Common Vetch
Common Vetch is another great nitrogen fixer from the Pea family! Vetch is an economical cover crop that has beautiful purple pea flowers all summer long.
Vicia sativa, known as the common vetch, garden vetch, tare or simply vetch is a nitrogen fixing leguminous plant in the family Fabaceae. Although considered a weed when found growing in a cultivated grain field, this hardy plant is often grown as green manure or livestock fodder.
Vicia sativa is a sprawling annual herb, with hollow, four-sided, hairless to sparsely hairy stems which can reach two meters in maximum length.
The leaves are stipulate, alternate and compound, each made up of 3 to 8 opposite pairs of linear, lance-shaped, oblong, or wedge-shaped, needle-tipped leaflets up to 3.5 centimeters long. Each compound leaf ends in a branched tendril.