Looks like army worm damage to me. They sometimes put holes in them, but more often will crawl around the edges where they can get those pincers on either side. The best defense - hand picking at night. Unless you want to go the sevin dust route. Insecticidal soap may do the trick. I don't use pure neem. Risk of burning your plant is high due to oil left on the leaves in the sun, it's expensive, and it's not as safe as the organic world has marketed people to believe. It might work, but there are definitely better alternatives, in my opinion.

@ joe jr

Thanks for the reply!

Maybe it is a combination of the army worms and these smaller bugs? The bugs I am seeing near the new growth are extremely small, about flea size! I looked closely and gently pulled down into the meristem area to find a bunch of these little critters scurry out. I know they are not aphids, and after looking at pics on google it doesn't seem like they are large enough to be army worms...

Oh, those could likely be flea beetles. They will hit peppers and eggplant pretty bad. However, they don't tend to do the damage pictured. They tend to leave a ton of holes and in a short period. The fix to that is to use something sticky and hold it under the plant. I mean tar sticky. The stuff I use is out in the garage, so I'll try to get the name later. Anyway, put some on a butter bowl lid and place it under the leaves. Then shake the plant. They fall off into the stuff. It won't eradicate them, but it will slow the damage significantly if you do it often. It's likely you have both pests. The flea beetles are just more obvious as they are around all day.

Okay, it was bugging me (ha, ha). The stuff I use is Tree Tanglefoot. The stuff is super sticky and you can reuse the amount you put on the lid for weeks. I actually feel bad about the slow death the things must suffer, but not bad enough to let them have my plants.

they sound like aphids. aphids love nitrogen rich plants which is why you'd see them on the newer leaves.
why are you sure they're not aphids?
they could (possibly) be baby squash bugs or spider mites.
but they sound like aphids.

Haha joe, you crack me up man! I think I laughed for ten minutes about the bug joke : D

@grizzman

I have seen many aphids, and they just are not aphids. They are not round at the back side like they have been sucking my plants dry. Also, these are much smaller than aphids! Aphids, from what I have seen, like to congregate together and are pretty often found on the underside of some leaves near meristem, for sure.

So........ drum role......

After close inspection of ALL my plants, I have come up with a conclusion. What really helped my diagnosis was the leaves of my cukes:

The leaves turning brown and showing these spots at first seemed like a minor thing to me, and I thought that it was just a lack of nutrients or thats just how the older leaves were dying. Slowly, however, I noticed that even more superior leaves were starting to look similar.

My suspicion is that these flea size, white/orangish bugs are actually THRIPS!!

Even though I cant see anything in the pictures, my first thought was aphids too. simply because I know they love peppers, and come on all kinds. I even had black flying aphids on my tomato's a while back. But my second thought was some kind of mite, but again without pictures of them it would be hard to say. I don't think I have ever had a problem with Thrips, but that's interesting. I was looking up some pictures of them to see what they looked like, and found these links that may be of some help in identifying and managing them. Also reading the descriptions and symptoms, they sure seem to fit the bill of the symptoms your experiencing.

Thrips
Peppers Thrips
THRIPS (good color pics)
INTRODUCTION TO THRIPS (with a list of different type of Thrips)

This was also intersting
Pest Identification and Diagnosis

Homehydro:

I am now 95% sure that these bugs are onion thrips after looking at some of those links.

The only destructive bugs that I have previously ran into were aphids. They were real pains to get rid of, and they are just so persistent! You think you squish every last one and the next day there you find a new platoon of sap suckers.

These guys seem a little more difficult than the aphids so far though. They are extremely, EXTREMELY small insects and they like to get into tight spaces that you just cant reach with even a brisk spray.

Not sure how I am going to treat these. I have started a neem oil weekly regiment, but even after spraying them yesterday there are still bunches of the dudes in new growth areas today. Any suggestions on a good insectisidal soap brand that would work well for these guys? Oh yes, before I forget to ask....

