Mine looks exactly the same as yours echinaceamaniac! Hasn't grown one iota since I got it. However, I am crossing my fingers that next spring; #1, it will still be alive, and #2 that it takes off better. :( Now, Tomato Soup is doing better than Mac and Cheese. At least it looks like it wil get somewhere. Here's pics of my two:

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kentstar - If it has been raining a lot there, I'd get me some Daconcil if I were you. I've sprayed mine already. We've had so much rain this year.

I have treated mine with some root stimulator product. I'm going to try babying these. LOL. If these don't live, I will call this plant the biggest dud since Big Sky Series!

I am getting via mail order some of that Gardenville Sea Tea tomorrow. I might try some of that on them. Daconcil, what is that? An insecticide? Fugicide?

I have some fungicide in the shed somewhere :). Thanks for the info.

I gotta get out the camera and take a few shots of mine! (mac&cheese and tomato soup)

The mac and cheese was spindly looking like yours, but now after a few weeks it is putting out new leaves and catching up to the more bushy tomato soup.

I also finally have some of my paradoxa blooming.. and comparing the flower and color to the image of mac & cheese... they look very similar... i guess mac has more outward petals... and purpurea like leaves but none the less.

I promise if I see something that helps these thrive, I will share it with all of you!

Ditto!

My Mac'N'Cheese and Tomato Soup look to be about the same size as yours, they were just plugs when I bought them so now they are in 4" pots, when the roots fill these pots I'm going to move them up a size, when these pots are filled with roots I'll plant them out. Maybe this will make a difference, time will tell.

Annette

Mac 'N Cheese doesn't seem to be anything like their marketing photos. Once again...Great marketing and bad plants are a terrible combo!

I did see a bunch of Mac and Cheeses in 1 gallon pots that were nice and healthy.. multiple growth points and bushy... so it might just take these small post plug plants to take off. Time will tell

Maybe they are tired from being exposed to all the plant hormones and Configure they use on all of them.

Also...I bought 1 gallon pots of the Big Sky Series and they still failed so you can't really go by the size. Those plants in gallon pots I'd bet anything have been treated with growth hormones. If you plant one, it will be smaller next year. I'd bet money on that!

From one of my replies to the tissue culture post: I just got back from one of my nursery haunts, and as I was hunting through the bench for a "White Swan" I saw some pots of "Mac-n-Cheese" - what absolutely miserable looking plants!! Tiny little puny things with a couple of leaves while next to those pots were lush specimens of "Magnus", "White Swan", and some other cultivers, the names of which escape me. So, something definitely seems to be up that cultivar...

I'm not surprised. I knew something was up when I saw people who have beautiful Echinaceas growing in pots and these aren't even 5 inches tall. The only one I've seen blooming is in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. It looks to be about 5 inches tall. The bloom looked horrendous to me. Something went wrong in those test tubes for sure. These are Frankenplants.

Well I just got my GardenVille Sea Tea today! I added a dilute solution of 2 Tbsps per gallon of water and used that on the Tomato Soup and Mac&Cheese. Now, we'll see how they do. Hope they live! lol

The first is my tomato soup... it is growing decently. The second it my mac & cheese. It looked small like the earlier postings.. but now after several weeks... it is picking up. I think there is a small bud forming in there too.

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Don't forget to pick the buds off asap! According to Terra Nova these shouldn't be allowed to bloom when they are this small. I just thought I'd share their instructions to me about this plant.

I will post another photo in a few weeks to show progression in growth. I will let them bloom and take photos as well... if they continue on their track now.

I picked the buds off of mine. I'm going to do what Terra Nova said to do and see if it works.

Buds? I wish I even had buds! My Mac&Cheese looks even worse now. Tomato Soup is still alive, but not much more than what it was before, maybe a half inch taller :(.

Kentstar - Where did you get yours? I bet you could get a refund or replacement plant. Surely they have some sort of guarantee.

I think I'm going to just stick to Paradoxa. It's prettier anyways in my opinion. It is so vigorous in comparison to these!

I got them at Green Thumbs Galore. I have hope yet, but not much for Mac&Cheese.

If you ask them for a refund, please let me know what they say.

