What's eating my pea leaves, lettuce and swiss chard???

Something is eating these vegetables. I'm pretty sure it's at night, because I don't see anything on the leaves during the day. I live in a zone 3 in calgary, alberta, so I probably don't have as many different kinds of pests that you guys have to deal with.

It's in a full sun location against a fence. I was thinking it was slugs or something, but I look under every leaf and there is nothing. Could it be weevils or something??? Do they feed at night? I don't see any larvae...

About ten feet away, I have a different kind of pea and more swiss chard. These are almost untouched. But all over my garden, there is at least some damage on only these plants, it's just really severe in this one area. They leave my tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, potatoes, strawberries and rhubarb alone.

My guess would be either slugs or cabbage worms, though I'm not sure the latter would bother these particulr plants. Ansolutely NOTHING bothers my peas, knock wood, but I have a devil of a time with the cabbage worms on my brassicas...they love Kale and Swiss Chard almost as much as the cabbage.

The only thing I've seen decimate lattuce, in my garden anyway, has been slugs. And some if them ore so tiny, it's hard to imagine they could do such damage.

Have you tried any of the suggested slug control products? Can't hurt, might help!

Yeah, I'm thinking slugs too, esp. looking at your soil. When I lived in northern MN, my soil would dry into clods like that, and those spaces between clods and cracks in the soil were a perfect hiding place for slugs.

Pus the slugs baits are non toxic, iron something, so no fear there. I have similar symptoms but havne't devoted myself to studying and seeing if the bait is working.
Maybe a slug trap you coud check in the morning, like a board, bowl, anything thye might hide under, cantalope half rind...

To me that looks more like damage from some type of caterpillar -- along with trying some slug control, I'd spray everything with some BT (Dipel, Thuricide). A couple of years ago pretty much everything in my garden was being eaten and I finally discovered the culprits, some ugly-looking brownish-gray caterpillars -- maybe army worms? but I never did positively ID them. Try checking the undersides of the leaves early in the morning. Hope you figure it out, it looks like whatever it is, they're making short work of the plants!

Strange how the eaten parts are all around the edges of the leaves- to me it looks more like leafcutters than worms? Worm holes are usually in the inner parts of leaves- just my uneducated guess!

The cabbage worm damage looks identical to that, but I don't think they'd be all that interested in pea leaves. And those little buggers are HARD to spot. Not only do they like the underside of the leaves, but they have an annoying habit of resting along the spine of a leaf - which is exactly the same color as they are. Took me a while to get the hang of 'em, but once I did, I became ole eagle eyes!!!

Shudder- Army Worms, you can HEAR them munching down on everything

Where's Janina? I wonder how she made out???

Here's a photo of a looper (cabbage worm, probably, but it doesn't look quite green enough to me) working my "Midnight Ruffles" lettuce over -- this patch of lettuce is about ready to be pulled out anyway, it's just about to bolt, but I gave it all a good dusting with Dipel to get rid of the worms and hopefully keep them from moving on to something else.

I honestly don't see anything day or night. There are jumpy things all over my lawn, could it be those???

My guess would be birds. They ate my peas last year (sigh)

From my observation, snails usually make holes. You might have some of those brown GRASSHOPPERS lurking. They're huge, and will do great damage if not handled.

The jumpy things are definitely not grasshoppers, they are tiny and light colored. I think it may be birds, because the damage hasn't been consistent. It happened really bad once, but my swiss chard and lettuce have recovered. The peas still seem to be having pieces of leaves ripped away and they aren't really recovering. I noticed a bunch of birds flocking to the bed a couple times in the spring, but that was before the seeds sprouted, but I guess they were probably there a few times while I was at work or something. I'll try covering them next year with netting, since it's too late now.

Thanks for all your help!

Janina - sometimes the birds will drop small pieces of pea leaves on the ground, which is a sure sign that they are the culprits. They seem to like the tendrils best. They sit on the pea fences and peck, peck, peck!

The holes look like semi-circles which made me think it might be a leaf cutting bee.

I had some get into my roses and ornamental flowers one year but didn't notice if any got into the vegetable garden.

You really don't want to kill bees. You might try covering some plants with gauze or something like that and see if that helps.

Cucumber beetles will eat swiss chard and lettuce, also had trouble with a black hard shelled bug (not flea beetles) eating swiss chard.

I have had identical damage to several types of plants this summer and it turned out to be black vine weevils. They come out just after it gets dark and hide in the soil during the day.