Game bird,

I assume you aren't seeing any discoloration, so if that is true, it rules out rust (rust colored spots, duh) and spider mites (yellowing of leaves and fine webbing on back of leaves). So, by the process of elimination and based on your description, my best guess is bean mosaic virus.

If it is bean mosaic virus, you'd be observing severe plant stunting, mottling of the leaves, some downward curling....and those fit your description of bumpy leave. If the plants have had time to set any seeds, your pods would show distorted growth and often stunting as well.

If it is bean mosaic virus, be very careful not to spread it from plant to plant by touching a healthy plant after previously touching a diseased one. Aphids and other pests also spread it from one plant to another. The solution (and I am sorry to have to say it) is to remove and destroy affected plants.

Cornell (see attached link) may recommend something you can spray. I don't know. I've only had bean mosaic virus on plants once or twice and it was only on a couple of plants. I am happy to report that when I removed the diseased plants, the others did not catch the disease so catching it early can save the rest of your planting.

I've linked the Cornell University bean disease site for you. There are photos further down on the page you can click and enlarge. Why don't you look at their photos and see if you think it is bean mosaic virus or one of the other viruses they feature in the photos?

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell Univ. Bean Virus Page

Yeah, it's common bean mosaic virus. I haven't had rust, mites or aphids that I've seen. Well, I've seen a few aphids here and there, but none on the beans. I've squished the aphids when I saw them and otherwise left them for the ladybug larvae to take care of. Fortunately, I seem to have a healthy population of ladybugs without needing to buy and release any.

I'll destroy the plants I can tell are affected. They've been stunted so much that I've planted replacements near them already anyway. I thought I should find out what was wrong with them though, before the replacements came up and got the same thing.

Glad that was the answer and that it is easily solved. I hope you caught it early enough that it didn't have a chance to spread. In this wet year, there seem to be a lot of viral, fungal and bacterial diseases popping up everywhere.

I went out and looked and every single bean plant I own looks funny. The bottom leaves look flat and normal and the next set on the Kentucky Blue and Kentucky Wonder are warty/bumpy and sometimes curled. Even the ones hidden inside the sunflower patch!

I took out the two most stunted scarlet runner beans, but noticed on each that they had a perfectly healthy looking new leader vine coming out, one that didn't have warts or bumps or curls on it. For the first one I just broke that off too, but for the second I clipped off all the diseased foliage and left the healthy looking stuff there.

This is very distressing. I am okay with destroying like half of my beans and replanting them, but to destroy all of them? Eck. I thought they'd slowed down in growing because it was a bit dry. If I toss them and replant, will I have the same problem? What else is fruit-bearing that can climb up a trellis or a string that I could replace them with and still harvest this year?

And what's with the scarlet runner beans sending out a healthy looking second vine? Is it really healthy, or does it take a little while to show symptoms?

I did have aphids on one of the diseased and destroyed scarlet runners.

Uh oh. That isn't good news. Do they all look like they have the same thing? And, I am curious. Are healthy new leaves continuing to come out on plants that already have diseased leaves? If so, I'd be inclined to give those plants a chance.

I think I might wait a few days and see if any plants put out new healthy growth. I've had some pretty sickly bean plants put out new growth and survive whatever they had (although it wasn't bean mosaic virus, and probably was something bacterial). It is one thing to yank out a few bean plants, but I'd hate to see you take all of them out if there's a chance they might outgrow the illness. One reason to remove a plant with mosaic virus is to keep it from spreading, and it sounds too late for that now, so why not give them 2 or 3 or 4 days and see if they turn around? Maybe then you won't have to destroy them.

As far as why the runner beans are showing new growth that might help them beat the disease....well, they are Phaseolus coccineus and the green bean varieties are Phaseous vulgaris, so maybe coccineus has some resistance not normally seen in vulgaris varieties?

There are beans that do have resistance to/tolerance of mosaic virus, including Derby and Provider. If there are heirloom beans with resistance to this disease, maybe George (Macmex) will know. And, in the same way that some people are more immune to viruses than some other people are, I assume bean plants would show varying degrees of tolerance or immunity.

There are not a lot of vining crops apart from beans that could climb a trellis and produce, but there's a few: any of the smaller muskmelons or cantaloupes, mini-pumpkins like Jack-Be-Little, Baby Boo, etc., decorative gourds, vining cucumbers, New Zealand spinach, snake melon, luffa gourds, Malabar spinach or vining types of black-eyed peas. Obviously you cannot go back in with more beans this year in that same spot, and probably ought to rotate beans to a different part of the garden next year.

