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Hi all, first-time gardener in San Diego here. I've got lettuce, arugula, squash, cucumbers, chard, radishes, carrots, green beans, and limas coming up (well, the lettuces and radishes I've been harvesting already) and the only thing in my garden that's getting munched on is my beans...
The leaves are being eaten by something, while nothing else is touched. I haven't *seen* anything in there crunching on my goodies, and I'm not sure how to approach this.. Any ideas?
Slugs!
They ate my whole bean crop last year, didn't allow any plant to retain a leaf for more than a day. I left bowls of beer for them and several of them drowned, but I never got all of them in time to keep my plants going.
There's nothing I hate worse than walking outside, barefoot, at night, and stepping on a slug! Seems like it takes a week to get that slime off your foot. lol My dad always bought some slug pellets, I think Ortho sells them, and sprinkled them around the garden. Worked pretty good. Ex FIL used to sit out at night with the salt shaker and sprinkle on the slugs on the sidewalk and driveway.
Hi all, first-time gardener in San Diego here. I've got lettuce, arugula, squash, cucumbers, chard, radishes, carrots, green beans, and limas coming up (well, the lettuces and radishes I've been harvesting already) and the only thing in my garden that's getting munched on is my beans...
The leaves are being eaten by something, while nothing else is touched. I haven't *seen* anything in there crunching on my goodies, and I'm not sure how to approach this.. Any ideas?
...........................
If the leaves are being eaten on your bean plants, after they have just emerged from the ground, slugs are a good bet. If you want to do it organically, you have several options:
1. start the beans in a cold frame and plant them once they are larger.
2. save your egg shells from the kitchen, put them in a 5 gallon plastic pail (or whatever else you have), but don't cover, for they need to air dry. once dry, you can use a glove or a 2x4 piece or anything else to mash, crush, grind them. Sprinkle the crushed egg shells around the plants that the slugs eat, the shells are sharp and will discourage the slugs.
3. get some diatomaceous earth (DE) from a garden source, such as PeacefulValley at: Stats about all US cities - real estate, relocation info, house prices, home value estimator, recent sales, cost of living, crime, race, income, photos, education, maps, weather, houses, schools, neighborhoods, and more (http://www.groworganic.com/item_PMB105_Diatomaceous_Earth_50_Lb_Bag.html - broken link). For more info on DE, see: Natural Insect Repellents for Pets, People, and Plants, Gainger & Moore.
It is the skeletal remains of prehistoric diatoms (single celled sea creatures). They are sharp on a microscopic level and will cut up all soft bodied insects and any insect that ingests it will have its innerds cut up, stop eating, and die. Of course, it has to be sprinkled lightly again and again to replace it after it rains; it is organic and will add calcium and other minerals to soil too.
4. I read somewhere that if you have copper flashing, that you can put a little fence on the ground around some plants, at least 4 inches tall, slugs start to crawl on it and the electromagnetic charge in the copper reacts with the slug's slime and shocks the slugs and they retreat; this seems impractical due to cost of the copper, but it is interesting.
5. If there is a granite quarry in your area that makes gravel, get some granite dust (the finest screening, just a little larger than sand). It is the old German method of farming, the powdered rock has all sorts of trace minerals, loosens the soil, and also works great on the surface as a mulch of sorts to keep some insects away. It costs about $8/ton (not counting delivery cost if you don't have a truck). It is a wonderful soil amendment to till in to loosen and nourish clay soils. Put a shovel-ful around each plant or so, a few inches thick, about 6 inches out in diameter. Slugs do not like to crawl through it. I place down old newspapers/boxes, junk mail around plants (tomatoes especially) to keep the weeds down and keep soil from splashing up on the plants (I have found doing this cuts out 90% of tomato disease/rot problems). I then put the granite dust on top of the paper/junk mail to keep it from blowing away and to pose a slug barrier. Slugs don't like to crawl through it as it is coarse and sticks to their underside slime. For more on granite dust, see the book Bread From Stones, Julius Hensel.
If the leaves and flowers and beans are being eaten after the beans plants are well grown, the Mexican bean beetle is probably the culprit;
[click on thumbnail for larger picture]
it looks like a ladybug, but is tan or yellow (or in some areas, sometimes orange or red) colored and their larvae are tiny yellow creatures with black spines on them (these are also often seen on squash plants). A natural product which will stop this infestation in all stages is Pyola (made from chysanthemum flowers) and obtainable from GardensAlive at: Pyola<sup>®</sup> Insect Spray
or Rotenone/Pyrethrin at:
Liquid Rotenone/Pyrethrin Spray (http://www.gardensalive.com/product.asp?pn=8659 - broken link)
(usually you get a $25 off coupon when they mail you their catalog (or you can ask online or by phone about the coupon).
If the bean seeds never seem to germinate or appear to sprout through the soil, good chance it is a vole eating them, going down the entire row underground. If this is the case, see my other post on moles/voles.
Hope this helps. Robert
Last edited by Robert-Alan; 05-22-2010 at 06:18 PM..
If something is eating only your leaves and nothing else, I'd bet my bottom dollar that it is rabbits. They are notoriously fond of bean leaves, leaving nothing behind but the lonely, naked stalks. I have yet to find a way to deter them, shy of building a mesh-wire cage to set over the plants... but thats surely what your problem is. Goooood luck!
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Bean culprits
