Shaggy Peas

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Shaggy peas (lat. Vicia villosa) - more often an annual herb, representing a genus on Earth

Polka dots, or, Vika, (lat. Vicia) family Legumes (lat. Fabaceae). The climbing plant has acquired tenacious tendrils located at the ends of the complex-pinnate leaves to cling to the support, helping the fragile plant to be resistant to the vicissitudes of life. Inflorescences-brushes of lilac-blue flowers adorn the delicate foliage, turning the plant into an ornamental one and attracting bees and other insects. Shaggy peas are an excellent green manure that maintains soil fertility.

Description

Shaggy vetch, as a rule, is an annual plant that manages to do a lot of useful things on Earth in one summer season. The plant is rich in subspecies, differing from each other in some external details.

Its branched climbing stem grows from 30 to 150 centimeters in length. In different subspecies, the stem can be naked, silky or covered with long hair.

Openwork paired leaves are formed by small leaves of various shapes: lanceolate, oblong, linear. The tip of the leaf can be sharp or blunt. A common compound leaf ends with a branched, tenacious tendril.

The sepal of a flower with teeth of unequal length has an oblique bell-shaped shape and protects the delicate floral corolla from adversity. Small flowers form dense inflorescences-brushes, painted in shades of white, purple, blue, pale red. The flower shape, characteristic of plants of the legume family, consists of a boat, wings that are longer than the boat, but shorter than an oblong or linear flag.

The fruit is a typical bean pod, oblong-rhomboid or simply oblong. The surface of the pod valves is reticulate. Inside the bean are black spherical-flattened seeds, in the amount of 2 to 8 pieces.

Shaggy peas are an ubiquitous creation of nature. It is assumed that his homeland was North Africa and partly Europe with Asia. But, with the development of connections between the continents, the unpretentious and frost-resistant Vika shaggy conquered more and more areas, often turning into an annoying weed plant.

Usage

Vetch is grown on all continents as a nutritious forage crop for livestock. It multiplies easily by self-sowing, turning into a weed that infests cereal crops.

The plant is an excellent green manure, healing depleted land, enriching the soil with nitrogen and organic matter. High frost resistance Shaggy pea allows you to prepare the soil in advance for vegetable crops. In particular, the World Fellowship of fans of ruddy tomatoes recommends that Vika should be sown with furry one month before the arrival of winter frosts in the beds intended for planting tomato bushes next year.

The calculation is based on the fact that seedlings slightly grown to frost can easily overwinter under the snow in order to continue their growth in the spring. In the initial stage of flowering, preventing the appearance of seeds, the grass is mowed under the root and turns it into nutritious mulch for tomatoes.

The roots remaining in the soil enrich it with nitrogen, prevent the soil from compaction, and allow moisture to circulate easily. Herbaceous mulch, in turn, contributes to the preservation of soil moisture, does not allow weeds to get through to the light, prevents the activity of harmful microbes and insects, turns into an organic fertilizer with a long period of action.

Such green manure allows you to get a decent harvest of delicious vegetables with minimal physical labor, maintain soil fertility, do without the use of chemical poisonous agents in the fight against lovers of feasting at someone else's expense.