2025 Little Easy Bean Network - Growers Of The Future Will Be Glad We Saved

[heirloomgal]

Well, the time has come to spill some beans so to speak, lol.

I'm a believer in the adage 'where your attention goes, grows' so I really make an effort in life to focus on the positive. Thus, I didn't want to be on the thread here hashing out my challenges this year, and sinking energy into it. However, I feel like I've now turned a corner and can allow myself to share some of the struggle of the last month or so since I think it's finally all over. I can honestly say the last 5 weeks have been the greatest struggle for my beans that I've ever had in my life, bar none. Let me preface my ordeal by saying I don't know if I had a hand in my problem or not, but I probably did to some degree because last year I did 2 things I don't normally do. I suspect these things played a large part. 1) I had a bunch of solar lights placed around the edges of the garden last year, about 16. 2) I decided not to till in the fall.

About a week after I planted out all my beans, I started finding cut down plants in the morning. Not the nipped at ground level damage I've seen cutworms do before. This climbed. At first I thought this was a passing thing, and I had the crazy luck to have significantly overplanted. (Crazy luck I tell you.) But within 3 days, I was finding up to 8 dead plants each morning, cut many inches up from the ground. I only planted about 6 of each variety or less. So I started buying bottles of diatomaceous earth, which were costly. I bought some online in bulk for a better price, but had to keep buying bottles retail until it arrived at the doorstep. It cost nearly $250 between the emergency bottles and the 25 pound bag, but it seemed to end my struggles. Or so I thought. I guess this bug had a lifecycle wherein it had a vulnerable phase to the powder... and then it didn't. A week or so after the nightly powder applications (so much work!) they were able to crawl across it no problem, and I started losing bean plants again. Lots of them.

They were chopping other plants too now - with big stems. If they couldn't kill the plant by wrapping around a too thick middle, the worm climbed even higher to chop branches and leaves or even the top growth of the plant. Tomatoes, sunchokes, ground cherries, prickly zucchini stems. They killed a lot of large marigolds, which is ironic, because those are often employed in pest control.

I tried making aluminum foil collars for the bean stems. They climbed right across them. I bought BBQ skewers, the really hard wooden ones, and stuck those beside the stems of the bean plants and tied them with yarn. There was no way I cold do all of them, but I did the plants in the spots where the worm/s had been active. I also sifted large amounts of soil around the plants - desperate to sift the bugs out. Nothing. Tying the wooden sticks to the stems seemed to work very well. Until it didn't. I guess the worm life cycle changed yet again. I couldn't believe my eyes, but they started to chew right through the hard wood along with the bean stems.

So I bought 3 foot long, very large BBQ skewers, much larger and thicker than the last but just as rock hard. To my utter astonishment, they climbed those too, up to 2 feet high, and chewed right through like a razor. The fava bean below had the XL skewer beside, and still the worm chewed right through. Piece is on the ground.

The whole thing was beyond terrible. But!!! I am thrilled to report that while I lost a lot of plants, I lost only 1 variety totally this year (Perle von Marbach) but I still have more seed. A variety called 'Stripey Snap' was hit hard, and there may be only 1 or 2 plants left but it's enough to try again for sure if the plant matures. There may be a few poles with only 2 or 3 plants around it now, but I'm happy for what remains. It's nothing short of a miracle that the main garden, which was affected the worst, is still going to be fine!

What a month it's been!!

 

[Decoy1]

One of the symptoms I read of vascular collapse in beans is wilting, but in my case there was none of that. The plants were perfectly healthy. What's left of them now even still looks good. All my googling seems to point to sunscald or overwatering. So, between the heat and all the rain that is entirely possible.

I’m heartened to find I’m not alone in this phenomenon. It’s natural to either feel one has done something wrong - any manure in the soil wasn’t well enough rotted was one thought I had - or fear a disease which will spread or be in contaminated soil etc.

It has been unusually hot here too. No rain but my partner assiduously waters. But whether by rain or by watering, each plant in the row will be getting roughly the same amount, so it’s surprising that one or two plants here and there just have a weakness that the others don’t have, in spite of having grown strongly.

I’m grateful for this discussion.

 

[Decoy1]

Well, the time has come to spill some beans so to speak, lol.

I'm a believer in the adage 'where your attention goes, grows' so I really make an effort in life to focus on the positive. Thus, I didn't want to be on the thread here hashing out my challenges this year, and sinking energy into it. However, I feel like I've now turned a corner and can allow myself to share some of the struggle of the last month or so since I think it's finally all over. I can honestly say the last 5 weeks have been the greatest struggle for my beans that I've ever had in my life, bar none. Let me preface my ordeal by saying I don't know if I had a hand in my problem or not, but I probably did to some degree because last year I did 2 things I don't normally do. I suspect these things played a large part. 1) I had a bunch of solar lights placed around the edges of the garden last year, about 16. 2) I decided not to till in the fall.

