Something eating my chilli plants

icecreamdogpark

as the title says the upper leaves have mild nibbling and holes in the leaves not too bad but want to get a hold of the problem grew those 20 plants from seed so am very protective of them !! have sprayed with bug spray but just wondered if something has chilli leaves as their favourite snack LOL,only evidence was a lonely single ant !! Thanks for reading

Lotus-eater

Slugs and snails. Watch them at night.

pink_numbers

I had the same problem last year, I had seedlings out, and slugs and snails ate the lot. I had to buy another lot of seedlings, and I copper taped their pots, which seemed to cut down the number of casualties.

To avoid the problem this year, I sowed the seeds really early (indoors in a heated propagator) so that the chillies outgrew the slugs and snails. They seem to dislike the more mature plants, only eating baby seedlings, so if you can get them pass the baby stage before getting them out, you'll have more of a chance.

icecreamdogpark

Wow thanks you too,yes there are slugs and snails around i`ll up the fight with those!

Sally_A

If they are only smallish holes and not detrimental to the plant, I found hoverfly larvae nibbling the leaves a couple of years ago, on the whole they are good guys so I left them alone.

icecreamdogpark

Thanks i`ve put slug liquid around the base of the pots and have kills lots of small black baby slugs and the holes are no worse so it must have been them i think :j