VNS Sunn Hemp: A High-Nitrogen Summer Legume for Biomass and Soil Protection
Watch Dale break down why sunn hemp is one of the most productive summer annual legumes you can plant. You'll see how it builds massive biomass, fixes more nitrogen than other legumes, and creates a protective soil armor that holds up to grazing and traffic. Learn why planting sunn hemp with cowpeas creates an even better cover crop combination.
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0:13 One of our most productive summer annual legumes. Fact, I think I'm most productive.
0:20 His son, he'll son ham fell, you don't see many legumes. They get this call. This is about seven feet tall and there's a lot of biomass in this plant. It makes more biomass, more nitrogen than any other.
0:38 Summer annual to get also has a couple other neat attributes. The snails are very hard and woody. When you lay these on the ground, they form a very persistent soil armor that takes a long time.
0:55 For these things to be OK, so that residue lasts a long time providing soil protection. You can lay these on the ground, it'll hold up animal traffic, it'll hold up vehicle traffic kind of.
1:09 Act like snowshoes that prevents further soil compaction. The highest nitrogen-fixing summer legume we've got probably makes more nitrogen per day of growth than any other legume that I'm.
1:22 Aware of just a very useful plant. The leaves are about thirty percent protein. It does contain some alkaloids that make it somewhat bitter to grazing animals.
1:35 Will voluntarily only make it a small percentage of their diet that when planted in a mixture this is a very very valuable component it also has these bright canary yellow flowers that come.
2:06 Pollen and nectar for a number of our native beef species. I think it's a plant that we should be using more of. I especially like a combination of some hemp and cow peas together because the
2:23 Sun hemp as you can see grows very tall and upright and the cow peas will vine up the Sun hemp stems and you get a really an uneven canopy that spreads a lot of leaf area over an acre.
2:41 A ground you have sun hemp and cow peas growing together you can get three or four acres of leaves on one acre of ground spread that sunlight over more leaf area which gives you more.
2:52 Photosynthesis, more biomass and more nitrogen than either plant alone. Also, because sun hemp is so upright it doesn't compete with weeds very well by itself, but when you can combine it with a binding plant like cow peas that'll fill in all the gaps, that combination together is very aggressive against weeds. In addition to making more nitrogen, more biomass, more pasture than either of the two species alone. Great combination, one of my favorites during the summer.