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pests Help identify this garden pest

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Help! My peppers are under fierce attack. Many of my pepper pods have small round holes, approximately 1 mm in diameter. There can be anywhere from 1 to 3 of these holes on an individual pod. Like if you took a ball point pen and pushed it through the outer skin/shell of a pepper pod. In some cases the skin is not pierced, but in others the hole goes all the way through to the middle of the pepper. The pests seem to prefer jalapeno types, but there are also holes in some habs.

Here are 3 pics, of the same sorry Jalapeno, with 2 deep-drilled holes and one surface wound that didn't make it all the way through the flesh.

001-3.jpg


005-3.jpg


006-2.jpg


If anyone has ideas on what this pest is AND HOW TO KILL IT, I'd be much obliged. Actually, I am rather desperate, as these holes are popping up all over my container peppers.

Thanks!
 
yikes, I believe those are pepper maggots, which burrow into the chile and lay eggs and cause the fruit to rot. So probably insecticide, although I've read that there are some traps that can be used as well. You should wait for some more experienced growers to chime in though, as I'm a newb.
 
Then again, I've been googling some and apparently there are some other pests that can burrow holes into the pods, including the tomato fruit worm. http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r604300511.html Also read that slugs can chew holes like that sometimes too, so I don't know. I'm sure some other forum members can provide a lot more help than I can. :o
 
Thanks, I think that diagnosis is probably correct. Pepper maggots. From what I've googled, the white skin-piercing but not flesh-piercing indentation (pic # 3 above) is where the fly deposited the eggs. The eggs then hatched into maggots who fed on my Biker Billy from the inside for a week or two. Pics 1 and 2 show holes where, I *think*, the maggots crawled out. Needless to say, the remaining pod is not exactly something I'm lusting after for tonight's dinner.

What's really needed now is an expert on such things who can advise me on what to DO about it. I have a variety of stuff I can hit it with, e.g. Sevin, etc., or I could go get some BT, or I could just suck it up and wait for them to go away in time. I'm really stumped as to where to go from here. Usually I just wait out the pests and take the hit so I don't have to spread poison all over my garden. The damage is non-trivial, though - a large amount of pods rendered inedible as in the pics above.
 
They're very difficult to get rid of since you have to time your sprays to kill the flies. The flies aren't hard to kill, but correct timing is the problem. Not much you can do to the infested pods other than burn them.
 
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