Latin name: Vicia sativa

Family: Fabaceae

Agronomic characteristics

Vetches are the most commonly used legumes in intercropping. They are appreciated because their moderate-sized seeds limit the quantities to be sown and facilitate mixing. Like all legumes, they must be sown early in summer if you want to produce biomass before winter. If they are well developed, they are destroyed relatively easily (freezing, rolling, etc.). However, we must remain attentive to their destruction if they are moderately developed, especially before crops where no recovery is possible because the vetch can be invasive. The ability of the different vetch varieties to produce biomass can be very different from one variety to another. Common vetch has the best forage value of all kind of vetch. Because of that, Common vetch is mainly used in cover crops for forage uses.