Perhaps..(one suggestion, surely not the only possiblity)...

Burrowing rodents? Voles will eat or damage the crowns & roots, and chippies and rabbits burrow under hostas, daylilies, peonies, other perennials. They may not eat the roots, but ice & too much water get underground in the winter where it shouldn't be and cause damage. The voles will also use other rodent tunnels opportunistically to get to plant roots. My woodsy yard is infested with vermin. Some years huge perennials & hostas come back MUCH smaller than the year before. I can usually find rodent tunnels near the base of the miserable plant. The really big tunnels (rabbits) have killed some of my rhododendrons, Mtn. Laurel, hydrangeas and I've been losing sections for my 40' climbing hydrangea for the past 2 years. When the snow melts I find huge piles of dirt kicked out of the tunnels.

Part of my problem is that the dogs are now elderly, and the one who liked to chase critters is now blind (cataracts).
I started keeping the cats in when I started putting out bird feeders and bird houses. I'm now defenseless against the rodent invasion.

I wish I lived in a city neighborhood like all of my in-laws do.

~Bunnycat

deer? someone or something in the bed?

it is a ge be happy it is growing or i will show you a pic. of mine

if you rule out vermin ....

it got stepped on .. aka heeled in ...

what would have been the dominant eyes for this year... were somehow destroyed... allow lateral ... many lateral buds ... to break dormancy .. and thus created the multitude of now active buds .. you lost atypical dominance of the large buds

just a theory .. hard to analyze over the web

ken

I'm not sure why you think there is a problem. It went from 3 eyes to 12 eyes? That's pretty impressive for a GE.

Dorothy,
Take a heavy duty knitting needle or similar instrument and start probing the soil structure at a distance of 9 to 12 inches from the plant. You should meet equal resistance all around, but if the needle progresses in spots without any effort on your part, you got tunnels below. In such a case dig up your GE and find a new home.
Manfred

Or, if when you step in to probe with that knitting needle, your foot sinks in up to your ankle, think bunny rabbit, and perhaps GE goes into a hanging basket (only half joking).

"what would have been the dominant eyes for this year... were somehow destroyed... allow lateral ... many lateral buds ... to break dormancy .. and thus created the multitude of now active buds .. you lost atypical dominance of the large buds"
Ken

I think Ken has the basic question exactly right, hopefully this photo of H.'Liberty' will show an example. This was 2 eyes that I separated and planted both in the same pot. The one eye was in good shape the 2nd had been damaged; you should see the undamaged one is growing 1 eye again while the damaged 1 has sent out dormant eyes from the crown around the damaged eye.

The dominant eye will suppress lateral dormant eyes from developing as long as it is healthy, this happens with hormones (I think) or internal signals. Some plants divide more readily than others while H.ÂGreat Expectations seems to remain one big eye forever slowing dividing over the years.

This process allows multiplication if you want to take the chance of damaging the dominant eye forcing or allowing lateral eyes to appear. There is a famous old method Ken refers to as heeling or it was called stomping. One would stomp on the center of a healthy plant damaging the dormant eye. It was used to cause an unstable plant that was settling out to put out a variety of new eyes leading to more sports. Use this method with caution, but it works!

Hi everyone. Thanks for responding. I have never seen a rabbit, though I have seen them on the other side of the neighborhood ( 1/2 a mile away) We (knock on wood) have never had voles, and I don't know of anyone in the neighborhood that does. No chipmunks. Deer are around, but never that close to the house and this bed is right against the wall of the house. We once or twice have had a mole around. Manfred, I will try the knitting needle and see what happens. As to the eyes, when they FINALLY started to come up, it seemed normal, 4 fat eyes (I was excited) But the eyes didn't develop like they should and more little eyes came to the surface. So I feel like the origional ones are still there but deformed, and new ones have been added. I did not step there, and my husband stays away from the gardens (except with the weed wacker) Maybe a dog in the neighborhood might have stepped on it...
Assuming the knitting needle comes out ok, should I leave it? Leave it alone and hope that next year it is a knockout? Dig it up and pot it?