Cover Crop / Cool season
Hairy Vetch Cover Crop
Overwintering legume cover before heavy-feeding warm-season crops.
Grown for soil cover and biomass, not food harvest.
Seed spacing and maturity
- Days to maturity
- 180
- Germination temperature
- 45-75F
- Seed depth
- 0.5 inches
- Spacing
- 2 inches
- Row spacing
- 6 inches
- Start method
- Direct sow
Frost-date timing
- Direct sow
- 28 days before last frost
- Fall planting
- 8 weeks before first frost
Action plan
- Can I plant this now?
- Use your local last-frost, first-frost, and soil-temperature checks before treating this crop as plantable today.
- Start indoors or direct sow?
- Direct sow into the final bed when the soil temperature, seed depth, and moisture are ready.
- How much space?
- 2 inches in-row spacing, 6 inches between rows, and 0.5 inch seed depth.
- Best companions?
- Use this as part of a diverse flowering or herb planting, and treat companion claims as site-specific rather than guaranteed pest control.
- Common failure modes?
- Plan spring termination carefully; vetch can tangle with small transplants. Moderate water during establishment. Well-drained soil; inoculation may improve legume performance.
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Moderate water during establishment.
- Soil
- Well-drained soil; inoculation may improve legume performance.
- Watch
- Plan spring termination carefully; vetch can tangle with small transplants.
- cover-crop
- legume
- overwintering
- green-manure
Browse context
- Cover Crop Catalog Category collection
- Legume Family Rotation and family context
- Cool Season Seeds Season collection
- Direct Sow Seeds Start-method collection
- High Pollinator Value Seeds Practical trait collection
- Fall-Planting Seeds Practical trait collection
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