Store-Bought Beans?

With our inventory of fresh-blanched and frozen green beans in the freezer dwindling, I figured that it would be a good time to get our fall crop of green beans planted.  We like to harvest green beans in the fall while it is cool.  One of our favorite side dishes at our Thanksgiving meals is bacon wrapped, brown sugar green beans.  Beans are the easiest things to grow.

August was a really wet month with a lot of rain.  September, on the other hand, has been very dry. Nevertheless, I planted some Contender and Blue Lake Green beans in the garden plot in the side yard and planted a row of pole beans in the garden by the trellis.  In a few days I had beautiful green beans poking up out of the dried out soil.  Each afternoon I pulled the water hose out and gave the growing beans a good soaking.

Everything was looking good but the next afternoon when I walked out to the row of beans, this is what greeted me:

There was not a single leaf left on any of the plants in the side yard.  I went to check on the pole beans in the garden and found the same thing - no leaves only a stem remained.  I immediately searched for the pest that did this, but the guilty party was nowhere to be found.  Was it a bug?  A worm?  Slugs?  Rabbits?  Squirrels?  I do not know.  I've never had this problem before.  Since I saw no worm or bug despite inspecting closely, I feel like it is a rabbit or rat or squirrel.  I'll be setting out my traps to see if I can catch the critter that did this.

Our next crop of planted green beans will be for the spring crop.  Looks like I'll be purchasing green beans from the grocery store's produce section this fall.