zjrahmani
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What Animal Eating Pepper Plants Overnight?

I am a first time gardener in La Jolla , Ca. Lately, something has been very destructive in my garden.

First, I started to have dirt piles show up in my garden all over the place and when I move the dirt aside there are no apparent tunnels. Now, over the last 5 days or so I have been loosing full plants, overnight! First a baby green bell pepper plant, then my red bell pepper plant (which was beginning to fruit), my jalapeno plant (which was beginning to fruit), and now stalks are missing from my zucchini plant. Around these plants I also have, pole green beans, onions, and tomatoes, which all appear to be untouched (so far!).

The area these are planted in is completely netted off so it should be rather difficult for big animals to get in and eat them.

Does any body have suggestions or know what may be doing this? It is becoming very discouraging.

Bobberman
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It sounds like a small ground hog to me! Set a cage trap you can buy at farm supply. They have specials on the traps with a small and large together for $34 most of the time. Put a piece of apple in the trap and when you catch the varmit you can move it to the woods somehere! I moved two ground hogs and a racoon. The racoon was vicious!

johnny123
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If you trap them and transport them just don't tell anyone.
In alot of states transporting them is illegal.

johnny123
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If you want to try to trap and transport I would call your DEC to see if is legal were you are because the fines are very high.

Fences work well for woodchuks but you have to be creative at the top of the fence with some barbed wire and run a little fence underground if they try to dig there way in.

I have watched a woodchuck climb a 4 foot fence to get to my pumpkins.
He only did it once.

johnny123
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If it's a woodchuck it is probably eating very early in the morning or just before dark when the yard is quiet.
They don't come around much in the day if there is activity around the area and they don't come around during the night.
There sleeping too!!!

zjrahmani
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Aside from trapping them, is there any other way to discourage them, such as something they don't like to smell?

johnny123
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Mix coyote urin and some water and spray it around the edges of the garden.

Fences work the best.
Well second best.
The .22 works the best.

johnny123
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Shake Away Woodchuck Repellent might be worth a try.
You can always get your money back if your not happy with it.
Instead of coyote they use fox scent.
Might be worth a try.

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rainbowgardener
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I'm not entirely sure. I live with a resident groundhog and raccoons (one just came out yesterday, trailing four babies behind her, not good news!). I fence a lot of things in to keep the critters away from them. But I've never had to fence my peppers, which neither the groundhog nor the raccoon show any interest in, either the plant or the fruits. And I've never seen the dirt piles you describe.

The groundhog nibbles the tops off plants she likes (including broccoli, sunflower, appendaged water leaf and others), leaving a few inches of stub behind. The raccoon usually isn't too interested in plants, just fruits/veggies. It will kill for corn or tomatoes, but only tromples the plants to get to the good stuff.

What works for me keeping them out is fencing in each bed with deer netting, stapled down at the bottom and pulled together and tied over the top to make a cage.

So the whole plant is just gone? Not cut off and lying there? I'd check with your neighbors. Perhaps you have some special southern california critter the rest of us don't know about. Southerners does this sound like armadillo? But if this guy is bothering your garden, it likely is bothering your neighbors as well. It does sound like an animal, not insects, if the whole plant disappears.

oceansea54
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I also went out yesterday morning and overnight something eat my whole eggplant down to the soil line. Nothing else was disturbed. Then this morning my while bell pepper plant is gone except the main stem and the one pepper that was on the plant. I have all my veggies in containers on gravel in my courtyard thats surrounded by a 6 ft wooden fence. I also have zucchinni, watermelon ( no fruit on those yet) but I do have tomatoes on my tomatoe plant. I live in the high desert in Ca. Rabbits? squirrels? Whatever it is, will it eat all my plants eventually? Help!! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

SLC
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I basically have had the same thing happen to me this year! I have had two yellow pepper plants ripped off one night. All that was left was a stub of a stem left. Then a LaRouge pepper and then a green pepper plant. The whole plant gone except like a half inch of stem left. These plants were not very big yet as I recently planted seedlings. They were maybe six inches tall or so. The weird thing is, all I have seen around are chipmunks, squirrels, a bunny and a ton of birds and crows around, so I don't know if it is one of those or not. I see the crows hanging out in my garden when I leave for work in the morning.

