of wheat 

 and vetch hay that made nearly two tons per acre, and 

 immediately followed it with cow peas and made as 

 much more hay per acre and then got the land in 

 alfalfa the same fall. This was in North Carolina where 

 the season is long enough to make such a practice 

 successful. 