I went to my wholesaler yesterday, where I got Mac N Cheese and Tomato Soup back in April. Their Mac N Cheese are still in quart pots and still only have 4 or 5 leaves. They look exactly like the ones I bought in April and the ones that have been pictured here. One or two plants were putting up a bloom that was very pretty but very puny. By contrast, Kim's Mophead, Coconut Lime, Pink Double Delight were all nearby, completely filling the quart pots and putting up tons of blooms per pot.

Tomato Soup had been bumped up to gallons. The plants were about a foot high, but were just a single plant with a single stalk coming up. No side shoots at all. They LOOKED like they filled the pot because the leaves are much longer than other varieties but there were no basil shoots coming up or anything. The bloom is gorgeous but it looks like only one bloom per plant? There were no side buds on any of the 50 or so pots. Nearby were Kim's Red Knee High which were overflowing the pots. This one is a new variety at this nursery, so the plants had to have been started this spring at the same time. Tons of flowers and new little plants crowding the pots. Because of Terra Nova's claims, I bought a gallon and will see if that outperforms my quarts that still look like crap. It is taller than mine, but does not look very hardy.

I searched out all of the new perennials that they had for this year. Some were in quarts, some in gallons heucheras, hostas, coreopsis, you name it. None of them looked like the echs in quality. They were beautiful and totally filled the pots.

It was very busy there, so I didn't get to talk to my guy about the echs. I did notice that they are no longer selling Tiki Torch. Imagine that....

I think I understand what happens...

Terra Nova crosses these plants. The seeds will not germinate so they take the embryo out of the seeds and tissue culture them via embryo rescue in a lab. The resultant plant looked good in their greenhouse. It's a bright orange that doesn't fade. They immediately start cloning this plant and rush it to the market.

The plant has very few blooms so they grow about 20 plants and pick the best blooms from them all and arrange them in a bucket of water.

They hire a professional photographer to take flattering photos. They crop the bottom off so you can't tell this is a photo of a flower arrangement.

They send these pictures to all the growers and fool them into ordering them. These people sell them telling their customers, "It's the best orange coneflower," they promise when they really have no idea how this thing will perform. They snicker when the customers leave with the plant knowing it won't return next spring.

The cycle starts all over again with Mac 'N Cheese and Tomato Soup. They have their fingers crossed that these new ones do better but they don't know because they didn't trial them.

Whatever their other virtues or vices, those are absolutely disgusting cultivar names.

I agree marymd7. What horrible names. LOL.

I was at a nursery yesterday that had gallon pots of Mac n cheese... 4 pots in bloom. One looked like the photo.. no quilling... nice flowers. The others looked like Tiki Torch. Not even close to a yellow.. just orange. Hopefully just mislabeled pots.

And they had a Tomato Soup gallon that had a single bloom... again a very nicely formed flower... and the red actually matched the label... nice and vibrant red.

It will be interesting to see if they hold their color though for very long.

My Tomato Soup has a bud. It seems a much better plant than Mac 'n Cheese, at least in my zone.

Mac 'n Cheese is going to be one that doesn't return next Spring. I'm going to dig it up and grow it protected all winter. Maybe it'll take off next year after some pampering.

You know, my Mac 'n Cheese actually bloomed for me this year!! Two blooms?! How's that for a healthy plant!! I think it all depends on where they're being grown. I'm going to be amending my soil that I have it planted in with expanded shale to improve the drainage. Hopefully this will help it out a lot (even though there aren't any problems...yet).

Please post a picture of your blooms. I'd like to see how tall the plant is. Was it small when you bought it?

My 3 Tiki Torch that didn't return this year had two to three blooms each last year. Just because a coneflower has two blooms doesn't mean it's a healthy plant. Don't get your hopes up. I know I'm not with this one.

Echimaniac and Kentstar, the plants you bought are very, very tiny. They should of been grown a little longer before sale. I refuse to buy plants that small.

Mine is still alive. It's growing some. Maybe it's a good thing that it's growing slow and putting out good roots. I won't give up on it but I've never had an Echinacea plant grow so slowly!

The Tomato Soup and Pink Poodle plants were small too, planted at the same time and all are blooming.

I'm thinking about ordering the Mac N Cheese from McGlaughin's. Just waiting to hear back from them first. I want to plant it next to my Tomato Soup.

So sad! One of the big selling points of echinacea is their health and vigor, and these screwed up mutants are just killing their reputation.

yes, McGlaughlins sent me a picture of his stock. They don't look like an echinacea, real big leaves. I'm still going to buy one though.