The good news is though, the LaRouge pepper and one of the yellow peppers are starting to come back! Little leaves are forming at the base of the stem! I hope the others come back too, although I do not know if there is enough time in the season for them to mature and produce peppers...

I have also had entire marigold plants ripped off in the same fashion. Last year I had my whole garden surrounded with marigolds and did not have one thing ripped off. The only difference there is, last year I bought them all already blooming, and this year I started them on my own indoors and none of them are blooming yet. I do not know if that is what helped last year or not, but I guess I will find out as soon as they all start blooming. They all have buds so it will bee any day now!

cynthia_h
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oceansea54 wrote:I also went out yesterday morning and overnight something eat my whole eggplant down to the soil line. Nothing else was disturbed. Then this morning my while bell pepper plant is gone except the main stem and the one pepper that was on the plant. I have all my veggies in containers on gravel in my courtyard thats surrounded by a 6 ft wooden fence. I also have zucchinni, watermelon ( no fruit on those yet) but I do have tomatoes on my tomatoe plant. I live in the high desert in Ca. Rabbits? squirrels? Whatever it is, will it eat all my plants eventually? Help!! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Deer can leap with ease over a 6-foot fence; I've seen one do it. I was walking my dog one night about ten years ago and a deer startled the !@#$% out of both of us by leaping over a 6-foot fence, OUT of someone's back yard, onto a car in that driveway, and then onto the sidewalk. So my first culprit (and, to be frank, only one) is deer.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

orgoveg
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I was thinking deer for the OP but they don't make the dirt piles that were mentioned. The deer around me prefer my greens and carrots, but I had one eat the top off a tomato plant this year. Their tracks give them away when the ground is soft. The bite marks on plant leaves are a nice big curve in the shape of a deer's mouth.

Tonio
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I've never heard of deer in La Jolla, but its possible depending on location. They are usually more to the east canyon valleys near Miramar and into the hills.
There are ground hogs, racoons, fox, coyote, rabbits, skunks, opossum in San Diego county , but mostly in low human population areas. Coon, skunks and possum do come out of the minor canyon areas to feed at night eating cat food and/or grubs. I've heard the ground hogs do inhabit peoples yards. Could be a possibility in hilly La Jolla.

cynthia_h
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orgoveg wrote:I was thinking deer for the OP but they don't make the dirt piles that were mentioned. The deer around me prefer my greens and carrots, but I had one eat the top off a tomato plant this year. Their tracks give them away when the ground is soft. The bite marks on plant leaves are a nice big curve in the shape of a deer's mouth.
This thread has been re-activated. The first OP wrote in June of last year; the two new gardeners wrote this week. The "dirt piles" were a year ago; the high desert situation just yesterday.

And deer won't leave tracks on a gravel-covered courtyard.

Cynthia

orgoveg
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Oops. I didn't look at the dates.

Yeah, tracks are hard to find in gravel.

oceansea54
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So... I went out this morning and the bell pepper and the rest of the main stem is gone!! Went off to Lowes for rabbit fencing and a new pepper plant and eggplant. Also bought a new bottle of Tabasco. I have heard mixed with water and sprayed around plants will keep little critters away. Wish me luck and thanks for the imput!!

suburbanpepperfarmer
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I have experienced this same problem this year.
I have plants that have been cut at the base, and the entire plant has been removed. No leaves, no droppings, no tracks, as if the plant were sawed off at ground level and then just disappeared.

I am in a suburban area / residential neighborhood. Ne deer spotted within four or five miles and no undeveloped area for them to hide or travel in. No groundhogs spotted within four or five miles either. A few rabbits. Plenty of squirrels, birds, crows, and neighborhood dogs and cats. Occasionally a raccoon.

This started with all of the marigold seedlings, then all of the tomato seedlings that are in the ground. Now working across two ground level beds of hot pepper plants. Whatever it is seems to take between one and three plants a night (sometimes afternoon too). So far, whatever it is has not touched any plants in buckets or portable planters which are about 12 inches tall.

So far I have applied:
Chili Powder
Chopped Garlic
Crushed Red Pepper
Crushed Dried Habanero, Chipotle, Cayenne, and Jalapeno Peppers
Ortho Animal B Gone Granules (peppermint)
Blood Meal Powder
Bone Meal Powder
Bonide Repel All Granules (dried blood)
Liquid Fence Rabbit Spray (egg solids)
Home Made Animal Repellent Spray (pureed habanero peppers [1/2 pound], thai peppers [1/2 pound], garlic, onion, and soap, each plant saturated)(Am I the only one seeing the irony of having to coat my pepper plants with pepper in an attempt to keep them from being eaten by animals?)

