Are you certain it was deer? Deer will eat them, but soybeans are _candy_ to rabbits. If your plants were all mowed in one night, it was deer; if little-by-little, most likely it was rabbits. They are very good at getting through fencing.

I use electric fencing, which has been very effective against deer & racoons, but not rabbits.

Rabbits were never more than a minor annoyance until I began growing large numbers of soybeans two years ago - then they became pests. They would nip off my young seedlings, sometimes right to the ground. Then they would actually make runs beneath the plants, and nip off leaves & pods; some rows were almost completely destroyed.

My attempts at live trapping have been unsuccessful. Only my air rifle solved the problem.

What kind of fencing do you have, and how tall? 4' tall welded wire fencing seems to stop deer for me, at least on smaller areas. They don't seem to be willing to jump into a enclosed space. Perhaps adding a higher strand of wire would help. I had some spaced 1' apart wire barriers and one night the deer decided they could navigate them and ate the leaves off of 25' of pole beans as high as they could reach. They left the tops and stems, so hopefully I will continue to get beans, but I had to go buy another $68 100 ft roll of 4' high fence. :-(

I have also had rabbits eat my bush beans, and voles can nip off pole beans at the ground just for sport. I stick a 4" galvanized nail down into the soil at the base of each pole bean plant so they can't tunnel up underneath them.

Last year, two gardeners tried edamame in our community gardens. Both had almost zero harvest due to deer. Whereas the deer only eat the tops off ordinary beans, they'll continue working down the stem. When they discover the pods, they'll head for those plants every night to look for more.

Defense: One tablespoon of Bulliard's Louisiana Supreme Garlic Hot Sauce per quart of water in a spray bottle. Spray the upper leaves of the plants nightly. You will NOT lose any more!

Martin

sylky: Maybe it's better that the deer got the Edamame; a consensus of my circle of friends (and studies done, also, I'm told), have concluded that edible soybeans cause more flatulence that any other known bean. If it hadn't been for the deer, you'd have been breaking wind all over the state of Kentucky. :-) :-)

i've heard that marigolds keep deer and rabbits away. the reason that deer eat them is because it increases the strength of their antlers (in the bucks) the does eat them for some reason too... i just can't remember what that reason is though...