Been a TERRIBLE YEAR for my coneflowers -- at least half of them never even came up -- I think the wild violets smothered them out... The ones that did, have had lots of mold on them, and the soaker hose just ain't gettin' it and I just haven't been able to stand the heat well enough to slow-water more than a couple times with the hose. I had SUCH a patch of them and the perennial false sunflowers the last couple of years. The sunflowers are doing so-so, but the coneflowers look like I might have to start over from scratch. Since I don't remove ANY seed heads until late winter, I can't believe I didn't at least get some new seedlings. Here's what I USED to have... I haven't photographed what this year looks like, but I might soon, for comparison. It's pitiful; I tell ya! Long shot of my fence from just under my carport Back section of the fence, with just coneflowers From the middle of the fence, back towards the carport The above was all shot in early-to-mid July of last year. This July and August... Zip. Just so you don't feel too bad, Jean... Maybe echinacea's just having a bad year for most of us :( Jeff

Have you noticed that something has been eating on your plants? Maybe the petals have bite marks in them? Leaf hoppers spread the aster yellows disease. If this plant has flowered correctly in the past, I highly suggest you remove it and trash it. This will help prevent it from spreading to your other plants. Even if it isn't that disease, you will still be getting rid of a bad plant and replacing it with a good one.

If you've had the kind of wet year many of us have had, molds and mold-based diseases are unusually common this year. The plant will probably come back just fine next year, but I would cut back the infected flowering stalks, and dispose of them. If the leaves look ok, let them be. Next year....

Indeed, it is common for the plant matrix to change and evolve over the years, especially in the early going. for the most part, I agree with Woods Tea that it would be a mistake to set this back to zero again. You might be doing better than you think you are. One of the common things I see happen is with regard to prairie grasses-big blue, Indian, switch. etc. The more you use fire, the more warm-season grasses you end up with. We've been so successful with this simple bit of strategy that I'm intending to diminish the use of or frequency of fire in some of our sites. I like the grasses-don't get me wrong-but I don't want just that. Dave, I'd have to do my own research to learn whether or not R. subtomentosum has exhibited any herbicide resistance. Honestly not sure. I would though suggest taking a few deep breaths, seeing if maybe you don't like what's going on more than you think you do, and investigate slow management protocols that can help you up the species diversity....without starting over from scratch. As long as we're on this topic-and I do admit, I'm taking it in a slightly different direction here-I'd like to recount two tales of plant succession: First, at one of our large stream restoration sites, which contains much "prairie" plantings...one of the engineers I work with was highly concerned about an explosion of red clover on the site. We get lots of that, along with bird'sfoot trefoil, vetch and other leguminous weed species. I told here-she is rather easily set off-to not worry about the red clover. As the prairie species take hole-all of which are taller than red clover-that species will lose the battle, and so it has gone. You can still dig around and find red clover, as well as the BFT, but neither are "problems" at this point, and their very future within this matrix is going to be limited. Then the other thing: So, three springs back, we planted 6000 seedlings on land I own. The filed had been Roundup-ready corn, so no herbicide carryover effect whatsoever. After the trees were in, the filed just absolutely exploded in lesser ragweed. Well, it was a wet season and "lesser" ragweed was all head-high and taller. 20 solid acres of nothing but ragweed. A quick calculation told me there was simply nothing I could do about this, so that's what I did-nothing. In one year's time, that entire filed converted to perennial, native (albeit common and somewhat "invasive") species like giant Canada goldenrod, various asters, etc. Pretty amazing if you ask me, and all by doing nothing. That's not exactly your story, Dave, but it does serve to illustrate the enormous changes that can take place, even within a fairly tight timeframe. +om