Something is destroying my pole beans

[Sammster]

When they get their tummy full they stretch out by my window to laugh at me! #@%&#
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Grrrrrrr!

 

[nao57]

!

 

[Birdsonghill]

Hello fellow chicken person! Rabbits ,deer and other critters can be economically kept out with deer netting, much cheaper on the front end than wire fencing. The draw back is you have to handle it carefully if you want to get multiple years out of it and it tends to trap snakes and some other small animals can get tangled up in it and die. I must fence my main patch or the deer and bunnies destroy much of it. I have taken a deer in payment some times to cover my expense for the fence with meat I fed so well. But the herds of deer can destroy a crop of corn in a night or two. Every time so far, the 300 ft. rolls have actually been closer to and even over 400 ft when stretched out and cost less than $90. If careful I can get three years out of it. I use 8 ft. high locust poles or 4x4's extending 8ft. tall to string the netting up on. It is about 7plus ft. tall installed, and is just enough to keep them out. It protects my 100 x 120 ft main garden plot well. I will warn you some years the animals got tangled in it and tore it up, so put visible flags on it and cut any snakes not the net to untangle them or just leave them to deteriorate in the netting. The $30 to 50 per year cost is worth it too me to insure my Melons, beans, peas and corn make a large crop. The 40 watermelons the deer ate one year in a single night was worth more than the fence cost.

 

[Birdsonghill]

Sounds like it could be a bunny. They will strip the bottom leaves where they can reach, and sometimes bite the stem. One bunny wiped out two rows of peas last spring, then came back toward the end of bean season and finished mine off for me. It ignored every other vegetable in my garden, only wanted peas and beans. A two-foot high chicken wire fence around them will do the trick if you do in fact have a bunny visitor.

I was thinking bunny or deer! I have had a crop of peas mown down in a day and a night by deer that looked like it was mowed with a reel type greens mower when they left it! They often start out nibbling outer leaves and shoots, then when they realize how good it is and they get comfortable there, they gobble it down! Rabbits can do a very similar mode of attack. I had them wipe out a large commercial planting I did at a office bldg. one year of pansies. At first we saw nibbling then it became a plague of flower eating varmints!

 

[Birdsonghill]

Rabbit, deer, maybe a woodchuck. Very frustrating, I know!

I forgot about my fat wood chuck! He liked the squash and melons so much he left most the other stuff alone this past summer.

 

[Sammster]

I forgot about my fat wood chuck! He liked the squash and melons so much he left most the other stuff alone this past summer.

It's so frustrating, isn't it?