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can someone help identify whats eating my leaves?

M

mattyq25

Hi all -
 
I need some help identifying what could be eating my pepper plant leaves. I have taken some pictures below of whats happening.. This is after i have been treating the plants with Neem oil. I just recently moved across the street from my old place so its weird that whatever is doing this didn't do it at my old place which is literally about 500 yards away. Has anyone seen this before? any recommendations on treating? i will say Neem has helped - i went on vacation prior to treating with neem and when i got back one of the plants was essentially stripped bare of all the leaves :( now its just happening to a small number of leaves.
 
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Other than that - the plants themselves look pretty healthy to me in their 7 gallon bags (just 2 pictured.. the others are around the corner):
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I just finished tending my raised bed and found 5 tomato hornworms causing kaos to my babies. I killed them off physically then sprayed Dr Earth insecticide. Tomorrow I'll do a neem oil soap treatment
 
It's good to keep an eye on your plants, but it's not good to obsess.  If that's all the damage that you're seeing, then I wouldn't worry. (just keep a close eye)  Stick with the Neem treatment (maybe every week or so) for unknown pests.
 
It's completely unreasonable to expect picture perfect foliage, from an outdoor plant, over the course of a season.  IF anything, a little bit of stress to the plant will do it good - so long as there isn't a full scale infestation.  And the plants look more than fine right now.
 
I get a little bit of similar damage. I can never find the culprit but since its very minor i dont worry about it much. Damage from horn worms does not stop quickly and its quite often very aggressive.
 
solid7 said:
It's good to keep an eye on your plants, but it's not good to obsess.  If that's all the damage that you're seeing, then I wouldn't worry. (just keep a close eye)  Stick with the Neem treatment (maybe every week or so) for unknown pests.
 
It's completely unreasonable to expect picture perfect foliage, from an outdoor plant, over the course of a season.  IF anything, a little bit of stress to the plant will do it good - so long as there isn't a full scale infestation.  And the plants look more than fine right now.
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These pictures are actually after I plucked away all the half eaten leaves and stems, one tiny guy was pretty much just a nub but has already almost completely grown back. I went away for a week and came back to the chaos. However, since I've been back I've treated with neem and whatever was doing this seems to have stopped for now, but I do notice these little holes appearing on random leaves of all my plants. So for the time being everything is manageable and looking good and the plants have already regrown what they lost - just wanted to get an idea if anybody has seen this and if I need to change up my plan of attack to prevent it from happening again (neem oil only for now). 
 
It's like I've said in so many threads...  Neem works to disrupt the reproductive ability of whatever ingests it, and eventually leads to it's death. (while contributing to a loss of appetite, in the process)  It's not instant - it is a process.  But for me, it's the best option, if you're dealing with unknown pests.

If you knew you were dealing with caterpillars, maybe BT would be best.  If you knew it was a grasshopper, I'd stick with Neem.  If it were aphids, maybe something else.  But you're doing well, and your plants look good.  So, barring any new evidence, hold the course...
 
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