Some critter, no doubt. Did it get them while they were in the hoop house? Then something small like voles or field mice. A trap will tell you what.

It may well be Rabbit.
This is what my neighbor's pepper plants looked like after Rabbit attack.

I think it's a bug not a critter(rabit etc.)
Rabbits etc.wouldn't leave the center of the leaves on the ground like in your pics.Branches yes,leaf parts no.
They usually eat the whole leave,and on plants that small I think they would have eaten the whole plant from the ground up.They also leave droppings all over the place.
Camel crickets did that to some of my plants a while back.
I don't see any snail or slug trails either.
Put some DE on top of the soil.Whatever is eating your plants will at least leave a trail in it so you can see where it comes from in the morning.
It looks almost like what catapillars do but I think it's early for them to be out.
I'd say it's a bug.
Might look for something in the soil/grass too that comes out at night to munch.
They would show up in the DE too.
Put out rat and mouse traps just to be sure it's not mice etc.
But I think it's a bug.
Could be something that lives in the ground your greenhouse is on-in the grass.
Try a tarp or something and see if it stops some bugs from crawling up in your pots and munching the plants.
You can spray some bug poison on some lettuce leaves and put them on the ground near your pots and sometimes it will attract whatever is eating your plants,might kill whatever it is whithout using poison on your plants.

I really think it's something comming out of the grass in your greenhouse.

Thank's guys, no rabbit's around, no other plants touched just the peppers, all this happened in a hurry, noticed it after the first night on 1 plant and it was raining while I was out there and just glanced at it, get home last night and found carnage on the other pot. Have had Bananna plants and some annuals and pond plants in a tub in there all winter, and many other plants, nothing else touched just the peppers. Will get rat traps on the way home, I know there are some of those around and mice too.

I'd check for insects or other invertebrates. Like smokemaster, I think mammals would have eaten the entire leaf. Caterpiller (hornworm) was my first reaction until I realized the plants were newly put out. The hornworms grow from moth eggs that would have to be laid, hatched, and grown from small size...not an overnight kind of happening. Also no frass...er, poop, on the ground. They always leave droppings behind that look kinda like worm castings.

Watch for other insects, the more mobile kind, though I don't know which ones would like peppers in your area. However, I could be wrong and maybe your traps will do the job.

Wishing you success in getting rid of the varmint...whoever it is.

I'm betting on an insect....

Keep looking around the plants. That looks like a hornworm attack to me. Just seems a bit early....

I saw the same thing on some of my plants and I caught some big a$% grasshoppers munching on one plant.

The strange thing is that they do not go after all of my peppers just a few types.

Well.....whatever it is it's smarter than me. Put out a large rat trap with cheese and part of a pepper leaf by it. Checked in an hour and the trap had sprung cheese on the ground and leaf eaten. Next put a piece of pepper leaf on the trap wedged in good. This morning leaf gone trap not sprung. I assume it is either mice too small to trigger trap or a pepper leaf eating ghost...However I put out rat poison also and all of it was eaten :)

A rat or mouse would have eaten the cheese. It may be a rabbit, try a piece of carrot. Could also be a something with wings, try covering the plants with netting.

I hope you don't end up killing somebody's cat. Cats will eat the vegetation off pepper plants, too.

Alan

Well it looked like when the trap went off it flung the cheese. It is not my intension to kill someones cat, however if it is in my yard inside my greenhouse when it is supposed to be on a leash as per city ordinance it is the responsibility of the cats owner not mine. My dog can't get in the greenhouse and he also don't roam around the neighborhood.

Cats wouldn't leave any of the plant still in the pot.They really tear them up when they do get a craving for veggies.
They probably would have eaten the cheese.
They wouldn't eat rat poison-assuming it was the grain covered stuff.
If it ate a mouse full of the poison grain that could kill a cat.

A few years ago my cats ate all the leaves off of my pepper plants and just left the stem standing in the pots. It took a while but the plants grew more leaves and did real well.

I'm just saying that you should find out a little more about what you are dealing with before you start setting traps and/or putting out poison. If a rat, or squirrel, or rabbit can get into the area then a cat probably can too.

Try spraying your plants with some hot pepper mix if you think it's an animal.

Personally, I agree with bob_in_pc. It could be a worm. I had one living in the dirt of a plant I was growing last year. Every night it would come out and have a feast then go back underground before morning. I finally started scratching around in the dirt around the base of the plant and fount it.

