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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
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Plant · P-092
Tufted Vetch
Vicia cracca
Tufted Vetch is a nitrogen-fixing vine that spreads by both rhizome and seed, sending tendrils up whatever it can reach. It needs soil kept reliably moist through the growing season, or shade if that moisture isn't available, and struggles wherever summers run hot, humid and dry. Where moisture holds, it feeds bees, gathers minerals as it grows, and can hold a bank on its own once established - but those climbing tendrils will pull down a young fruit tree, so give it a fence or a coppice stool instead.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–8
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moderate · Wet
Vertical layer
Vine- Soil pH
- 5.5–8
- Plant type
- Vine
- Mature height
- 1–6 ft
- Mature spread
- 1.6–3.3 ft
- Plant spacing
- Not yet recorded
- Root type
- Rhizome
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
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Bottle Gourd
Lagenaria siceraria
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Butternut Squash
Cucurbita moschata
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Gelsemium sempervirens
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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