Could be cutworms, this happened to me one year with pole beans, they were right up the pole and starting to flower, every plant had been cut off at soil level.

Annette

Sounds like voles. They have done that to some of my peas, sometimes destroying most of the row... but usually not until pods appear. I would suggest putting out a few mouse traps in your patch, that has been very effective for me in preventing vole damage. Place them under the foliage, where the voles make their runs (I mark trap locations with survey flags). My traps caught about 50 voles last summer, mostly under my tomato plants... hard to imagine how much damage they might have done had I not caught them early.

Hi, Kids. Thanx for your replies! Aftermidnight - it's me, Bettie, in MB, who you gave some Little White Rice bean seeds to.

I was not aware that cutworms could possible chew their way into such tough, firm stalks. I am amazed that they did so with your pole beans - which are larger than my little pea plants. Will wonders never cease. So maybe it's cutworms with my peas, too.

Zeedman - it certainly could be voles, too. Lots of them around here! Thank you v. much for your information. 50 - that's lots and only the ones you caught. I think that the use of mulch could be one reason they are taking over my garden; any opinion? It gives them a cozy spot to reproduce and set up their nests.

You know those cylindrical plastic things they put around the base of newly planted little trees; I wonder if there's a smaller version available for garden plants. Anyone know? I use old zinc sealer rings for other crops, but they wouldn't be useful, I don't think, for voles though they would for cutworms.

What do y'all think of the new houzz version of gardenweb?

Hi, back at you Bettie, glad to "see" you here :). Let me know how the Little White Rice do for you, I grew mine in hanging baskets due to lack of space for bush beans, needless to say didn't have enough to use in the dry state but they made tasty little snaps.
Annette

Hi, Zeed. Many thanks for all that info. DE - I'd forgotten about that stuff. Good suggestion.

Hi, Aftermidnight. We'll see how it goes with the little white rice beans! Tks. again!

Aftermidnight, the rice beans dried on the plants, so now I just have to do the labour of extracting them from their hard pods.

LOL, have fun. I shell the dry bean pods sitting in front of the TV, in a container with high sides now. The cat is still chasing the odd bean from last year around the floor, most likely she fishes them out from under the bookcase. Some put hard to shell beans in a sack and stomp on them a few times.

Ha ha ha! These little beanlets are the hardest to shell. What do you do with your beans? Cook them or sprout them or what.

Bettie, we eat them as green beans, tender and sweet :).

Hi. After trying to shell these hard as rock little buggers one by one, I decided to soak them pods & all, then just kind of knead them till the beanlets popped out. Worked good. Now, I am soaking the beans for soup, I guess. Will decide tomorrow!