Happy St. David's Day: 2015.

Happy St. David's Day!
The daffodils are nearly finished blooming in Vinoland, it's been a very mild winter.  The daffodil in the photograph has grown from a bulb, one of many, that I planted around Vinodog 1's grave last November.  I love that the vetch tendril is grasping the blade of grass, a weedy-embrace in remembrance of my old girl.
Bore da!

A common weed.

I was happy to see Common Vetch growing vigorously on my recent ramble with Thud. It made me think of my little vineyard almost 6,000 miles away. Of course, the entire state of California won't be looking quite as green as this right now as they are having slightly higher temps than Blighty. You also won't see the Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) growing alongside the vetch stateside. How English!

N is for...

...nitrogen.
The main source of environmental nitrogen is the atmosphere. We are all breathing about 78% nitrogen gas right now. Nitrogen fixation is the process by which gaseous nitrogen changes into nitrate or ammonium, something more usable to grapevines.
The above picture shows vetch, caught in the act of, fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere. The pink nodules on the roots show that nitrogen fixation is active. The amount of fixation depends on many things; cover crop type, soil pH, soil temperature, soil moisture, etc. The incorporation of the vetch into the soil, by disking, can double soil nitrogen content compared to a no-till green manure approach. However, disking is bad for soil health as it causes compaction, so here, in Vinoland, we mow. A significant amount of nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere by volatilisation in a no-till operation, but that's OK, the cycle will happen again next year...and I'll have something to kvetch about once more.

Kvetching about vetch.

No, I haven't determined that I will blog in Yiddish from now on. It's just that there is so much common vetch, (Vicia sativa), growing around here this year that I'm a little overwhelmed. It's everywhere, even Vinomaker has commented on it. The past couple of weeks I have been concentrating on the vineyard and the landscaping has suffered a little. The vetch has intertwined itself with our shrubbery and every other vertical foothold it can find...it's a good job the Vinodogs don't stay still for long. There are worse weeds out there, of course. Vetch is a legume and so is capable of nitrogen fixation. They also have a stipular extrafloral nectary site that ladybirds just love. And our neighbours' horses love it too.
So just like triffids, the benefits of vetch outweigh, in this case, the back ache it will take to remove it.