I'm hoping someone more expert responds, but all I can say is that my sugar snap peas also have very similar mottling (silver and green) but no holes, so I'd suspect the two are unrelated.

Hi,

I think you have slugs or pill bugs eating your peas. You would see them at night or early morning. If your peas are producing/growing well, I wouldn't worry too much. The photo doesn't look as if the plants will be seriously compromised from the holes. If you start losing 1/3 to 1/2 a leaf, that's a different story.

You can handpick if there's lots of them (go out in the dark, bucket of soapy water, flashlight, scrape slugs into water bucket). If picking slugs is too icky, there's organic slug treatments - contains Iron Phosphate - google Sluggo. There's other varieties at your garden center, but look for "organic". Also have read that spraying the plants with coffee or a tea of "no doze" will kill slugs. Apparently caffeine is a neurotoxin for slugs...

The mottling looks like leaves on some of my peas - I think it's normal in some varieties. I'm having a bangup pea harvest this year - the wet and cold spring in GA has made peas grow like mad!

Good luck!
Cindy

The leaf coloring is normal. I dont think that is slug damage - they dont usually make lots of little holes like that, more likely to be flea beetles. I get some slug damage in my garden but never to peas.

Try spraying with Spinosad if they get bad.

Update: I went out at night with a lantern as suggested and discovered the culprits ... caterpillars. They are small, about an inch long, the exact same color as the plants and the exact same size as the stems. They are VERY difficult to see and can hide in plain sight. I picked off as many as I could find, then sprayed the peas with BT the next day. It didn't seem to have much of an effect, because I found two more very healthy caterpillars the following day. Not sure what else to try on them.

I have not had a problem with slugs, at least not in my raised beds, and have been diligent about looking for them.

I think BT needs a few days to work on caterpillars. Congrats on no slugs - I hate slugs, they are decimating my beans and brassicas this year.

Slug-go works a treat! Used it around my cala lillies with great success. It's labeled okay for organic gardening.