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Somethings Eating my Pepper Plants, uggh!

M

mstang1988

Title says it all, something is eating my plants! It's not just a nible here and there, I come out in the AM and another plant is stripped of it's leaves. I'm thinking it's a rabbit as looking through these pictures I noticed a hole in the fence that I literally put up this last weekend and the pieces of it being in the garden. We have a huge amount in my neighborhood but they don't usually end up in my back yard with two huge dogs (German Shepherd and a Border Collie).

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Luckily they haven't touched my super hots.
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I will note that all of these plants including the superhots came from a community garden, not from seed. They were super healthy until cold weather struck this week (freezing a few leafs etc).
I have two Bhuts, 1 Moruga, 1 Butch-T, 1 Red 7-Pot. The rest in the garden bed are Jalapeno's and Bell's.
 
Yeah, rabbit is a pretty good bet. Buy a jumbo shaker of cayenne powder and completely cover the entire area especially where you think they're coming through. Don't be shy with it. Reapply whenever it is washed away. Good luck!
 
My guess would be rabbits also but have never seen them make a hole in a fence that high up. My guess is that the hole is about a foor or so off the ground.

Do you have ground hogs there? They can make a mess of a fence that high up and it looks like the hole is big enough for one to have made.
 
are there any tracks near the plants? I would say deer but they typically leave tracks. are you in the middle of austin or in the hill country?I would get some bird mesh webbing and cover the remainder of the plants..
 
anyway to cover the plants at night? like painters plastic or sunshade covering, something that can be tapped onto your raised beds then just pulled over the plants for cover and removed in the morning.
 
koskorgul said:
My guess would be rabbits also but have never seen them make a hole in a fence that high up. My guess is that the hole is about a foor or so off the ground.

Do you have ground hogs there? They can make a mess of a fence that high up and it looks like the hole is big enough for one to have made.
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It is pretty high up, you are right. We do have ground hogs but I'm 99% confident it's not that as I'm in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. I would also think they would be trying to get into the chicken coop which they haven't tried. We do have tons and tons of rabbits though, I'm just surprised with two huge dogs anything is back there.

I'll check for tracks when I get home. I'll look into building a cover and possibly bird netting. Talking to the wife last year she said she put down hot pepper of some sort for the rabbits so I'm betting I'll catch them.
 
I've had similar damage from insects living in the soil, especially caterpillars and cutworms. They come out at night and do their thing and can decimate a plant quickly.

I dig around in the top of the soil and usually find them - but it takes patience...
 
Too early for horn worms? One of them can eat a two foot pepper plant down to stems overnight. You might spread some flower around them and look for bunny tracks. I'd say it's probably some type of caterpillar or horn worm.
 
Yup...they don't like the spicy! Great job on catching the culprit! I would pepper up that little breezeway too and push them a little farther back. Most of your plants will be no worse for the ware once the bush back out.
 
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