What is eating my purple beans and snow peas?

[Superking]

I initially did not have any fences up my young snow pea and purple bean plants, until I always find that they are all disappeared eith broke stem/ disappeared leaves. I do spot bunnies(rat?)near my garden from time to time. I recently put this fence/cage that is covered all the side and the top. However I discovered that all the young plants were eaten! What is eating them?? See attached pictures below.... How can rat or anything get in??

[digitS']

I am a little dizzy from looking at those pictures.

Bean sprouts are especially popular with rabbits, I've noticed. My garden isn't visited by rats ... so far. There is some differences between the two, I'm sure.

If something is getting in past that wire netting, I suspect it isn't the rabbits. Mice or voles were probably the pests responsible for the loss of some bean plants in my neighbor's garden this year.

Steve

[KitchenGardener]

How big are the plants when they are getting eaten? Are they seedlings or established plants?

[ACW]

Slugs and snails are a prime problem for me ,this year we had a very mild winter and wet spring perfect for these beasts.
lots of yung growth scythed down by them!

[Superking]

Initially "they" were eating very young snow peas and purple pods, now today I discovered my fully matured grown green beans got bitten , cucumber plant, zucchini .

I actually saw a mice look like creature in my garden last week, can all this be work of voles? Any recommendations how to prevent ? Capture ?

[applestar]

You have more than one culprit.
This photo -- this is a classic evidence of SVB (squash vine borer) if you take apart the brown goo (basically sawdust) encrusted split stem, you will find giant white segmented maggot lookalike larvae of a moth. Keep splitting and looking through the stem because there will be more than one. You will need to make sure they are all dead before discarding this plant.

...but in the photo I also see a pile of rabbit poo at the base of the plant... Unless you are using it or maybe goat or Guinea pig manure straight on top of the soil as fertilizer.

Based on assumption that a bunny did get inside the enclosure, I would say this looks like the typical snip-and-spit work of a young bunny trying different plants:

[Superking]

The rabbit poop is actually my fertilizer, I raise rabbit and just dump the poop on top.

What about the cucumbers? I can not see any visible damages but its all wilted outside?

Do I remove the zucchini plant?

[Superking]

Half bitten tomato...

[applestar]

Take a look at this and other photos in my thread. How does yours compare?

Subject: Applestar's 2016 Garden

This morning, one of the three Butta zucchini plant is doing this: BER on the medium sized fruit and female blossoms not developing and browning



This is the 2nd plant of the three to be doing this and the first one has dramatically stopped growing and is failing to develop fruits even though it was loaded with female flower buds just a little while ago. I think these are likely to be more signs of the SVB induced decline. The other two that I took out were doing this a week ago.

I might just harvest the femal flower buds as baby zukes tomorrow and take out all three lush green-looking living dead plants. At least I could then use majority of the plant matter as compost ingredients -- I just have to inspect, extract the SVB's, bag and discard damaged parts just in case I missed any.

[applestar]

SVB's apparently sometimes infest cukes, though I haven't seen any. Another possibility is that whatever is going around snipping off stems has snipped the cuke vine at the base -- my young wild bunny prankster snipped off a runner bean at the base -- it had already grown to the top of the trellis -- all dead and dry up there and had to be pulled down.

[jal_ut]

Do some research on Diatomaceous Earth, then see if you can buy it at a local store. A gardener's friend. Completely non toxic, but death on insects because of its very sharp edges.

[Superking]

I did cut into the stem of my zucchini did not discover any larvae or white creatures ...

I will put a camera up to see what is snipping my young and old veggie plants off, I suspect it's a combination of vole and bunnies

[jal_ut]

If its 4 legged critters, best to look into Victor Traps. Get a cat? I have a 2 acre lot and raise a big garden. I have 3 cats at the present time. They hold down the rodent population. These cats are free to come and go at will. They are not house cats.

[Superking]

Saw this on my other zucchini today, used soapy water to kill them all.