None of these have worked. And my garden is starting to smell very noxious and the flies are really swarming around the blood and bone.

Whatever has been taking these plants is large enough to consume or carry off the whole plant.
It seems to be unable (too small) to get to plants in a 12 inch tall bucket.
Whatever it is is immune to spice, because the way these plants have been coated with chili powder and pepper spray, anything eating them should be dragging its tongue across the ground in pain for at least a couple hours after eating.

I haven't seen any resolution in this thread, and this seems to be the only thread I have found that specifically mentions the entire plant disappearing.

Any help would be appreciated.

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rainbowgardener
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How big are the plants that are disappearing? You mentioned seedlings. My experience with seedlings disappearing is cutworms. Cutworms can cut the seedling off at the base and can drag the plant underground so it is disappeared. Cutworms would be unaffected by the pepper spray.

Cutworms are in the soil. So your container plants may just not have cutworms in their soil and the cutworms couldn't get in to them.

Raccoons generally don't eat plant seedlings and if they would, they would likely eat some leaves not disappear the whole plant. Groundhogs will eat seedlings, but mostly just chew it from the top down, leaving some bare stems sticking up. Squirrels or birds again likely don't eat plant seedlings and if they did would take bites/ pecks, not disappear the whole plant.

You have to know what your culprit is to know how to treat it. My vote is still for the cutworms in which case all the sprays and animal repellants were wasted. To prevent cutworms, when you plant your seedlings put a collar of cardboard or aluminum foil around the stems. Make sure one end is pushed a few inches into the soil, and the other end extends several inches above ground. The cutworms won't be able to get to your plants.

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applestar
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Yep sometimes, the cut at the ground level and felled plant/seedlings are lying there crumpled and dessicated in the sun with no semblance of their former glory.

suburbanpepperfarmer
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The smaller plants disappearing (habaneros) are 3-4 inches tall, 4-5 inch leaf span.
The larger plants disappearing (some kind of red pepper) are 10 inches tall, 7 inch leaf span.
Leaves range in size 4-5 inches long, 1-3 inches wide.
The diameter of the stalks being cut off is 1/8 inch.

I was referring to them as seedlings because they do not seem to be the size of the potted plants being sold at the garden centers, and are not full grown yet. (Late start, some plants just now starting to bear fruit).

The soil is mostly clay with mixed garden soil and vermiculite. I did reasonably well creating a decent soil in one of the beds, but the other is still mostly rather hard clay, difficult to turn with a shovel.

I do not think an insect could pull a 10 inch tall plant down into this clay soil.
It would be difficult to miss one of these plants if it were chopped off, left on the ground, and withered.

My thought is this animal would have to be large enough to chop and completely consume, or carry away one of the plants.
And I doubt a deer or larger animal would be satisfied and stop at one plant a night (or three on bad nights).
A dog would rip the plant out instead of carefully chewing it almost even with the ground.
I read mention of squirrels ripping plants up instead of chewing the stalk.

Short of a six inch tall sheep, the only thing that fits the description seems to be a rabbit. In this case a rabbit immune from liquid fence and with a taste for the hot pepper spray I have been saturating the plants with.

suburbanpepperfarmer
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imafan26
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Well, I know what is eating mine and that is snails and slugs. they will cut down and eat tender seedlings but they totally stripped the basil and just left the stem.

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rainbowgardener
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I have slugs attacking some of my pepper plants too, but I have never seen them get stripped over night that way, much less totally disappeared. Usually slug damage looks like this:

Image

Over time, if it keeps progressing, it will eventually look like this:

Image

What I usually do about slugs is diatomaceous earth. But since it has to be reapplied after rain and since we have had rain most days this summer, I haven't even tried....

In the meantime, I don't know where you are located or what your season is like (if you have frost coming back in a couple months or what), suburban pepper, but I'm sorry, but I have to say, it wasn't looking like you were going to be getting peppers from those plants anyway. They were vulnerable to attack, because not doing very well. Very pale and yellow like not getting enough nutrients, kind of stretched out like not getting enough sun, and too crowded.

