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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-298
Goats Rue
Tephrosia virginiana
Goats Rue fixes its own nitrogen and produces rotenone in its roots, a broad-spectrum natural insecticide long used to poison fish - not something to feed livestock despite the name, since every part of the plant is toxic enough that goat's-milk feeding was abandoned once the toxin was understood. It grows slowly from seed that is difficult to start and hard to divide, so a planting neither spreads nor replaces itself once established. Sources disagree sharply on how much shade it tolerates, some rating it full sun only and others full to deep shade - which matters, because a shade-tolerant nitrogen fixer is unusual.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun · Shade
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–9
- Soil
- Sand · Loam
- Moisture
- Dry
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 3.3–6
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 12–24 in
- Mature spread
- 9–18 in
- Plant spacing
- 12–36 in
- Root type
- Fibrous-deep
- Spread pattern
- None
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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