"Paulo da Costa" wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"Eigenvector" wrote in message
. ..
I tried growing Echinacea in my patio area and they seemed to take off
quite nicely, but knowing nothing about them, I left them alone to do
their own thing.

I read somewhere about deadheading them, but didn't do that as I am not
familiar with the practice.

So right now I have the plants in my little plot, looking perfectly dead
and wondering if they will come back in the spring or did my ignorance
turn what should have been a perennial into an annual? How do
echinaceas seed and grow - by the flowers, like marigolds, or some other
mechanism?


Where do you live?

Even in California, my Echinacea are totally dead-looking right now, and
they will come back strongly in a couple of months. If you're planting it
in a colder climate, it may take longer, but they will come back.

Echinacea has a rhizome and spreads out bigger and stronger every year,
after dying back in the fall. You can also grow it very easily from the
seeds that are in the "cone" that remains when the flowers die out.

Paulo

Okay, that's certainly reassuring. I was about to clip off the dead flowers
but wasn't sure what effect that would have on them. I was also going to
pull weeds from around them, but not knowing what an echinacea looks like
when just starting out I didn't want to take the wrong thing. It's been
rather warm and wet here (Seattle) lately and the weeds are coming out in
force. I wanted to tag them before they had a chance to establish, and
since I have the day off I can do it at my leisure.

I made the mistake of buying compost from a landscaping yard that apparently
doesn't filter their soil very well - I have more weeds growing up than I
know what to do with.