About a week after I planted out all my beans, I started finding cut down plants in the morning. Not the nipped at ground level damage I've seen cutworms do before. This climbed. At first I thought this was a passing thing, and I had the crazy luck to have significantly overplanted. (Crazy luck I tell you.) But within 3 days, I was finding up to 8 dead plants each morning, cut many inches up from the ground. I only planted about 6 of each variety or less. So I started buying bottles of diatomaceous earth, which were costly. I bought some online in bulk for a better price, but had to keep buying bottles retail until it arrived at the doorstep. It cost nearly $250 between the emergency bottles and the 25 pound bag, but it seemed to end my struggles. Or so I thought. I guess this bug had a lifecycle wherein it had a vulnerable phase to the powder... and then it didn't. A week or so after the nightly powder applications (so much work!) they were able to crawl across it no problem, and I started losing bean plants again. Lots of them.

They were chopping other plants too now - with big stems. If they couldn't kill the plant by wrapping around a too thick middle, the worm climbed even higher to chop branches and leaves or even the top growth of the plant. Tomatoes, sunchokes, ground cherries, prickly zucchini stems. They killed a lot of large marigolds, which is ironic, because those are often employed in pest control.

View attachment 76211View attachment 76212

I tried making aluminum foil collars for the bean stems. They climbed right across them. I bought BBQ skewers, the really hard wooden ones, and stuck those beside the stems of the bean plants and tied them with yarn. There was no way I cold do all of them, but I did the plants in the spots where the worm/s had been active. I also sifted large amounts of soil around the plants - desperate to sift the bugs out. Nothing. Tying the wooden sticks to the stems seemed to work very well. Until it didn't. I guess the worm life cycle changed yet again. I couldn't believe my eyes, but they started to chew right through the hard wood along with the bean stems.
View attachment 76214
View attachment 76213

So I bought 3 foot long, very large BBQ skewers, much larger and thicker than the last but just as rock hard. To my utter astonishment, they climbed those too, up to 2 feet high, and chewed right through like a razor. The fava bean below had the XL skewer beside, and still the worm chewed right through. Piece is on the ground.

View attachment 76216View attachment 76218

The whole thing was beyond terrible. But!!! I am thrilled to report that while I lost a lot of plants, I lost only 1 variety totally this year (Perle von Marbach) but I still have more seed. A variety called 'Stripey Snap' was hit hard, and there may be only 1 or 2 plants left but it's enough to try again for sure if the plant matures. There may be a few poles with only 2 or 3 plants around it now, but I'm happy for what remains. It's nothing short of a miracle that the main garden, which was affected the worst, is still going to be fine!

What a month it's been!!

That’s beyond awful @heirloomgal. My heartfelt sympathies. It makes the one or two giving up the ghost, which I was worrying about, seem very minor.

Have you identified the destructive caterpillar? You seem confident the attack is under control now, thank goodness. Have they moved on, or into a different phase of their life cycle?

Great that you haven’t any irreplaceable losses, but I can imagine the distress and desperation you’ve been experiencing.

 

[flowerbug]

@heirloomgal i would think that high up that it was groundhog damage because i rarely have any cutworms around here (just a few once in a great while).

 

[ruralmamma]

Thankfully the Wren's Egg plant has been the only casualty.

I have three plants that have surpassed my height as of this morning - Nona Agnes, Grandma Barnett and one whose name escaped me as soon as I shut the garden gate (Coal Camp). I purposely requested Nona Agnes and Meerbarbe this year to compare to seed I acquired from the seed library which lists it by both names. Not sure how good my comparisons will be since I pampered the Network beans while the transplants of my saved seed were planted a few days later on a day that was supposed to be overcast. Of course on our way to my daughter's appointment two hours away, the sun came out in full glory and I expected to come home to cooked plants but they looked okay. I guess the greenhouse is doing a better job of hardening them off than I thought as they're healthy and climbing.

 

[Branching Out]

We've had a lot of cutworms this spring too. So frustrating. Now that I can recognize their pupas I can eliminate many of them at that stage of growth. One of our local garden experts Linda Gilkeson has a background in entomology, and I often refer to her documents for advice on how to deal with insect pests. I've not tried searching for them by flashlight yet, but may have to give it a try. Linda's post below was from an October newsletter, http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/gardening-pdf/Winter Gardening 2018 - Oct 31.pdf

'Those darn cutworms: In these relatively warm nights, climbing cutworms have been frolicking and
chewing big holes in leafy greens. Most are the caterpillars of the Large Yellow Underwing moth [for
photos, see: http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/leaf_chewers.html#25 ]. The surest way to deal with them is
to go out after dark with a flashlight and look for them on the plants. Their colours range from light
green to very dark grey; in the evening they come up to feed along the top edges of leaves and are
surprisingly easy to see. Because they are so big it only takes a few cutworms to do a lot of damage, but
the good news is that when you catch and destroy the ones that are present now, that’s it—there won’t
be another generation until later next summer'.

