I believe I have found the pest that has been eating my plant!!! Its a beetle of some kind, I cant identify it because its really small and there are no markings on it. Its dark brown and its not a beetle with a hump back, the shell/wings of it don't cover the hole body. These pics are the best I could do for right now!!!rainbowgardener wrote:Slugs are the commonest thing that eat my pepper plants. You will never see them unless you go out with a flashlight late at night and look closely. But slugs generally leave roundish-oval holes in the centers of leaves. Things that eat leaf margins like that are more often caterpillar or beetle type pests.
You will need to just keep looking carefully, in the day and in the night. It is hard to know what to do, until you know what pest you have.
Thanks, I'm going to check for eggs in a bit!!! Any thing I can use to keep them away?rainbowgardener wrote:Yup, that could be the guy. I'm thinking perhaps a juvenile of squash bug:
https://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05609.html
or stinkbug:
https://www.robsplants.com/critters/bugbeetles.php (you have to scroll down a good ways to get to the stinkbugs)
Check the underside of leaves for egg clusters.
Squash bugs have coppery bronze eggs, while stink bugs have pearly white eggs. I'm voting for stinkbug, just because squash bugs really do stay mostly on squash family stuff.
I live in Florida, are winters are mixed between anywhere from 30 degrees at the lowest and 80 degrees at the highest. I have all but one of my plants inside under a grow light. Mostly because the bugs around me are really bad with eating mine and my family's plants. My mom lost a young catnip plant to white fly's. I have a total of 9 plants, theirs 5 bhut jolokia's and 4 moruga scorpion's. There about 4 to 5 inches tall. I'm going to go ahead and transplant them this weekend because there just in clear plastic dixie cups and the roots have reached the bottom of them. Anyway thanks for your help!!!rainbowgardener wrote:Have you told us where you are? I presume somewhere in the southern hemisphere if you are growing peppers now. Australia? South Africa?
Anyway, unfortunately stinkbugs are a difficult pest to deal with. A bit easier now as juveniles, once they are in their final hard shelled form, they are pretty resistant to anything.
Easiest is to keep watching all the time for those egg clusters. Remove and crush them. Ladybugs and lacewings also like to eat those eggs, so planting things like marigolds and sunflowers that attract them is a good thing. The juveniles are pretty vulnerable to insecticidal soap sprays like Safer's, especially if you can manage to spray it directly on them. The only good thing about the adults is that they are large and pretty slow, so you can hand pick them off and drop into a bowl of soapy water, or shake them into the bowl.
But vigilance is required, you don't want to let it become a major infestation. And unfortunately, they are very mobile, so even if you managed to get rid of every one from your yard, they can come right back from elsewhere. And they eat any crop you might be growing.
There are traps for them: https://www.rescue.com/product/reusable- ... k-bug-trap but Amazon had a lot of reviews saying they didn't work: https://www.amazon.com/Stink-Trap-Sterli ... B005BV0QP2
Ya the one in the pic is outside.rainbowgardener wrote:OK, you hadn't said you were talking about indoor plants. Is the one pictured being eaten the outdoor one? I really hope you don't have stinkbugs in the house. They do like to come in for the winter and can become a major nuisance once they are in your house. If the indoor plants are getting eaten like that, I would do a major search and destroy for any bugs, before they get established in your house.