If your greenhouse is warm enough for your plants then it's warm enough for insects to be there.

Alan

I recommend motion sensing camera... :).

...had a mouse prune a Bulgarian Carrot last fall. I had it potted up in front of my workshop. I was moving a stack of lumber around and found his nest. It was a regular root cellar! He had scooted under the rollup door, climbed the pot and shimmied up the plant, harvested a nice mature BC and drug it back inside. He had five or six of them in his nest in various stages of consuption. Some only had the stem and a few seeds left, others were half-eaten and some were earmarked for a future meal. I immediately took up all my mouse traps. This is obviously one tough little mouse, dining on Bulgarian Carrot peppers. Kinda like Mighty Mouse. Anyway, the LAST thing I wanted to do was pi$$ him off!

A few years ago I had yound flower transplants disappearing right after I planted them and finally saw a stump of one of the plants coming out from under the (low) deck. I have a small Havahart trap which I baited with greens and the next day had captured a vole or field mouse. I relocated it and the problem ceased. I have had to do that a couple of times since.

I also have a larger trap which I use to relocate two or three woodchucks per season. They can devastate a small garden in a day.

Here is a link that might be useful: Havaheart

Hey fiedlermeister, you haven't been releasing them by me, I hope. We have more woodchucks than we want :)

I'm never sure where to relocate live trapped critters. Some are actually illegal to relocate in our area. Sometimes I bring the trap and critter to my neighbor and ask him to get rid of it and not tell me too much about it. Kinda bad that I make someone else do that, but he doesn't seem to mind. I'll have to bring him some veggies. Guess we all have our own talents and mine is growing, not dispatching.

I go down the road and across the river to a nice wooded area. I hope they don't bother anyone else and being in the city, there areen't a lot of gardens around here. "City" being a relative term. We are 3 miles from the center of Bangor (36,000 folks) but have an easment and then woods behind us so we also have lots of wildlife. This time of year we see wild turkeys almost every day, and deer frequntly ( yesterday as I was taking the dog for a walk about 4 feet from us three deer crashed through the yard and across to the woods--Katy got very excited) In summer in addition the the woodchucks, squirrels, and chipmunks we see racoons, skunks, and once a fox and once two young moose were in the street. My next door neighbor had a bear take his bird feeder.

Most critters will not come into my yard since my dogs have a passion for small furry animals ;-)

Last year my friend was telling me about his hornworm problem and I wondered why I hadn't seen any in my garden. One day I was sitting in my yard and I watched several small birds dissapear into my plants and come out with big green worms in their beaks. They would sit on my wall and eat the worms. I then figured out why I did not have the hornworm problem.

My friend had a great video of him with a Blue Jay that he has trained in his backyard where he holds a hornworm in his hand and the Blue Jay flies from his roof and lands in his hand and eats the worm. Too funny. I never knew you could train those things.

Natural pest control at it's finest.

Have you found what is eating your pepper?

I have same problems. Only the peppers are eaten, not the tomatoes (which are together with the peppers).
I had to plant new peppers - after one night the new plants were eaten as well!
It is not rabbits, mice or rats (sure, as here are cats watching..)
I have had peppers several years but never experienced this.

My guess....army worms.

They're actually a caterpillar. Look up how to control them, I've forgotten.

It was a large Rat

ugh...i didn't think they'd munch on plants like that.

I found a hornworm on my pepper plants last week and I found it only after investigating what decimated all the leaves. It stuck out like a sore thumb as it was thicker than the stem. It ate 3 lower halfs of 5 inch Jalapenos. That sucker was big. I saw a smaller one on the underside of a leaf and I got rid of it. Later that night I saw a thick hornworm chewing through my tomato leaves. After that attack I haven't seen any more damage or worms.

Hey - some of my plants are suffering from the same problem depicted in the third photo from the bottom. My pepper, squash, spinach and brussels sprout plants are being lobbed off at the stem, a little bit each night. the interesting thing is that these plants are on a roof that would be inaccessible to rabbits and deer, and my eggplant and tomato are just fine. Upon closer inspection, I spotted some raccoon tracks up there; there are also neighborhood cats that might head up for a snack. I've covered them with netting, but that won't help with whatever's eating my peppers while they're still babies...(some bug) :(