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| Many acres used to be grown here in western oregon. I grew up raising harry vetch for seed. I dont know what other climates it will grow in. This is my story and I'm stick'n to it. We'd plant a mix of oats and vetch, seem to recall about a 20% vetch mix with oats. (20lbs vetch per 100lbs oats.) Oats was for a trellis effect. Planted it in early october, sprayed with karmex before germ. Let grow till bloom when we had to spray with insecticide. Usually methoxychlor, early days by air, later by ground for........political reasons. Once pods set, figure out which set you want to try to harvest, (we usually went for the second set) and get a majority of the seeds in the majority of that pod set to have a black speckling, then swathe. Let dry in the windrow, and combine. Sometimes the seeds will have a green color to them even though they are dry enough to harvest. But make sure the stuff is storable. Weeds and pods may not be dry enough to store even though the vetch is ready to combine. Sometimes the trick there is to be able to skalp the high moisture stuff off and seperate so you can store the seed. If you wait too long in the hot dry air in the windrow to combine, the vetch pods will be popping and you'll loose your crop on the ground. If you try to combine it a day too early, your auger on the combine header will wrap 200' of windrow up before you get to the switch. If that happens, you wont be pulling it off by hand, you'll need a big sharp something to cut it apart.
Do you have a local seed cleaner? If so, it would be a good idea to see if they can clean vetch. If not, and you dont want to incure the cost of cleaning them anyway, set your combine back up next to the bin with a piece of tin or something to somewhat evenly districute the material across the chaffer, and re-run the stuff over the cleaning system of the combine. You'll likely need to remove the flat pods before you can use the vetch in a planter.
Well, thats my story, fwiw. Good luck with whatever you decide. | |
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Hairy Vetch? Can you grow your own.
