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Answer

If the leaves have been completely eaten off as seedlings it may be more than the young plant can overcome. However if the beans are to recover you are going to need to find out who or what is eating up your garden. The most common garden pest known for eating seedlings are earwigs which love to feast on the young shoots of seedlings and soft fruit at night.

There are couple organic (Integrated pest management IPM) methods to control earwigs and you can see if they are in fact the culprit, the best method is trapping. Using a small can like a tunafish can placed around the garden with a small amount of tuna oil or vegetable oil with a couple drops of bacon grease is rather effective to trap earwigs, once the traps are used simply dump out the nights catch and refill. You can also use a rolled up news paper, cardboard or a small piece of hose. Simply place the rolled up newspaper in your garden near the damaged seedlings just before sundown the earwigs will hide in there once the sun comes up, then in the morning shake out the paper into a pail of soapy water. Continue to do this each night until you are no longer trapping earwigs in your garden.

If it is in fact slugs your best option is slug and snail bate, most brands are not organic however there are some but they do work.

Hope this helps, thank for the gardening question!

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