No! No! No! It's not done by squirrels or rabbits or groundhogs. It's a weevil (the "Sunflower Head-Clipping Weevil). I removed the one below from my purple coneflower and brought it in the house for a picture. I also killed 20 of his friends. What you have to do is walk around your garden and when you see a flower deadheaded 2 inches from the top, put your hand (or cup) underneath the flower and squeeze. These weevils will fall out into your hand or cup, and you can kill them with prejudice. They don't bite. :) You will also see them on top of the flowers and sometimes crawling up the stem. I've manually removed them every few days, and the problem is mostly resolved. I also found more details just now at: https://bygl.osu.edu/node/816 Good luck!

Hi everyone, I am trying to prep my garden and wondering whether I should pull up all of my coneflowers. I didn't know that they had yellow asters until I looked up why coneflowers turn green. I noticed the weird look last fall, but thought, "Hmmm⦠I must have planted an exotic one and didn't remember." Do I really need to pull up all of them NOW or should I wait til they come up to see which are healthy? I have 50% perennials in the garden, much of which are resistant to the aster yellows. The coneflowers and rudbeckias are just the 2 that might be impacted.

You need to remove the entire plant. If you don't, the leaf hoppers will spread the disease to your other plants and you'll have to pull them out, as well. This is a nasty plant disease with no treatment, except to remove infected plants as quickly as possible. Other plants to watch are Marigolds, Asters, carrots,Coreopsis, Black-Eyed Susans....I can't remember any more from the list. You can Google Asters Yellow and get lots of info. Sorry this has dampened your garden enjoyment. Martha

I second Cathy's winter sowing suggestion. I've started many native wildflowers this way, using milk jugs. Echinacea purpurea doesn't require a cold stratification period, so you've got some time to put this together. You could try the Winter Sowing forum, or Trudi Davidoff's site for tips. Wintersowing is like having tiny cold frames, so the seedlings can get an earlier start with more even temperatures. You do have to keep an eye on them once temps start to rise, taking the tops off on warm days, and making sure the soil doesn't dry out. After the seedlings have hardened off, you can transplant them into the large (and hopefully deep) pots where they'll spend the summer. I also think cooper8828's advice would work although it's more risky if the weather is really roller-coasty in the spring. Also -- you might try posting this to the Perennials forum. It's a busy forum and plenty of Echinacea experience there.