 

[heirloomgal]

That’s beyond awful @heirloomgal. My heartfelt sympathies. It makes the one or two giving up the ghost, which I was worrying about, seem very minor.

Have you identified the destructive caterpillar? You seem confident the attack is under control now, thank goodness. Have they moved on, or into a different phase of their life cycle?

Great that you haven’t any irreplaceable losses, but I can imagine the distress and desperation you’ve been experiencing.

I believe it's called the 'Variegated Cutworm', a more formidable opponent that the single other type I've encountered. There are still some small ones here and there, as I've found a few marigolds again cut, and a small tomato branch yesterday morning, but the powder seems to be able to stop them at this stage so I covered everything in it. They clearly are actively seeking smaller plants luckily, of which there are less and less. My fervent hope is that the moths will soon decide that the garden is no longer able to provide what the larvae will need. I removed all my decorative lights, I read in commercial agriculture they use night lights that zap because being moths they magnetize to light. Hopefully, a year with no lights and seriously stringent weed control and this will pass.

Thank you @Decoy, it was indeed terribly stressful - especially as a seed trader and network grower. As you too may feel at times, if you lose what you're growing you may never have another chance again. I prayed every night for the garden, hoping for help of any kind, upper or lower management, to part the seas for the beans. And I believe it arrived because it's nothing short of a miracle that almost every single variety has survivors.

 

[heirloomgal]

We've had a lot of cutworms this spring too. So frustrating. Now that I can recognize their pupas I can eliminate many of them at that stage of growth. One of our local garden experts Linda Gilkeson has a background in entomology, and I often refer to her documents for advice on how to deal with insect pests. I've not tried searching for them by flashlight yet, but may have to give it a try. Linda's post below was from an October newsletter, http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/gardening-pdf/Winter Gardening 2018 - Oct 31.pdf

'Those darn cutworms: In these relatively warm nights, climbing cutworms have been frolicking and
chewing big holes in leafy greens. Most are the caterpillars of the Large Yellow Underwing moth [for
photos, see: http://www.lindagilkeson.ca/leaf_chewers.html#25 ]. The surest way to deal with them is
to go out after dark with a flashlight and look for them on the plants. Their colours range from light
green to very dark grey; in the evening they come up to feed along the top edges of leaves and are
surprisingly easy to see. Because they are so big it only takes a few cutworms to do a lot of damage, but
the good news is that when you catch and destroy the ones that are present now, that’s it—there won’t
be another generation until later next summer'.

Oh yes, I forgot to include that in my epic saga. I went out half a dozen times in the middle of the night with a flashlight. No question about it, the best thing is to catch the buggers. But in all those bleary eyed searches I did not find a single one. They may drop down and curl up at the first sign of disturbance or light, I'm not sure. Or my timing may have been off. What - strangely - made those middle of the night searches extra challenging was the truly astonishing amount of worms that are active. It's alot of movement to register around the plants when your looking for a different pest, and I found it really hard to concentrate with all those worms at my feet. Plus, being outside all alone in the middle of the night with only a flashlight, I admit, it freaked me out a little. That's a lot of bush back there, creaking trees, snapping twigs, 'mystery noises' and the bush extends back there for kilometers.

 

[heirloomgal]

Some little bean updates and hodgepodge.

I noticed today how peculiar the leaves of the bean variety 'Barba di Frate' are! In front I believe is the bean 'Atlas', which has what I'd call the more standard leaves, BdF behind. It reminds me of some houseplant whose name I can't think of.

The blooms are on 'Sakaguchi Kang Wong'. Yay!

Oh no! It's a bush bean, and I planted 3 around a pole!

Starting to see some itsy bitsy beans out there!

Here is an oddity we were talking about earlier in the thread, beans that do weird things like suddenly die off or act funny. This is only one minor spot, but I think the day that growth tip went this way it didn't like the weather.

My row of, well I can't spell or pronounce the name without the tag, but needless to say it was perfect until about a week ago. All the plants looked good in the row, and then 2 had top growth (flowers even) that seemed to just wither & die so I picked everything brown off hoping there might be a revival below, but alas no. They haven't budged, so I need to pull them out.

Closer up, the two plants in the middle of the row

 

[Decoy1]

Closer up, the two plants in the middle of the row

That is very similar to the random plant sickness I’ve been experiencing. I’m thinking some varieties are particularly prone to it. I had it quite big-time last year with Ruth Bible and this year, from a different source of seeds, I’m experiencing it again. And yet other growers seem to experience Ruth Bible as particularly robust.