Bug chewing off my Beans & Peas. HELP!

I just went out to check and see how my green beans are coming along. I had noticed that some of them were getting blossoms. I couldn't believe my eyes. Some of the plants have had their tops chewed off leaving only sad looking stubs. Also something has been doing the same thing to our pea plants. They are chewed off about 2inches above the ground and you don't notice it until the plants wilt. I have put down a lot of diatamacious earth around all of them. I thought cut worms. But don't they cut the plant off just under the soil surface? Help!

 

Could be slugs or snails...but tell me--was the upper part of the plant lying on the ground near the "chewed-off" plant, or was there no 'top of the plant' to be found?

 

The rest of the plant that had been chewed off was laying next to some of them, or on top of some of the sad looking stubs. I have my garden fenced in to keep the critters out. I'm thinking maybe cut worms but on sure since it happened at the top of my Green Bean plants. Hope that helps.

 

Well Tooty, with the upper plant bits lying beside the plants, I now suspect birds. You may need to also have some kind of discouraging structure above the bean plants until they get to be 12 or more inches tall.

If you have at least one set of leaves proximal to the "severance site", your bean plant may send up another runner or two. All hope is not lost for those decapitated plantlets.

 

Sjoerd: I will have to put one of my scarecrows out in the garden. I never thought of birds. But we have a lot of different varieties. But that doesn't help me with what is snipping off our pea vines about 2 inches from the ground. I'm thinking in this case it is cut worms. I love your website. Very nicely put together. Thanks again.

 

Tooty--I have never heard of a cut worm cutting plants off so high above the soil level. Cut-off plants is such a frustrating thing to discover.
Thanks for the compliment on the website. That was very nice of you.

 

Sjoerd: that's what had me scratching my head. I think I have two different things going on.
Toni: got the rabbit thing covered. :-| Hummm. I just put out our scare crow. We'll see what happens. Thanks.

 

I've had the exact same thing happen to my yellow pole beans. I'm sure that in my case a bunch of young birds (sparrows) are the "offenders", because I actually saw them tugging at the beans. (we have a group of about 40 sparrows that sort of 'live' in our garden)

Those baby sparrows are so cute, I just can't be cross with them for ruining my beans!

 

Do you have grasshoppers like we do here ?

 

Gardenelf, I don't have very many sparrows in my yard. We have blue birds and so we eliminate as many sparrows as we can. Sorry. They are the main reason that Blue birds are on a decline in the US. The sparrows will go into a blue bird nest, break all the eggs and even kill the adult blue bird if they are sitting on the nest. So I know it's not sparrows. But it could be some other bird. I did put our scare crow in the garden yesterday.
So I will see if that helps.

Mart, not yet. We get more grass hoppers in late Aug. into fall. So I am still scratching my head.

 

Tooty2shoes, I do apologise for my ignorance, I never knew that about sparrows!

Unfortunately we don't have bluebirds here in The Netherlands. In fact, most bird-species are on the decline here, including the sparrows. The large group of those little "thugs" we have here is quite the exception.

I hope the scarecrow works so your beans will grow!

 

Gardenelf: that's ok. I didn't mean the info as a negative against your liking the sparrows you have in your yard. Sorry if it sounded that way.

 

Oh no, it didn't sound negative at all! I am just shocked to learn that those little cuties can be little terrors too!
I can well imagine it, though, I've seen them fighting amongst themselves around the birdfeeders, they can be really mean and nasty!
I don't know if you've ever observed this, but I've seen sparrow-females peck at the male, and actually have them dangling from their beak for up to a minute. Ouch!

 

Well if this don't beat all. I found out what has been chewing and eating stuff in my garden. And I am to blame in a way. I have been putting down grass clippings around my veggies and the perimeter of my veggie garden. I pulled some of the grass mulch back and what did I see. Tunnels going threw it.
What I had created was the prefect Vole home. So I have now removed all the mulch from the perimeter of my garden and the put down Shake-away. At first I thought of using rat poison on the little buggers :-x . But I hate using poison on anything. So then I thought, Ha :-D I will use my Coyote pee and shake it around the garden to keep those little critters out. I a few days I should know if it worked or not. Then I may have to resort to more harsher methods. Hope not though.