You've probably had aphids a day or two or three and they've spread the disease from plant to plant before you even knew the aphids were there. I always see aphids if I start looking for them--it is just that they don't get out of hand and become an issue because the lady bugs keep their numbers down. Generally, though, I am not looking for aphids although I'm sure they are always there.

Dawn

Yes, they all look the same. Most of the Kentucky Wonder and all of the K. Blue look a bit paler on their new leaves, but the scarlet runner beans are the same color all over.

You're right that there's no point in trying to quarantine them. I'm going out of town this weekend, so I'll water them good, maybe measure a few and write down their number of leaves and height. Then I'll check them again Monday and see if they've changed.

If MacMex reads this, then maybe he can recommend a resistant heirloom. I could send him money and an envelope and he could send me 100 good bean seeds.

Update on the bean issue:

The Kentucky Wonder beans haven't grown significantly in the past week. They have yellowed and otherwise remain the same.

The Kentucky Blue beans seem to have partly recovered. They are green and several of them are putting on new, non-bumpy growth. Something came by last night and ate about a quarter of the leaves though, so I'll have to see if the plants can recover from that.

Most of the scarlet runner beans look the same, without growth or progress. A couple have taken off growing wildly, bumpy leaves and all. I don't know what that's all about. I've planted some new plants which are about six inches tall now and are looking very healthy at this stage, without bumpy leaves.

I don't know what's wrong with the plants or what I can do about it. My garden is being overrun by pests, far more than I ever had in Minnesota. I've never had cutworms (in my corn patch here), tomato problems (all my bigger plants have curly leaves and I've had three different kinds of worms eating the plants), severe plant-eating (first by mice, now by... deer? rabbits?), and sunflower-eating critters (three kinds of worms, one kind of weevil, ants, wasps, and recently katydids). All of these are new pests for me.

On the up side, I haven't had any outbreak (yet) of squash bugs, except for the few I hand picked and the eggs I squished. I've seen cucumber beetles, but they haven't been bad enough to complain about. My squash, muskmelons, watermelons and pumpkins have been pest-free so far (or at least nothing I didn't handle by hand-picking).

I've had to struggle to get successful sweet potatoes and I'm still not sure they'll make it. I have wire and plastic collars around all of them to keep out the rabbits or whatever was eating them.

Gamebird,
You're not alone. I think that is what is wrong with my pole beans also. I planted Lazy Housewife, but planted really, really late. I'm about fed up with this pole bean business. I made a real nice trellis only to have my pole beans fail. Being an old heirloom bean, I bet mine aren't resistant to that disease either. You're describing my beans also. I think I'll pull them up tomorrows and plant another row of squash. Next year.....Back to the old stand by. Topcrop bush beans. I'm content with a couple of rows and a couple of good pickings. All of you pole bean folks out there....I applaud you. You have more patience than I do! I have more patience with my high school students than I do with my garden. : )

I'll happily change varieties or use innoculant or whatnot to get success on my beans. I know what you mean about building the nice trellis. I have two lovely looking bean teepees without any beans growing on them! I've already planted all my muskmelons and the few seeds of a climbing cucumber I had. I have bush cucumbers I could plant, but I doubt they'll climb. I still have a few jack b little pumpkin seeds. Maybe they'd climb the trellis? But those I planted a month ago are only now getting five or six leaves. The Jack B Littles grow so slowly compared to my other pumpkins!

Game bird,

What you just described is simply what gardening in Oklahoma is like sometimes. Gardening here can be like a roller coaster at an amusement park....there's ups and downs and all sorts of twists and turns and sometimes it is fun, and other times it is not.

We have a very long growing season so we get multiple generations of all kinds of pests....and a huge variety of diseases that seem to ebb and flow depending on the weather. As soon as you deal with one issue, another one pops up. It can be very frustrating, but normally you'll get pretty good production out of your plants in spite of the pests and diseases.

Beans sometimes stall in hot weather and often they will put out new growth and start looking better when the weather breaks, or they get a good watering, or they get fed or something happens that relieves their stress a little. Often, if you have yellowing on the lower leaves, that can be a sign of heat stress, and they'll improve and put out new growth higher up on the plant above the yellowing leaves. as they recover from the stress. The lower leaves that turn yellow often fall off or you can cut them off the plants if looking at them bothers you. Yellowing leaves on bean plants also can be a symptom of low fertility (which I doubt is what is happening in your case because of all that manure), wet soil, dry soil, spider mites (in that case, you'd have tiny red spots on the backs of the leaves--those are the mites--and some webbing on the leaves) or nematodes (in sandy soil only). I have the best success with bush beans that are planted very early--in late March or early April so they can produce before the heat arrives, and with pole beans that are planted in mid-summer for fall production. My beans just sit and stall once we're in the upper 90s/lower 100s day after day, so I don't expect much from them in July and the first half of August. During that hot time, it is the southern peas (black-eyed peas, crowder peas, cream peas,etc.) that are producing.

