I don't know what is eating your plants but the 3rd picture is a Petunia, not a Pansy. Some of the damage looks as if it could be slugs or snails but the first Foxglove has something else going on which looks more like a disease than a pest. I would suggest going out after dark and seeing if there is something nocturnal nibbling your plants.

Just out of curiosity, what are those little light-colored round things on the soil?

Those round things on the soil looks like fertilizer to me

ZM, the little balls are control release fertilizer prills. Osmocote is one of the most well known brands.

I was thinking earwigs, too, or even pillbugs or sowbugs, dowlinggram.

dowlinggram- thanks so much for taking the time to write up that recipe. I will try this week both here and in another bed where my Queen Red lime Zinnias have been decimated.

Rhizo_1 - good call, you were spot on about the fertilizer .

Floral_uk - you're absolutely right, those are petunias. I hope it's not disease, these were all grown from seed and I've been very careful about cleaning and bleaching any pots which I've re-used. I think I did pretty well with the hardening off, too.

Shortly before their demise this morning, I found these two culprits:

The caterpillary one was on a zinnia and the slug? was on a foxglove. Do you have suggestions for either?

This culprit periodically pulls out whole plants that I've just planted, but he's such good company that I forgive him:)

You can usually just hand pick caterpillars and wooly worms from zinnias. For slugs, I use Sluggo. It is safe around pets, like your dog. But it kills slugs effectively.

Thanks ZM, will pick up some Sluggo today. Good to know about handpicking them. How on earth do you manage to do that by hand with all your zinnias?!

Slug bait out. Not sluggo; local hardware store didn't have, DH picked up the brand they did have.

I put out 9 'traps' with dowlinggram's recipe tonight; ran out of small containers and then thought to cut off the bottoms of recyclable water bottles (worked well!).

Just went out and found two of these on a couple of zinnias. Earwigs, right? I'm embarrassed to post pictures but the zinnias which I planted out, are in terrible shape.

During the day, today, I took this picture, just after picking up a flat. Lots of activity, this was all that was left, when I took the picture:

Note two earwigs? to the upper right and a pillbug ? along 9 PM. I did see one pillbug roll up into a ball, so that's why I think they're pillbugs.

Hi oldbat2be,

" Good to know about handpicking them. How on earth do you manage to do that by hand with all your zinnias?! "

I do have a lot of zinnias, but today I did not see a single wooly worm on them. We did take one off of a tomato plant, but I think it was just "exploring". Wooly worms aren't very numerous and they are easy to see, so hand picking them doesn't take a lot of time. One year in the past numerous earwigs caused extensive damage to my zinnias. They worked at night. I discovered that they were living under the mulch I had provided my zinnias, so I simply removed the mulch and replaced it with sand.

That eliminated the earwig problem, and also eliminated the pillbug problem. Pillbugs don't like sand, There is also an effective bait available for pillbugs. but my sand mulch keeps pillbugs away, and it keeps earwigs away.

ZM