I grieve with you.

Where abouts do you live that there are so many maggots.

Maybe hopefully some peppers are not so attractive to the maggots.

jasonk, I feel your pain i have over 125 plants and thousands and thousands of peppers that i fear will mostly be lost. I have thrown away at least 500 peppers so far every one of them with maggots. They have not bothered the small pods and so far I have not seen any damage to any of my Habs Bhuts or Naga's. I too will take extra care in trying to elimanate this problem next year. Where do you live?

Dale

I live in Southern Ontario (Canada), which you wouldn't think would be a horrible place for this since, peppers aren't indigenous, but there you go.

I live in metro detroit and pepper maggots are not known to be in this region from what my county extension has told me. I just came in from the yard and i am starting to pull my plants 15 plants so far and I will probably pull many more in the next couple of days. Its just not worth picking the peppers and watching them rot. I would estimate that 90% of the pods are affected by these maggots.

Dale

Pepper maggots are evil. I feel for you. What is the best way to control/prevent them?

My little peppers are ready to be picked, but I'm finding little holes in them. What mean little creature is doing this?

Please help!

Holy Hot Sauce.

I am shocked and scared. This is terrible.

I too have the maggots. Are all the plants junk?? Or can they be saved somehow?? And how do you stop the problem next year?? Do I start them inside, and not buy them from the farmers market??

Any ideas would be great!!! Thanx.

Dale,

You got me very interested now. I would love to see some pics of the damage from maggots. I too have had the misfortune of losing hundreds of beautiful larger pods. I thought it was Blossom End Rot, but a member on another forum keenly pointed out little holes in the fruit.

I just tossed 15 or so plants today because I got sick of picking fruit and seeing them rot in places. It hasn't affected my smaller peppers as much, similar to your experience.

So throw me on the list of disappointed so far. It could've been a wonderful year for frying peppers. My Spanish Spice plants were loaded with nice looking peppers.

Sory to hear about everyone's misfortune. Let's hope for improvement. :)

Chris

littlecatlady>>>>little holes can be pepper maggots or pepper weevils.

Has anyone submitted samples to the extension office for confirmation?
Anyone have pics of the pods and the little buggers inside them?

kendra

Well, I now know the thing response for ruining nearly all my crop. Is this a pepper maggot? What is going on if it is? Dale, how weird that an uncommon pest hits both of our gardens in SE Michian so viciously.

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Chris

I think that looks more like a pepper weevil. They are gross little things.
Last year we got some peppers from a friend and canned them all whole in vinegar. About 6 months later I went to open the can and just happened to glance at the peppers inside. These little nasties had come out of the peppers in to the brine and were floating there.....YUCK!!!! I had to throw out several jars that had his peppers in them just in case.

kendra

This is the worst news. I am worried that these beasts might spread all over the country. I have some peppers with sort of small holes appearing. the pepper falls off the plant. and It has a hole in it. I figure a caterpillar must have crawled out of the pepper and is now gone.

I have been simply throwing the pepper away. I will have to cut the next one open and see what is inside.

I made my very first discovery of a creepy-crawly inside of one of my chiles yesterday. I discovered it after I had roasted the chile and was in the proccess of peeling and dicing it when I noticed it. Don;t think it was a pepper maggot, because it was green...like a caterpilliar, hard to tell because it was pretty well cooked. What was weird was this little hard thing in the chile with the bug. It was shapped like a lima been, about the same size too, and was a little bit lighter green than the bug. I tried to cut into it but it was hard as a rock. No idea what it was. I wish I had a camera...I suppose I should join the 21st century and pick one up. Anyways, I've been harvesting chiles for close to 2 months now, and haven't had any problems like this, so hopefully it was an isolated incident.

Yes, I have been in touch with my county extension and I am going to send samples to MSU for tests. Pepper Maggots are not at all common in mich that is why they want samples so that they can cofirm. these things in my peppers are not weevils they are maggots I have seen the flys in the garden but at the time did not know what they were.I am not sending the samples to MSU for my benefit because I am 99.9999% sure that these are pepper maggots from the pics that I have seen on the internet of the flies that lay the eggs. Mich. State University wants these samples because they have not had cases of the maggots in mich that they know of. i would hope that someone , including myself can find a way to prevent them from surviving in the soil so that we don't have this problem next year. I found this on a site about Pepper Weevils I believe it to say that they emerge from the pepper as a weevil and not a maggot.

Pepper Weevil larvae bore into pepper pods and feed for about 8 to 10 days. At this time, full-grown larvae create cells made of frass within peppers and pupate. Four to 6 days later, a new generation of beetles emerges. This 2- to 3-week life cycle is typical in summer. In cool weather, however, 5 to 6 weeks may pass from the egg to the adult stage. In Florida, 5 to 8 generations are produced each year.

Chris, mine too are isolated to the larger pods but am finding no damage to my habs Bhuts and Nagas. I have already disposed of 20 plants and I am guessing 1000 pods.

I will keep everyone up to speed on this and hopefully someone will find a way of elimanating these bastards!!!

Dale

It's not too late if you still have more chilli's that have not matured. I too just had them and went to Ace hardward and bought some insecticide spray (yes, chemicals but I was desperate). I live in Indonesia and opted for the local one the farmers use but they did have name brands like ortho etc. I just picked off the ones infested and sprayed the rest. I caught it when the first ones were ripening so there were still many more to come and it worked. Don't give up, you can still get few. Then in the down time of the year research organic ways to control it for next year. Unfortunately for me, too many bugs here, chemies are my only solution!

The other thing you can do is put the maggots in a bottle of tequila.....it's a delicacy in Mexico although it's a cactus worm and not a chile worm.

Be creative.

I too have lost several serranos butI just thought it was from birds or geckos here in Miami eating them but now that you mention it they have little holes in them and are now rotten. I guess I am a victum og the Pepper Maggot or Weevil experiance too. Sucks!!!

Chris,

This looks an awful lot like your bug.

Sorry for all of ya'lls losses. Roadie

Here is a link that might be useful: Pepper Maggot

The little white ones things have taken hundreds of my larger hot peppers (jalepenos, cherries, cayennes, fish peppers) in recent years in NJ. IÂve tossed 4 of 5 fish peppers over lunch today. They donÂt seem to go for the sweet peppers or for the slimmer, hotter ones, such as thai, Bulgarian carrot, lemon and Tabasco. I havenÂt seen them laying, so I donÂt know if itÂs weevil or pepper maggot, but the weevil photo seems to be pretty close. Does anyone have a link to other good pictures to help with ID?

http://comp.uark.edu/~pjmcleod/pepper/Fig42.jpg

Any updates from those in this thread from last year? After pulling the plants did the Weevils return? How are your plants this year?

Hope some of these individuals post again in regards to the success/failure of their weevil/maggot prevention methods. Especially since I live near MSU where thepodpiper send his samples of the little bastards, close to home.

I'm also in southern ontario and have noticed the same crushing defeat today. by chance did you use any new soil that didnt come in a sealed bag because i incorporated some city compost from the halton give away suspiciously considering that to be the cause since it says they live in the soil over winter. apparently these are a rare pest so its surprising to so so many others in ontario dealing with the same problem. this link might help

Here is a link that might be useful: university of Connecticut