GardenAnnual Cover Crop · 4 varieties
Hairy vetch
Vicia villosa
Fabaceae — the same plant family as bush bean, pea, pole bean, cowpea and 9 more here. Relatives share pests and diseases, which is why rotation plans group by family.
Hairy vetch (Vicia villosa) is an annual cover crop. It wants full sun and pH 6–7 soil, with about 1 in of water weekly. Watch for aphids and anthracnose. Below: its full sourced profile from 9 extension sources, plus a planting calendar timed to your frost dates.
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP for yours. Timing is a guide from the crop's sourced growth stages; confirm with your local frost dates and extension before you sow.
What we will not put a number on
We do not give a feeding rate for this crop, and that is deliberate rather than a gap. The figures published by extension services are pounds of nitrogen per acre for a production field — they do not convert safely to a raised bed or a pot without knowing your soil test and your fertilizer's analysis, and guessing errs toward burning roots. It is also why every chart you find online disagrees with the next one.
We give watering as a depth per week rather than gallons per plant, because that is how it is actually measured and how the published figures are written. A gallons-per-plant number depends on your spacing, your soil and whether the plant is in a pot — so it would look more precise than it is.
Site & soil
- Sun
- Full sun
- Soil pH
- 6–7
- Soil texture
- Loam, Sandy, Clay, Well drained
- Frost tolerance
- Very hardy
No published figure for the temperature frost starts to hurt it. We looked — where a number is missing here it is missing from the research, not skipped. The crop’s frost and heat tolerance above still applies.
The plant
- Mature height
- 1–3 ft
- Mature spread
- 1–3 ft
- Growth rate
- Fastest
- Spacing in row
- 1–3 in
- Between rows
- 6–8 inest
- Planting depth
- 0.5–0.75 in
- Support
- Self-supporting
- Grown from
- Direct sow
Water & feeding
- Water needs
- Low
- Water per week
- 1 in/wkest
- Critical water
- Establishmentest
- Feeding
- Low
Timing & fruiting
- Harvest cues
- First flowers, Pods visible
- Killed in the ground at
- 5 °F
Compiled from the extensions cited below. Which ones actually show up depends on your region — your extension's local list is the last word.
Petshorses
Recorded exactly as the source states it — not medical or veterinary advice. If a person or animal may have eaten a toxic part, call Poison Control (1-800-222-1222) or your vet / the ASPCA line (888-426-4435).
| Variety | Type | Days | Color | What it is known for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AU Early Cover | Named | — | ||
| AU Merit | Named | — | Southern Pasture & Forage Crop Improvement Conference (SPFCIC), hosted by Texas A&M AgriLife records this astakes the cold | |
| Common | Common | — | NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox records this astakes the cold · draws bees and butterflies · gets by on less water · drops seed and comes back on its own | |
| Purple Bounty | Named | — | Purple | USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) records this astakes the cold |
- Alternative Field Crops Manual — Hairy Vetch (Undersander, Ehlke, Kaminski, Doll & Kelling, September 1990; Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Cooperative Extension & Univ. of Minnesota; hosted at Purdue NewCROP). Same document family as the registered AFCM-RYE and AFCM-FLAX.
- Cornell University (Bjorkman Lab) — covercrop.org
- Iowa State University Extension and Outreach — Integrated Crop Management Encyclopedia, 'Hairy vetch as a cover crop' (Mark Licht). Last reviewed June 10, 2026.
- Mississippi State University Extension Service
- NC State Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox
- Oregon State University Extension Service — EM 8699, 'Hairy Vetch (Vicia villosa)', Sattell, Dick, Luna & McGrath, January 1998 (Oregon Cover Crops series). Archival PDF from ScholarsArchive@OSU; two-column layout, must be read with pdftotext -raw or the sentences interleave.
- SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education)
- USDA NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) Plant Materials Program
- University of California ANR — Alfalfa & Forage News
We compile bare facts from these university-extension and horticultural sources, never copied prose. 14 of the 18 values on this page carry a citation. The rest are marked est; hover one and it says why — either nobody publishes a figure we could point at, or a person set it and attached no source. Figures vary with climate and seed source; confirm with your local extension before you buy.
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