Pepper plants should be very dark green and leafy:

Image

Here's a picture of one of my bell pepper seedlings, that I started from seed, just before it was transplanted into the ground:

Image

It was 8" tall and 10" wide and darker green than it really looks in the picture, because it had a lot of light shining on it.

suburbanpepperfarmer
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rainbowgardener wrote:I have slugs...

...
In the meantime, I don't know where you are located or what your season is like (if you have frost coming back in a couple months or what), suburban pepper...
I am in the middle of the country, directly between the forest fires and the floods.
We had a long winter (thank you global warming) and frost that continued until the end of April and beginning of May. The weather pattern kept the temperature 10-20 degrees below normal until the second week of July, then a week or two of normal summer temperatures, and now record overnight lows.
The weather has been raving about the yearly rain total being several inches above normal, but ignores that the majority of that rain arrived in downpours that immediately ran off and we have had maybe two soaking rains since April. The plants that I have been watering are the only things that have not turned to straw, which may be the reason they are so desirable to the wildlife.
I started the seeds in March and April. Someone already pointed out that they should have been started in February. But had I done that, I would not have been able to move them outside until after the May freeze anyway.

As far as the color, I have seven different species of plants, each with a different color, and all appear very green to the eye. If you are viewing on one of those retina burning, ultra bright, flat screen monitors, turn the power level all the way down for more accurate color depiction.

On a happier note, in the late afternoon I found a single plant sheared off. It was cut several inches above the soil level, and the plant had been left behind.
Worst case, the animal got interrupted and left the plant behind before it could carry it off.
Best case, and the one I have been pulling for, the level of pepper spray saturation has finally reached an intolerable level for the animal and it dropped the plant and ran from the shock of the fiery taste.

No lost plants overnight.

Now I my issue is how to restart watering without washing off all the animal repellent.

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Francis Barnswallow
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Check at night to see if you see the culprit. For me I get crawling cutworms and hornworms, especially if it rained that day.

But the main problem for me is squirrels eating the peppers themselves. :evil:

suburbanpepperfarmer
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I checked the ingredients for squirrel repellent, and it reads close to the same as rabbit repellent:
Chop up and boil hot peppers in water, strain, add some dish soap, apply to plants with a pump spray bottle.

Based on that, squirrels should not be taking hot peppers...


Well, my little animal friend has returned, now visiting between 4 PM and 6 PM every afternoon. But instead of cutting and carrying off plants, it is felling them and leaving them behind. Maybe as revenge for rendering them inedible with pepper spray.
Oddly enough, the animal is only going after three of the seven kinds of peppers I have planted. Not the ones I grew last year and need again for cooking this year. But the ones I am trying out just to see what they are like. I'm approaching 8% loss of the 303 plants I started out with, but that is more like half of the three kinds of plants being targeted. So I have resorted to moving a sample of the three types back into buckets so I will have some to try out before every one in the ground is gone.

I have no solution for the thread and the issue, and have pretty much come to the conclusion that all of the animal repellents on the market and recipes for home made repellent are a waste of time and money.

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rainbowgardener
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When you are talking about four leggers, not insects, cutworms, slugs, etc, the only thing that has ever worked for me is fencing. You can put up deer netting pretty cheaply and easily.

MrsWindsor2008
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I agree with the last post. I have had the same problem in FL as recently as the night before last. Squirrels are diurnal so they wouldn't be a bother at night but what I did last night was to cut the bottom off a 2 liter soda bottle, take the cap off for ventilation and twist it into the dirt or gravel like a personal greenhouse for each individual plant and last night my nightly visitor was unable to do further damage to the one pepper plant they hadn't fully decimated and I'm using another to protect the one that I am hoping will grow back. It is definitely over night because one of my plants was ripped up out of my gravel bed and chewed down until only a small nub remained and the other was intact except for one leaf at around 10 pm. The next morning the other had been stripped of most of it's leaves.

Choctawcat
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I had something eating my bell pepper plants down to the ground overnight, my greenhouse guy said it was probably a rat ... I planted more and put a chicken wire cage around them then I sat a rat trap and low and behold I caught a huge rat ... he was right.

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rainbowgardener
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Wow :shock: ugh.... If it weren't that, plants being nibbled from the top down, leaving just a stub, can often be woodchucks/ ground hogs.



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