Do you think that it would be safe to apply the diluted neem oil on the hydroton and rockwool cubes, on the account that the adults are supposed to be found in soil regions normally?

ethnobotany
Ya, I was thinking either the onion thrips or the Western flower thrip because according to the links they both like peppers. To be honest I was mostly just looking for pictures of them to see what what bugs you were seeing, but I didn't really read much about their life cycles, and/or control measures. Although I do remember them mentioning using oil. I assume that refers to neem oil, but I do know there is at least one other type of herbal oil, though I don't remember what it is.

I have some AzaMax from general hydroponics, and it's supposed to be good for all kinds of bugs. However like the neem oil, it requires many applications over time. I don't think either really kills the bugs. But from what I'm told the AzaMax makes them lethargic, so basically their too lazy to eat and bread, and if they die it's mainly because they starve to death. The lack of breading keeps the infestation numbers down. From my experience the neem oil seems to work the same way. So I would assume it would take regular applications 2-3 times a week to get under control that way. But I would read the sections under life cycles for those thrips, as well as the control measures (even chemical control) for them.

Here are a couple more links as well:
Onion Thrips notice under the section on chemical controls it mentions

"Spray techniques
The secret of thrips chemical control in onions is the placement of the pesticide. It is necessary for the product to reach inside the plant base of the leaves where the majority of the thrips are located. Using high pressure and high water volume in the application enables this to occur."

You may try using a pump sprayer (like for spraying your yard for weeds) to get a pressurized spray that can get down into the folds of the plant.

WESTERN FLOWER THRIPS in the greenhouse Notice in the section under chemical controls it mentions:

"In order to impede the onset of resistance to insecticides, it is essential that growers use several insecticides from different IRAC Mode of Action groups rather than using the same pesticide time after time. Pesticides will kill active stages of thrips that they contact but will not kill eggs or pupae. Just days after a pesticide application new larvae and adults will emerge. Therefore, a second application is recommended 3-7 days later. If a greenhouse contains mixed plant materials, all plants may need to be treated, not just the severely infested ones, to avoid having thrips jump from one type of plant to another and back again. "

Differentiating Onion Thrips and Western Flower Thrips (unfortunately I think this may need a microscope)

As for spraying the growing medium, I'm a bit weary about doing that. I recently sprayed my pepper plants with a strong dose of neem oil to get rid of some aphids. I sprayed it so heavily that it dripped down into the growing medium, and now my roots are turning brown. I don't know if it was from the neem oil, or is a form of root rot or disease ,and just a coincidence. But I also had a similar issue when I heavily sprayed my tomato plants with the AzaMax.

You definitely have thrips on the cukes. That sort of damage is signature thrip damage.

Dude, I completely forgot the part where you said they are whitish orange in color. I wouldn't have suggested the flea beetles at all in the later post. For some reason, when I posted the second time, I was thinking your insects were black. Still, if you ever have flea beetles, now you have a good solution. . .

Even with the thrips, I still say you may have another insect lurking. It's evident the cukes are hit with the thrips. But, keep in mind that when growing outside the environment that is perfect for one pest is perfect for a host of others and if you have your plants near a breeding ground, you are likely to get other insect damage. The leaves look chewed on to me. Am I wrong on that? Is it just distortion? It makes a difference and I should have asked before. Thrips don't chew up edges of leaves and they usually leave the undersides looking pretty bad.

They appear to be merely distorted with no "chunks" missing, just a whole lot of crinkled edges and what not. I have found some leafminers on my goji berry bush which are pretty obvious to diagnose. Upon looking into the peppers I found nothing other than thrips. The peppers appear to be affected much less becuase I cannot find many thrips there compared to the cucumber plant. The pests began with the cucumber, so it probably has taken awhile for a few of them to migrate across the porch to the peppers. In addition, the peppers have fewer leaves so I suspect that is another reason why they arent exploding in number as much as with my cukes.

The underside of the pepper leaves are indeed slightly "scraped" in appearance. Those pictures I provided could be misleading about the scrapes on the underside, and one of the newer leaves in that pic looks like a chunk was bitten out of it so I can see why you may have guessed with the larger bugs.

Although, who knows! Maybe at night whenever I am snoring in my bed I have some kind of moth larvae scurrying around my porch, or even some kind of beetles? Whatever the case, I should probably keep my eyes peeled, especially since I am growing outdoors which is the bugs natural habitat, as you mentioned Joe.