Holes in peppers

Casper

Casper

I have holes in my purple thai chiles.  I have over a hundred purple pods poking through the foliage.  Today when I was examining my plants I noticed two interior peppers that are not quite purple yet have already started to turn red while none of the others have.  I then noticed that these pepper had large holes in them.  (photos)
 
Two questions...
 
What causes these holes?   and  Why does this make them turn red earlier than the rest?
 

 

 
 
I agree caterpillars.

I've been very impressed though with my savina & devils rib plants because as soon as the pods are violated by a caterpillar the plants drop the pods. I never had this with my orange habs or scotch bonnets.
 
JoynersHotPeppers said:
Slugs make holes like that, watched them do it live on a Jonah the other night. 
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If you have mulch nearby, eliminate the chances of it being slugs by sprinkling Sluggo around the mulched areas. I had holes like that last season, sprinkled Sluggo around my flowerbeds when I mulched them in Spring, and haven't had a single hole this season. My hostas are also huge this year as a result of not being eaten every night by those darn things.
 
ms1476 said:
If you have mulch nearby, eliminate the chances of it being slugs by sprinkling Sluggo around the mulched areas. I had holes like that last season, sprinkled Sluggo around my flowerbeds when I mulched them in Spring, and haven't had a single hole this season. My hostas are also huge this year as a result of not being eaten every night by those darn things.
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Agreed and I use it, my plants in question are in Walmart bags and the slug went from the shed wall onto a branch then a pod. :) I was pointing out slugs do that kind of damage more than my problem. I could have removed the slug but wanted to watch it work! The ones last night, not so lucky ;)
 
kill them all! haha
i saw one catterpillar doiing this same damage on my douglah, lost 15 pods off the damn beast  :(
it makes a hole in the pod and its goes on to another and on and on,
therefore i tought it might of been catterpillers cause there are multiple pods damaged
can be slugs to yea, they no good for anything
happy i dont have them 
 
THEY ARE STILL COMING!!!
 
I have searched for slugs and caterpillars with to no avail (sp).  I keep finding more peppers with these holes as the weather cools down.  I have had a friend suggest that it must be moths, since I have not found anything else.  
 
I did find a spider nesting with a leaf bent over and wrapped into a cone where it had babies.  Just because it was right near the hole in the pod I pulled the branch off.  Immediately baby spiders swarmed over my finger tip.  The leaf was folded with webbing then full of webbing as well.  I killed them all unfortunately.  Wrong place wrong time I guess.  The mother was very small clearish with a white ball the size of a single smelt roe.  
 
What do I do?  I have other more important peppers (to me) in this garden.  
By the way I will still eat these in my red sauce for the pizza I make tomorrow, but I would rather they ripen.
 
 
When you are searching, are you looking at night or in the daytime?  It would be best to look at night as that's when most of the nasties are out feeding.
 
I am looking during the day, but I will get out there with headlamp at night on a search and destroy mission.
 
Thanks again everyone.
 
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