Some plants outgrow the mosaic virus if insects aren't spreading it from leaf to leaf, or some produce in spite of the plants having it.

Scarlet runner beans really don't like our heat, so mine put out their best growth in April through mid-June most years, then grow more slowly in the heat of the summer and then tend to put out a big flush of growth when cooler temps return in the fall. Yours may or may not perform the same way.

Cutworms are an issue here, but I have found them to be the worst during a "new" garden's first year or two. I suspect they are already there in the soil and are deliriously happy about the improved soil and new plants. With careful attention and the use of some anti-worm techniques (like spraying your seedlings with Bt and tilling up your garden once or twice during cold weather to expose them to the surface so they'll die), you can get them under control. One problem with the southern cutworms is that they can climb the plants and cut them off up to maybe a half-inch or inch above the ground, whereas up north they often cut them off at or below ground level.

I don't use cutworm collars. I just use toothpicks. I keep a box in my garden tool bucket and whenever I have new seedlings, I stick two tootpicks in the ground as close to the plant as I can. The cutworm has to completely encircle the plant to cut it off, so with half a toothpick below ground and half above, they can't completely encircle it, and I figure two toothpicks makes it twice as safe as one toothpick would.

The only way to keep critters out of your garden is to have a fence around it that they can't breach. It has taken us years to arrive at that point because every time we thought we had a "critter-proof" fence, one critter or another eventually found a way to go over it, under it, or through it. I have two neighbors here who've gardened much longer than I have and they still have critter problems because they won't fix their fence problems. That's their choice, of course, but I am so much happier when I don't have to worry about walking outside and finding 4 deer in the garden like I used to.

The only animal that still plagues us is raccoons because they can climb the two entry arbors, so I am planning to take out the entry arbors and just replace them with gates....maybe screen doors reinforced with woven wire.....and 2' of fencing above the top of the screen doors. That may or may not solve the raccoon problem, but we've already "conquered" deer, rabbits, moles, voles, gophers, bobcats, skunks, possums, armadilloes, and coyotes....so, surely, we'll eventually manage to keep the raccoons out too. And I don't suppose we'll ever manage to keep the venomous snakes out of the garden, but as long as the cats keep the rodents under control, the snakes don't come into the garden much any more.

One fencing tip I'll pass on now is that you need two gates at opposite sides of the garden. That way, if a creature like a deer, skunk or venomous snake wanders in through one gate while you're in the garden, you can promptly exit throught the other. You can just imagine how I learned this important garden lesson!

With all the insect pests, the reality is that no matter what you do, your garden IS an ecosystem and it is going to be inhabited by all kinds of creatures. So, you just have to do the best you can to attract beneficial insects, birds and reptiles because they'll keep at least 75% of the pest insects under control once you've got enough beneficials. My garden is full of all kinds of insects and bugs, but I'd say 95% of them do not do enough damage to impact the harvest because I have a good balance between the herbivore insects that eat my plants and the carnivore insects who eat the herbivore insects.

This has been a harder than average year in terms of late cold weather and heavy spring rains slowing down planting and plant growth, but that's just how it goes sometimes. What keeps us going? Probably the hope that next year will be "better" and the acknowlegement that we enjoy gardening as a process, and the harvest is just the bonus....the gravy.....the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae.

Dawn

So... beans don't like really hot weather? That's funny. Really funny! In Minnesota they didn't grow much until it got hot, though "hot" there meant in the 80s. If it got into the 90s it was a real heat wave.

Well, at least we're having a "cold snap" here today and it's only 93.

So toothpicks work to prevent cutworms? Huh. I've only got a handful of toothpicks left, but I have a box of long nails. I think I'll use the nails.

I guess I'll just leave the beans be. They'll either grow or not.

Beans aren't crazy about the heat. They perform best, in terms of setting quality pods, when the highs are in the 70s. The bean plants produce the best quality in the 70s but I do not see significantly lower quality until the highs hit the 90s. So, for me here in southern OK, my best beans come from plants that are blooming and setting beans in May, which then generally are harvested in June. As the temperatures get hotter and hotter, most green bean varieties set fewer and smaller pods. Then, as cooler temps return, they set larger beans and more of then. And, for some reason, Lima Beans are pickier about the temperatures and often don't bloom and set beans well once soil temperatures are in the 90 to 95 degree range no matter what you do, although a couple of the heirloom varieties don't seem quite as picky about soil temperature as the newer hybrid ones. Runner Beans are picky about heat in about the same way but tend to come on strong in fall's cooler temps.